page_title: Jacob Burck
section_title: Chicago Years
hierarchical_section_title: Jacob Burck / Biography / Chicago Years
caption_attribution_description: English: "If I Should Die Before I Wake", an editorial cartoon commenting on the destruction caused by World War II. Winner of the 1941 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.
context_page_description: Jacob "Jake" Burck was a Polish-born Jewish-American painter, sculptor, and award-winning editorial cartoonist. Active in the Communist movement from 1926 as a political cartoonist and muralist, Burck quit the Communist Party after a visit to the Soviet Union in 1936, deeply offended by political demands there to manipulate his work.
  Upon his return to the United States, Burck drew political cartoons for two large mainstream dailies, the St. Louis Post Dispatch and then, for 44 years, the Chicago Daily Times. Burck was awarded the 1941 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.
context_section_description: After returning from the USSR, Burck went to work as an editorial cartoonist for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, before moving to the Chicago Daily Times in 1938.  Burck's incisive and biting style led to his daily cartoons being syndicated by Field Newspaper Syndicate of Field Enterprises in more than 200 newspapers across the  United States.  Burck's signature style, with India ink with brush, grease pencil, or lithograph crayon, was soon adopted by Bill Mauldin and most other editorial cartoonists of the 1940s and 1950s.
  Burck won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning while at the Chicago Daily Times in 1941 for a cartoon titled, If I Should Die Before I Wake.  In 1942, he received the inaugural Society of Professional Journalists prize for editorial cartooning, the Sigma Delta Chi Award.
  Burck's continued style and criticism through cartooning of politicians, hypocrisy, and social injustice left him an open target during the Second Red Scare of the 1950s.  Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee investigated his early, radical associations.  In 1953, they attempted to have the bohemian Burck (who had neglected to formalize his US citizenship) deported.  The Government claimed that Burck had joined the Communist Party in 1934 and remained a member at least  through 1936.  Burck denied ever joining the Party, claiming membership had been pressed on him by his employer, the Daily Worker. 
  Burck's defense was able to demonstrate "a long record of anti-communism... [was] exemplified in his political cartoons."  Charges were eventually dropped after a sustained legal defense funded  personally by the publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times, Marshall Field III.  The deportation order was formally vacated by an act of the United States Congress in April 1957.
  Burck's syndications dropped drastically because of the government case, but he continued to produce daily editorial cartoons for the Chicago Sun-Times, successor to the Chicago Daily Times, over a 44-year career.
  A long-time member of the Cliff Dwellers Club in Chicago, Burck received the 1971 Merit Award "for distinguished service to the arts in Chicago."
  Burck's final published editorial cartoon appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times on February 23, 1982.  Over the course of his career he was responsible for drawing over  10,000 editorial cartoons.
caption: "If I Should Die Before I Wake", for which Burck received the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning
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