“Chalk Talks” at Otterbein

In the days before computers, there was often a struggle to display large pictures in instructional or social settings. Do many or any readers remember overhead projectors? Whiteboards? Going back toward caveman (sorry, caveperson) days, there were chalkboards. We stone age veterans can remember chalk, erasers, and the horrible screech/squeak that fingernails made on slate. 

Chalk talks were simply the use of that primitive technology to illustrate a story. Dry-as-dust lectures could be livened up with illustrations. Horrifying or humorous, this new medium brought life to Chautauquas and provided platforms for public speakers. Two early chalk talkers visited Otterbein University. Let’s see what kind of show they produced. 

Frank Beard was many things. A guest speaker at Otterbein’s College Chapel on a cold day just before Christmas, 1880, he was a Union veteran of the Civil War, a prominent artist, illustrator, and speaker on the Chautauqua circuit. He was a Prohibitionist and a popular entertainer, well paid for his services.[i] 

He was also deaf.

Beard (1842-1905) served with distinction in the Civil War. While not on the battlefield, he honed his sketching abilities. He struck pay dirt when a sketch of his was turned into a political cartoon. The depiction of Union general Winfield Scott as a pugnacious bulldog facing down a lanky, tail-between-legs Jefferson Davis was a hit, appearing on stationary, envelopes, and other venues.[ii]

After the war, Beard worked as an illustrator and cartoonist. Times were lean, but Beard was an early user of chalk talks. Appreciative audiences would listen, or in this case watch, as Beard drew pictures and cartoons on topics political, and later, religious. Observers marveled that a deaf man could communicate so well: 

Beard is widely credited with inventing the chalk talk, a form of public lecture that dramatized the creation of art, transformed a drawing into a spec- tator event . . . .Beard, for instance, sketched with both hands at once or drew an image upside-down, undecipherable to the audience until the climactic moment when he rotated his picture…[iii] 

Beard began as a political cartoonist. His works appeared in news magazines and opinion pieces. As he grew older, he drifted toward the Temperance movement. Even after his death in 1905, the American Issue (re)ran comic art by Beard that lampooned the alcohol industry. 

But Frank Beard was not the only chalk talker to visit Otterbein. In 1892, another cartoonist/illustrator visited campus. S. M. Spedon was a skilled illustrator. He drew newspaper illustrations, and produced a book, Calisthenics and light gymnastics for home and school, written by Alfred M. A. Beale, and “Profusely illustrated by S. M. Spedon.” 

Spedon is not as well remembered as Frank Beard. Spedon lectured on the Redpath Chautauqua circuit. His travels for Chautauqua took him all over, such as to Newnan, Georgia, in July 1905.[iv] A pamphlet advertising his lectures named three favorites, “Characters and Characteristics,” “Things We Laugh and Wonder At,” and “Flashes of Fun and Dashes of Color.”[v] 

Spedon is not quite as well remembered today as Frank Beard. It took some excavation to even find his picture. Finally, scans from the library of the University of Iowa were found, showing his portrait and samples of his artwork.[vi] 

Audience reactions were rarely recorded, but the continuing popularity of chalk talks over at least three
decades speaks volumes.In a mostly silent world, the chatandillustrationoftheseitinerantartistsbroughtcolor and sound.At Otterbein, students and townsfolk likely enjoyed them.

- Alan Borer

Frank Beard, American Illustrator, chalk talk artist, and cartoonist

[i] Columbus Dispatch, December 18, 1880 

[ii] https://emergingcivilwar.com/2023/01/25/americas-first-war-cartoonist/ 

[iii] Benjamin Lindquist, “Slow Time and Sticky Media: Frank Beard’s Political Cartoons, Chalk Talks, and Hieroglyphic Bibles, 1860–1905.” Winterthur Portfolio. 53. 41-84. 

[iv] The Newnan (GA) Weekly News, July 28, 1905 

[v] https://s3.amazonaws.com/pastperfectonline/images/museum_519/030/fstc0607.jpg 

[vi] https://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/node/11675