Less Things Change: Charles Brooks and the Art of Alabama Politics, The

Like any good political cartoonist, Charles Brooks of the Birmingham News played the part of both prophet and court jester. His cartoons continue to serve as a voice of Alabama's political conscience.

CARTOONS HAVE PROVIDED A POPULAR AND HIGHLY EFFECTIVE form of political commentary since the time of Napoleon and George III. When artists draw political cartoons, they often use caricature to visually emphasize some aspect of a politician's character, for instance when cartoonists draw George W. Bush as a small child to illustrate his political inexperience. Cartoonists also create memorable images when they exaggerate a political figure's features like Abraham Lincoln's long legs, Richard Nixon's five o'clock shadow, or Bill Clinton's bulbous nose.

Unlike other modern journalists, political cartoonists are expected to take positions and express opinions in their work. As the cartoonist Mark Cramer observed, "While other journalists are consigned to a life of dreary objectivity and nitpicky details, an editorial cartoonist can sound off like the guy on the next bar stool." Political cartoons are intended to provoke a reaction and to advocate a position. They are intended to generate discussion.

Alabama's best-known political cartoonist of the twentieth century is Charles Brooks of the Birmingham News. Born in Andalusia, Alabama, Brooks enrolled at Birmingham-Southern College in 1939, applying two hundred dollars won in an art contest toward his tuition. As his interest in political cartoon art grew, Brooks left Birmingham-Southern to study at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts with Chicago Daily News cartoonist Vaughn Shoemaker, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. After serving in the military during World War II, Brooks worked drawing gag-cartoons for a Chicago advertising agency. In 1948 he returned to Alabama and was hired by the Birmingham News as the paper's first editorial cartoonist. Brooks retired from the News after nearly forty years, but he continues to work in the field, editing the annual Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year (Pelican Publishing Company) series, which highlights the work of hundreds of political cartoonists from the United States and Canada.

OVER THE COURSE OK HIS CAKRKR CHARLES BROOKS provided commentary on ten presidential elections, eight presidential administrations, the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and Watergate, as well as state and local politics.

Readers familiar with Alabama politics will experience a striking sense of dejavu when looking at the span of Charles Brooks's work. Cartoons that Brooks drew thirty and forty years ago could run in an Alabama newspaper today and still be relevant because so many of Alabama's political problems remain unresolved.

A good political cartoonist fills many roles, from prophet to court jester. Charles Brooks served as a voice of Alabama's political conscience. Eighteen years after he drew his last cartoon for the Birmingham News, Brooks's work reminds us of how much progress our state still can make.

Copyright University of Alabama Press Spring 2004
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