While Uncle Sam is perhaps most well-known for the historic “I want you” posters from World War I, the character has a specific meaning to the Black community that Lamar so often focuses on.

(In the Civil War, Sam grew a beard modeled on Lincoln’s.) Uncle Sam didn’t really become a household name until Thomas Nast’s sketches in Harper’s Weekly in the late 1860s and ’70s ...

When Europe plunged into war in 1914, Wilson ... James Montgomery Flagg drew his famous image of Uncle Sam pointing at the viewer -- the classic "I Want You" army recruitment image.