ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Like the moth, it works in the dark

Gibson, Charles Dana, 1867-1944, artist · 1923

Like the moth, it works in the dark
A charcoal or pencil drawing renders an American flag lying flat and torn across a barren landscape beneath a dark, threatening sky. At the flag's center sits a white pointed Klansman's hood rendered as a moth—labeled K.K.K.—its wing-shaped form suggesting both night-flight and the hooded costume that the Klan revived to mass popularity after 1915. The visual pun is the argument: the Klan, like a moth, destroys fabric in darkness and in secret, and the fabric it destroys is the flag itself. The cartoon appeared as the Klan reached peak national membership, infiltrating politics across the South and Midwest. The satire targets white supremacist vigilantism and its corrosion of American civic identity.

Gibson, Charles Dana, 1867-1944, artist Public domain