"Swear!"
Kirby's recurring 'Mr. Dry', a top-hatted figure with an umbrella labelled 'Anti Saloon League' that stood for all prohibitionists, clasps hands with a hooded Ku Klux Klan member holding a whip before a burning cross. The drawing moves the Klan's stigma onto the League by showing a sworn alliance; historian Thomas Pegram describes the actual relationship as informal ties between some League officials and local Klans, while League activists at the time denied involvement with Klan vigilantism.
- Date
- November 11, 1923
- Period
- Interwar
- Made by
- Rollin Kirby (cartoonist, New York World)
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Cartoon
- Issuer type
- Media
- Regime
- Coolidge Administration
- Leader
- Calvin Coolidge
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Persuade or win support
- Themes
- Elections and party politics, Race and ethnicity
- Event
- US Prohibition
- Techniques
- TransferName-calling
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Library of Congress, retrieved September 27, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (1923 work by Rollin Kirby, d. 1952; LoC: no known restrictions)
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Text on the object
ANTI SALOON LEAGUE KU KLUX "SWEAR!" Sunday 11th Nov. 1923 [illegible — additional handwritten scheduling note] [illegible — handwritten notes, left margin]
'ANTI SALOON LEAGUE' runs down 'Mr. Dry's' coat sash; 'KU KLUX' appears on the hooded figure's robe front (the full 'KU KLUX KLAN' is implied but only these two words are legible). The title '"SWEAR!"' and a date are lettered below the drawing; faint cursive production notes in the lower-left margin and the artist's signature at lower right are too small to transcribe reliably.
