Frank Spangler, Sr.

Frank Spangler, Sr.’s daily cartoons in the Montgomery Advertiser captured the “news” of the early 20th century—seasonal holiday celebrations, public and business events, civic issues and civic progress, and, in some of the century’s most turbulent years, Alabama politics. The MMFA holds a collection of original cartoons by Spangler documenting the history of life and politics in Alabama’s State capital in the early 1930s, the earliest years of the Great Depression.  While many events and issues of public concern are reflected in his drawings, none are more important than those documenting the politics of that time. These cartoons capture the events and personalities that set the stage for social and cultural transformation in the post-World War II era of the 1960s both in Alabama and across America. The drawings featured in this exhibition relate to the vitally important elections of 1930, and a central political figure of that era, Senator J. Thomas “Cotton Tom” Heflin, who was the subject of some of Frank Spangler’s most creative visual inventions.