Food for Thought Friday: Historical Empathy

puritan, native american, puck

On a recent visit to Ellis Island, Marabou came across this cartoon. The March 30, 1898 (Vol. 43, No. 1099) cover of Puck magazine shows a Native American man, wearing a war bonnet and deerskin pants, holding up and gesturing to a rolled document that reads “An act to prevent the country from being overrun by foreigners.” A blonde white man in Puritan dress (who, according to the Library of Congress is supposed to be Senator Henry Cabot Lodge) cowers on his knees with hands clasped, fearfully looking upward. A tag reading “A.D. 1620” hangs out of his pocket referring to the English establishment of Plymouth Colony in present-day Massachusetts. The illustration’s caption muses, “Where would WE [bolded and underscored] be?… If the real Americans had held Lodge’s view on immigration there would be no Lodge Bill now – nor anything else.” The reader is asked to consider immigration policy through an historic lens. Food for Thought Friday: Historical Empathy