Pioneer Cartoon Gallery 4

During the segregated years of the 1900s through 1960s America, the Black Press offered comic strips that featured African American heroes & heroines in a wide variety of life situations. These characters were not confined to gritty 'inner-city' stories, poor 'ghetto' life or as one dimensional comic relief as today .

This gallery continues with comic strips that were found on the pages of Black newspapers during 1920 through 1970.

The emphasis of their work appears to be an emergence of 'race' pride. There is a need to offer the community positive self images, & many cartoons reflect this through realistic, or should I say naturalistic portrayals of people of African descent. Unlike the 'mainstream' press that persisted in only presenting negative, subservient less-than-human images based upon black-face, minstrel-like parodies of people of Color as late as the 1950s. The artists of the Black press simply showed reflections of daily life. Be it gag comics, adventure serials or 'soap opera' romance, the characters were intelligent, independent, self-empowered individuals that were little different from their 'Mainstream' White comic strip counterparts--- apart from being shaded to indicate skin tone.

Also, you will see by the quality of some of the following cartoons, that whoever photographed the microfilm of these Black newspapers, didn't think the historical significance of the Black press was important enough to carefully position the pages flatly. Many of the images curve out of sight, losing the last panel of many of the cartoons in 1948 & 1949. I apologize that I could not present some of better & funnier strips I've had the opportunity to read.

Thanks to the Vivian Harsh Collection of Afro-American History located in the Carter G. Woodson Regional Branch of the Chicago Library for making the following images possible.

Around Harlem is a single panel comic created in the early 1940s by Ted Shearer. Until further information is uncovered, Around Harlem was exclusive to the New York Amsterdam News. Possibly to compete with Ollie Harrington's Dark Laughter, which was syndicated through Continental Features & could be found in nearly every other competing paper. Around Harlem appears to be a slice of Black life feature for more mature comic readers, that poked fun at the way the Black community behaved. When Ted Shearer went off to fight in WW2, so did the topics of this cartoon. Now signing the comics Sgt. Teddy Shearer, Around Harlem (& sometimes Next Door) centers around Black solders on leave at dances or on dates with sometimes less than innocent young ladies (being caught in a passionate embrace on the sofa with a young G.I., the girl tells her angry father: "You tell him it's time to leave, I don't know his name!")

As Others See Us is one of two early cartoons discovered, drawn by Jay Jackson dated 1928 (The Jingle Belles is the other). A slice of 'roaring twenties" African Americana with an art deco style. The 24 year-old Jay Jackson's use of humor obviously matures with age (or perhaps it's the input from his 2nd wife Eleanor who provided gags.)

Bucky is a daily domestic life cartoon drawn by Samuel Milai, the same artist who illustrated the J.A. Rogers Black history series. Like the comic strips drawn by White cartoonists working for the 'mainstream' syndicates, Bucky simply showed 1947 African American life from an uniquely African American point of view, without the unnecessary use of derogatory racial stereotypes of the 'mainstream' comics before the civil rights era. The cartoons revolve around Bucky as he interacts with school-mate, girls, his parents & the world in general. There is a clear bonding going on between father & son, who often fall victim to the mother who outsmarts them to get them to help out with the work around the house. As the comic progresses (I've gotten as far as 1950 so far) Bucky appears to mature. Several strips are devoted to his outgrowing clothes & getting as tall as his dad. Then quite suddenly he is inexplicably younger again, which leads me to believe drawing were being reused with new dialogue. Especially since I've come across the above scene of Bucky on the telephone about 10 times.

Cuties a single panel comic by E. Simms Campbell.

Although his illustrations as the one above that were created for 'mainstream' publications are better known to many comic historians & collectors, E. Simms Campbell also drew humorous illustrations depicting African Americans as well as for a number of Black Press papers & magazines across the country. His satirical drawings of that vein are usually commentaries on the social & economic barriers which the Black community has to face. "Like many of America's brightest cartoonists, Campbell take his work very seriously. When asked if he is interested in "serious" art, he invariably answer: 'Serious? There's nothing more serious than what I'm doing now.' " But exhibited here are simply gags for the sake of being funny.

