This is the cover to Time Magazine from July 14, 1947. You can clearly see it's cover feature is on Eva PerĂłn, wife of Argentine President Juan PerĂłn. The "Argentinian rainbow" mention on the cover is in reference to her so-called "Rainbow Tour" where she spent several months meeting with leaders in Europe building goodwill in the wake of her husband's 1946 election. So why am I bringing this up?
1947 also happens to be the year that Orrin Evans first published All-Negro Comics, the first comic book entirely by Black creators. He had intended it to be an ongoing series, however, it's generally believed that suppliers refused to sell paper to him once they realized he was Black. I say "generally believed" because I've heard that story repeated many times and it seems quite plausible, but I've never seen an actual source cited for that.
I mean, sure -- 1947? That's still eight years before the Montgomery Bus Boycott and seventeen years before the Civil Rights Act. Obviously racism was pretty rampant in 1947. But what did people -- well, white men in publishing at any rate -- actually think of a comic book by and for Black people? That's actually why I've got this specific magazine cover. This issue includes a notice about All-Negro Comics being published...
The 75th anniversary edition of the comic that was published a couple years ago includes an excellent piece by Qiana Whitted* in which she, among other things, extrapolates on some other angles of that Time summary, noting how Black creators at the time were wrestling with portraying Black characters that explifies their Blackness without (at best) reducing them to caricatures or (at worst) adding a kind of validation to the already-existing racial stereotypes. For example, the muggers of that story in question are not only indeed wearing zoot suits, but that they're wearing them is part of the plot itself! So it's not just the unnamed person at Time who thought it would be somehow funny to point out the characters' clothing choice or anything.
Regardless of whether or not there's any condescension intended, what I can point out is that, despite being 1947, there's no aggressively racist viewpoint on display. It's very much not a case of "who do these people think they are" or anything like that. The overall tone is casual, a short human interest type of piece. I certainly don't want to downplay whatever racism Evans faced on a no-doubt daily basis, but there was at least one other publisher at the time who didn't hate what he was doing.
* Technically, it's an abbreviated form of a piece from her book, Desegregating Comics: Debating Blackness in the Golden Age of Comics. I had pulled out the 75th anniversary All-Negro Comics while I was writing this post since it easiest copy of the book within reach, saw Whitted's piece and included mention of it here, before realizing that's not where I had originally read it! Go get that! It was nominated for an Eisner Award!
1947 also happens to be the year that Orrin Evans first published All-Negro Comics, the first comic book entirely by Black creators. He had intended it to be an ongoing series, however, it's generally believed that suppliers refused to sell paper to him once they realized he was Black. I say "generally believed" because I've heard that story repeated many times and it seems quite plausible, but I've never seen an actual source cited for that.
I mean, sure -- 1947? That's still eight years before the Montgomery Bus Boycott and seventeen years before the Civil Rights Act. Obviously racism was pretty rampant in 1947. But what did people -- well, white men in publishing at any rate -- actually think of a comic book by and for Black people? That's actually why I've got this specific magazine cover. This issue includes a notice about All-Negro Comics being published...
Ace Harlem to the RescueSetting aside some of the specific language of the time, the tone of that last paragraph seems slightly condescending to me. Calling out the villains in a way that calls attention to the stereotype but then dismissing it as okay because it's "all in the family" strikes me as hand-waving away the significance of the Evans' achievement. Like, "Yes, it's the first, but it's just for those people so it doesn't really matter." Maybe I'm reading more into than is intended though.
What does a striker on the picket line think about? Orrin Cromwell Evans thought about comic strips. Evans was one of the Newspaper Guildsmen whose strike against J. David Stern's Philadelphia Record ended in the Record's collapse (TIME, Feb. 10). He was the only Negro reporter on the staff. As he walked the picket line, he thought hard about a complaint frequently heard among his people: Negroes are usually ridiculed and their way of life distorted in comics drawn by white men.
When the Record died, Guildsman Evans took his idea to Harry Saylor, who had been the Record's editor. Saylor was enthusiastic.
This week Evans and his partners (Saylor and three other Record men) brought out All-Negro Comics, a 48-page, 15¢ monthly, the first to be drawn by Negro artists and peopled entirely by Negro characters. Its star: "Ace Harlem," a Dick Tracy-like detective. The villains were a couple of zoot-suited, jive-talking Negro muggers, whose presence in anyone else's comics might have brought up complaints of racial "distortion." Since it was all in the family, Evans thought no Negro readers would mind.
The 75th anniversary edition of the comic that was published a couple years ago includes an excellent piece by Qiana Whitted* in which she, among other things, extrapolates on some other angles of that Time summary, noting how Black creators at the time were wrestling with portraying Black characters that explifies their Blackness without (at best) reducing them to caricatures or (at worst) adding a kind of validation to the already-existing racial stereotypes. For example, the muggers of that story in question are not only indeed wearing zoot suits, but that they're wearing them is part of the plot itself! So it's not just the unnamed person at Time who thought it would be somehow funny to point out the characters' clothing choice or anything.
Regardless of whether or not there's any condescension intended, what I can point out is that, despite being 1947, there's no aggressively racist viewpoint on display. It's very much not a case of "who do these people think they are" or anything like that. The overall tone is casual, a short human interest type of piece. I certainly don't want to downplay whatever racism Evans faced on a no-doubt daily basis, but there was at least one other publisher at the time who didn't hate what he was doing.
* Technically, it's an abbreviated form of a piece from her book, Desegregating Comics: Debating Blackness in the Golden Age of Comics. I had pulled out the 75th anniversary All-Negro Comics while I was writing this post since it easiest copy of the book within reach, saw Whitted's piece and included mention of it here, before realizing that's not where I had originally read it! Go get that! It was nominated for an Eisner Award!