Obscurity of the Day: History of the U.S.A.

 

Happy Independence Day to you folks down there to the south! Today's obscurity seems on the face of it a great obscurity to feature today, but names can be deceiving. History of the USA told the story of the country through a different lens than you would expect from an American newspaper: a purely negative lens in which the focus was squarely on all the wrongdoings and missteps associated with the young nation.

What American newspaper would commission such a comic strip, you wonder? What newspaper had such an axe to grind against its own country? Why, it was that infamous organ of the American Communist Party, of course, the Daily Worker.

The heydays of that newspaper were during the Great Depression, when many Americans, out of work, hungry and despairing, were disillusioned with the American capitalist system and democratic government. The Soviet communist system, theoretically anyway, seemed like it might offer a viable alternative. The Daily Worker was where many curious Americans dipped their toe in the water to find out more about this strange new form of government pioneered by the USSR. 

The Daily Worker took full advantage of that wide-eyed naivete, reporting national and world news with a constantly droning editorial voice telling how in all things the American system was flawed and the Soviet system was wonderful. So it's no surprise that they offered the same sort of material in their comics. 

History of the U.S.A. ran weekly from January 12 1936 to March 14 1937 in the Sunday edition of the Daily Worker. Almost all cartooning contributors to the paper hid behind pseudonyms, but William Sanderson is an exception to that rule. He also produced work for the left-wing magazine New Masses, and gained fame for his striking paintings. For this comic strip Sanderson adopted a faux woodcut style that is well-suited to the historical material, but he seemed to struggle with organizing his material so as to read smoothly from panel to panel. 

Just before the end of the run, Sanderson's gave up the art chores on the strip to someone named "Hall", who got co-credit with Sanderson from February 14 1937 on to the end of the strip.