1955 George White Political Cartoon, Reapportionment, Dade County, Civil Rights

A manuscript c. 1955 political cartoon by George White produced for the Tampa Bay Tribune. It deals with the reapportionment fight, a hot button issue in state politics throughout 1955 and 1956 related to proportional representation in legislative districts.

A Closer Look

This cartoon was drawn in the context of a statewide fight over the number of seats in the state legislature allocated to different areas. Similar disputes took place throughout the South in the 1950s, driven by postwar population growth and the Civil Rights Movement. The fight in Florida became so acrimonious that firebrands spoke of tossing various counties or legislative districts 'into the ocean' (legislatively speaking, that is, dissolving them), which is likely the basis for White's depiction here of Dade County being sawed off from the rest of Florida. The right-hand of the two figures sawing away at Dade County is labeled 'Miami Anti-Reapportionment Bloc.', and this is probably meant to apply to both of them. Another label reading ' Anti-Reapportionment Block' under the figure to the left, has been whited out but is still legible when backlit; its excision is probably a simple editorial change, possibly aesthetic but likely also driven by a desire for precision (referring specifically to the Miami Anti-Reapportionment Bloc.)

The Reapportionment Fight

In the postwar period, reapportionment became an issue in multiple southern states. As with seats for the U.S. Congress, legislative districts were meant to be updated at regular intervals (usually every 10 years) according to state constitutions, but decades of exceptions and loopholes had been cut out, leading to the overrepresentation of rural voters and the underrepresentation of urban voters. The problem became much more acute as Southern cities grew rapidly in the years after World War II (1939 - 1945), largely thanks to out-of-state migrants. The issue came to a head in Florida in 1955-1956, when it entirely deadlocked the statehouse.

The disagreement was primarily constitutional and also nakedly political, as rural constituencies and their representatives stood to lose influence. Supporters of reapportionment often referred to the state constitution as an outdated 'horse-and-buggy document' with many confusing clauses and typos, in addition to the issue of disproportionate representation. But in the background, often unspoken or only obliquely referred to, was the issue of civil rights, since allowing black citizens to actually vote would have a major impact on the outcome of elections to the statehouse.

Like most Southern states, Florida was dominated by Democrats and all major political leaders, including former Governor Fuller Warren and his successful 1956 challenger LeRoy Collins, were supporters of racial segregation. However, they disagreed on the means of maintaining segregation, with the 'moderates' seeing the unbalanced apportion of population in determining legislative seats as indefensible, unconstitutional, and illegal. Similarly, Fuller Warren was staunchly opposed to the Ku Klux Klan despite maintaining segregation in the state (for his part, by the end of his term as governor, Collins broke with other southern governors in implementing the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision and openly discussing an end to segregation).

Publication History and Census

This cartoon was drawn by George White for the Tampa Bay Tribune. From context it must date to 1955 or 1956, when the reapportionment fight dominated state politics, but we have been unable to locate the issue in which it was published. As a manuscript of the final published cartoon, this work is entirely unique.