Harper’s Weekly celebrated the passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1875 with a tribute entitled “To Thine Own Self Be True.” The hands of Columbia, a common female personification of the United States, pass a sheaf of papers marked “Civil Rights Bill” to the hands of a Black man. Nast frequently referenced Shakespeare in his cartoons; the cartoon’s title comes from Hamlet and would have been familiar to the magazine’s erudite audience.