"He's not blowing his top yet. Wait'll he sees who walked in with his gal!."

"Gentlemen, gentlemen! Remember Number 10's father let us rent the hall---FREE"

Jive Gray is a 1946 Milton Caniffesque adventure series by Ollie Harrington (Dark Laughter). Jive Gray, I understand is based upon a real-life WW2 flying Ace by the same name. It is unknown what the real Jive Gray did after the war, but the comic Jive becomes a civilian with a air cargo shipping business taking on jobs flying merchandise around the world. However, in the series the above is taken from, Jive & his partner are mysteriously grounded when their plane loses power and nearly crashes. They have a run-in with Lilla Diller, ace woman reporter who is on the hunt for the killers of her father, a brilliant Black scientist at an unspecified 'Negro' college. Believing Jive is involved, she sets out to settle the score.

Learning that her father is still alive, & under the protection of the towns notorious racketeer, Hedwupp. The professor is hiding out from a 'powerful group' that doesn't like the idea of important experiments being conducted at a 'Negro' college. The experiment involves the discovery of a new element that can provide limitless energy--- or reduce the earth to rubble in the wrong hands. (The powerful group turns out to be American Nazis, headed by an effeminate German aristocrat.) After a terrific shoot-out, the professor is captured & forced to make his discovery into a weapon that can knock out mechanical power from miles away. Where after they set about forcing airliners & government planes from the sky. Jive & company try to warn the police about the Nazi group, but the racist chief delays believing their story until the group clears out without a trace.

Later (1949-50) Jive is lured to South America, leads a revolt, falls in love with a woman rebel, marries her, returns to the U.S. only to get shanghaied days after his honeymoon, on a ship smuggling narcotics---

Krazy Jess is a pantomime strip (having no dialogue) by Clovis Parker. (1948 -) All the action is visual, creating the humor. As in the above strip, Jess is startled by a parrot uttering some sort of profanities. Jess runs away & into a store, returns to the pet shop with a book on good manners to give to the bird.

Quincy is a humor strip created by veteran cartoonist, Ted Shearer. Syndicated by King Features Quincy first appeared in news papers in 1970 & continued until 1986. Like many "Black" comic strips distributed by the 'mainstream' the feature involved an integrated troupe of urban children. Unlike the others, Mr. Shearer chose to take a non-preaching approach to his stories, while not avoiding the subject of integration, segregation, poverty & race relations in America, Quincy was used to simply be a daily humor strip that often focused upon the conditions the characters lived without hitting the reader over the head with the social issues causing it.

Scoopie is a humorous series strip by Jerry Stewart about an extremely inept newsman who not only does his job badly--- he is equally unlucky with the ladies. But none of this ever seems to get him down. Even when interviewing a prize fighter who found it easier to demonstrate his knockout punch than to explain it in words. However, Scoopie sometimes gets the upper hand, as when his date cancels out at the last minute, he takes her rejection in stride saying he'll just ask someone else, who by the way, the first woman hates. So out of spite, she changes her plans to go out with him, just so the other woman can't have him. Scoopie (always wearing the fedora with the press pass in the band) winks & grins slyly at the readers.

Smiles is a strip that centers on the day to day life of a young Black working (or looking for work) woman & her girlfriends. This copy does not give credit to the cartoonist or show a signature, but I'm willing to guess until further evidence, that it is drawn by Elton Fax, due to it's stylistic similarity to the 1930's cartoon Susabelle.

More to come in the future.

I'm working on it !

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Copyright Notice !

Pioneering Cartoonists of Color is a publication of Creative License Studio Inc. Copyright © 1998 by Tim Jackson. All rights reserved worldwide. Original cartoons used in cartoonist's biographies are copyright © of the featured artists.