Category: Arts & Humanities, Image, English, Ephemera, The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, United States
Results
The National Archives and Records Administration Clifford K. Berryman: Political Cartoonist Extraordinaire In 1886 at the age of 17, Clifford K. Berryman moved from Kentucky to Washington, DC, to work at the U.S. Patent Office, where he used his self-taught talents to draw patent illustrations. He left the Patent Office in 1891 to become a cartoonist’s understudy for the Washington Post. Within five years, Berryman was chief cartoonist, a position he held until 1907 when he became the front-page cartoonist at the Washington Evening Star. Berryman drew political cartoons for the Star until his death in 1949 at the age of 80. Washington political circles embraced Berryman’s cartooning.
Guns, tanks, and bombs were the principal weapons of World War II, but there were other, more subtle forms of warfare as well. Words, posters, and films waged a constant battle for the hearts and minds of the American citizenry just as surely as military weapons engaged the enemy. Persuading the American public became a wartime industry, almost as important as the manufacturing of bullets and planes. The Government launched an aggressive propaganda campaign with clearly articulated goals and strategies to galvanize public support, and it recruited some of the nation's foremost intellectuals, artists, and filmmakers to wage the war on that front.
