# The Place Is Full of Simon Legrees! The Senate and a civil rights bill, June 1957

Jim Berryman's Washington Star cartoon of 22 June 1957 draws the Senate as a figure in a bonnet running over breaking ice with a bundle marked "Civil Rights Bill," chased by two hunters whose dogs are labeled "Filibuster" and "Judiciary Committee."

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- The Place Is Full of Simon Legrees! The Senate and a civil rights bill, June 1957

      The Place is full of Simon Legrees!

      The Place Is Full of Simon Legrees! The Senate and a civil rights bill, June 1957
      Jim Berryman's June 1957 cartoon casts the Senate as a fugitive carrying a civil rights bill, hunted by dogs named Filibuster and Judiciary Committee.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Name-calling
      DateJune 22, 1957Made byWashington Evening Star (cartoonist Jim Berryman)MediumCartoonCountryUnited StatesRegimeEisenhower AdministrationNARANAID 5743243SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives (NARA), Records of the U.S. Senate, Jim Berryman Political Cartoons , retrieved October 3, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) Jim Berryman, Washington Evening Star. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the U.S. Senate, 5743243 (NAID 5743243).
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  Jim Berryman's Washington Star cartoon of 22 June 1957 draws the Senate as a figure in a bonnet running over breaking ice with a bundle marked "Civil Rights Bill," chased by two hunters whose dogs are labeled "Filibuster" and "Judiciary Committee."

## The drawing

A figure in a bonnet runs across ice that is breaking up underfoot. The figure is labeled "Senate." It carries a bundle, and the bundle is the bill. Behind come two men, one with a shotgun, each with a dog on the chase. The dogs have names.

FILIBUSTER

JUDICIARY COMMITTEE

CIVIL RIGHTS BILL

SENATE

Jim Berryman Washington Star

Words on the cartoon, FRAME transcription. Washington Evening Star, 22 June 1957. Full record at propagandaarchive.org.

## The borrowed story

Simon Legree is the slave owner of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the caption hands his name to the men in pursuit. The bonnet, the bundle, and the ice read as a scene from the same book, a flight from slavery. So the cartoon recasts a Senate procedure fight as a story about slavery, with the bill as the thing being carried to safety and the chamber's own rules and committee as the pursuers. FRAME calls the method name-calling by literary label. It is a strong label. Calling a parliamentary tactic "Legree" accuses the people using it of something much worse than delay.

## How to read it

The filibuster is a rule that lets a minority of senators keep talking, and a reader who distrusts majorities with power has reasons to value it. Berryman's charge is that in 1957 the rule and the Judiciary Committee were being used to keep a bill about equal rights from ever reaching a vote. That is a fair charge to make in a newspaper, and the record of this period on the site, from the Southern Manifesto's pledge to reverse a court ruling by "all lawful means" to the signs at the Arkansas capitol, shows what the delay protected. A procedural right is still a right. Using it to block the equal protection of other citizens is not a defense of liberty.

The same cartoonist, six days earlier, drew the House as a hanging judge and "The South" as its defendant in No jury trial for the likes of you. Berryman returned to a stalled civil rights bill in 1963 with Let Me Through!, where the bill is jammed in the Senate doors beside a tax cut. The other sheets of the period are gathered on US civil rights era messaging, 1954–1969.

## Record and rights

Washington Evening Star, cartoonist Jim Berryman. Jim Berryman Political Cartoons, Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives, item NAID 5743243, retrieved 3 October 2026. FRAME classes the source as openly identified and records the rights as public domain (U.S. government work).

## Sources

- FRAME object record, The Place is full of Simon Legrees!, 22 June 1957. Jim Berryman, Washington Evening Star. National Archives, Records of the U.S. Senate, Jim Berryman Political Cartoons, NAID 5743243, retrieved 3 October 2026.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/berryman-the-place-is-full-of-simon-legrees-1957/