A Second Emancipation Proclamation!! is a 1943 Office of War Information cartoon drawn by Charles Alston. Roosevelt signs a paper marked "Atlantic Charter" beside Churchill while Abraham Lincoln stands behind him with a hand on his shoulder (NAID 535700).
What it shows
Three men share the panel. Franklin Roosevelt signs a document marked "Atlantic Charter," on the deck of a warship, with Winston Churchill beside him. Behind them stands Abraham Lincoln, one hand resting on Roosevelt's shoulder. A clipped line, set out as a news item, gives the occasion as an anniversary.
AUGUST 14 - "TWO YEARS AGO TODAY, PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AND PRIME MINISTER CHURCHILL SIGNED THE ATLANTIC CHARTER." ... NEWS ITEM
ATLANTIC CHARTER
Alston OWI
"A SECOND EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION !!"
Who made it and for whom
The signature reads "Alston OWI." The archive identifies the artist as Charles Alston and the maker as the Office of War Information. Its note says the office prepared cartoons of this kind for distribution to the Black press, and that this item is the original drawing, not a printed appearance in any paper. The National Archives keeps it with the OWI's war effort cartoon artworks in Record Group 208. The record does not list which newspapers ran it.
Lincoln as a witness
Transfer is the only technique the archive assigns. Lincoln's standing as the emancipator is lent to a wartime declaration by two heads of government, and the caption makes the comparison in so many words. For a Black readership, the cartoon says the war's stated aims carry on Lincoln's work.
That is a promise, and a promise can be measured. The cartoon offers no clause of the Charter and no change at home; the reader is asked to accept the frame on Lincoln's authority. Readers were entitled to ask what the second proclamation would free, and for whom. The record shows the offer, not any reply to it.
Alston drew the same government voice in a harder key the year before in The Savior of the Darker Races. A federal promise that did come with text is Executive Order 8802. The OWI domestic branch case study describes the News Bureau section that worked with the Negro press, and the Four Freedoms page covers the period's other statement of war aims.
Sources
- FRAME object record, A Second Emancipation Proclamation!!, 1943. Office of War Information, cartoon artwork, artist Charles Alston.
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 208, OWI War Effort Cartoon Artworks (series NAID 535594), item NAID 535700, local id 208-COM-994, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 3 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
