Labor Day 1942 is an Office of War Information cartoon by Charles Alston. A white worker and a Black worker carry a shield reading "Free Labor Will Win" toward a dark tower labeled Axis, with factory smokestacks behind them (NAID 535654).
What the cartoon shows
Alston drew two workers, one white and one Black, carrying a single shield between them. They move toward a dark tower labeled "Axis." Factory smokestacks stand behind them. The lettering is short.
LABOR DAY ★ 1942
FREE LABOR WILL WIN
AXIS
36 2/3 picas
Who made it
The record credits the Office of War Information, with cartoon artwork by Charles Alston. The National Archives holds it in Record Group 208, in the series Cartoons Promoting the War Effort (NAID 535594). The archive classes the medium as a cartoon, aimed at the domestic public. The record does not say where, or whether, it was printed.
How to read it
The archive tags glittering generalities and fear appeal, and names the tell: a slogan-and-symbol frame, with the integrated pair as the visual message. "Free labor" is a virtue phrase the drawing never defines. The Axis tower is the threat. Those are the techniques.
The picture also says something specific. Two workers of different races hold the same shield, and neither leads. Roosevelt's Executive Order 8802 had declared a policy of no discrimination in defense hiring the year before, and the War Manpower Commission's Americans All made a similar plea with nine surnames and a Roosevelt quotation. A drawing cannot show whether shops followed it. It does show what the government's own cartoon file put forward. The archive files the cartoon under labor, war and race and ethnicity.
"Free labor" is worth taking at its word. Labor is free when people choose their work and can quit it. A slogan that sets free workers against the Axis is making a claim about the difference between the two systems, and it holds the speaker to it.
Alston also drew The Savior of the Darker Races for the office. The Office of War Information hub, the Roosevelt administration essay and the domestic branch case study cover the agency.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Labor Day 1942. Office of War Information (cartoon artwork; artist Charles Alston).
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 208, Cartoons Promoting the War Effort (NAID 535594), item 208-COM-141, NAID 535654, retrieved by the archive 3 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
