Black Hoosier Cartoonists in Chicago

This year I added a unique and really interesting book to my library. The title is It's Life as I See It: Black Cartoonists in Chicago, 1940-1980. It was compiled and edited by Dan Nadel and includes essays by Charles Johnson and Ronald Wimberly. It's Life as I See It was published in conjunction with an exhibit called "Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now," held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, June 19 to October 3, 2021. Cartoonists represented in the book are:

• Tom Floyd (1929-2011)

• Richard "Grass" Green (1939-2002)

• Seitu Hayden (b. 1953)

• Jay Jackson (1908-1954)

• Charles Johnson (b. 1948)

• Yaoundé Olu (b. 1945)

• Turtel Onli (b. 1952)

• Jackie Ormes (1911-1985)

• Morrie Turner (1923-2014)

Of these nine cartoonists, three are or were from Indiana, Tom Floyd, Grass Green, and Seitu Hayden. I have written about Tom Floyd before, on February 12, 2021. You can read about him by clicking here.

Richard Lee (later Edward) "Grass" Green was born on May 7, 1939, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Noah and Retta (Knight) Green, both of whom were from Alabama. Grass Green was active in comic book fandom and in what fans call small press and independent press. One of his most well-known creations is a superhero called Xal-Kor the Human Cat. Green aspired to work for Marvel Comics but made it only as far as Charlton Comics (in the 1960s) and underground comics (in the 1970s). He continued working in the comics field throughout his too-brief life. It's Life as I See It reprints a previously unpublished comic book story called "Smoke Power," from the 1990s. Grass Green died on August 5, 2002, in his native city.

Seitu Hayden was born William Eric Hayden on September 11, 1953, in Fort Wayne. Mr. Hayden worked with Grass Green as early as 1969, inking Green's comic strip "Lost Family." He later took the name "Seitu," which means "artist" in Swahili.

"Smoke Power" by Richard "Grass" Green, an unpublished comic book story from the 1990s. Ironically, Grass Green died of lung cancer at age sixty-three.

Text copyright 2022, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Dele Jegede in Encyclopedia of African Political Cartoonists

Born in 1945 in Ikere-Ekiti, Nigeria, artist, teacher, cartoonist, and art historian Dele Jegede studied art history at Indiana University in 1979-1983. From 2002 to 2005, he was a professor of art and head of the Department of Art at Indiana State University in Terre Haute.

For years it was hard to find anything about Dr. Jegede on the Internet, least of all images of his art. That has changed. There is a lengthy Wikipedia page on him. From that I have learned that in 2018, he was inducted into the Society of Nigerian Artists Hall of Fame. There is also an entry on Dele Jegede on the website Africa Cartoons: Encyclopedia of African Political Cartooning. Here is a link to the main page:

https://africacartoons.com/cartoonists/

And here is a link to the page on Dr. Jegede himself:

https://africacartoons.com/cartoonists/map/nigeria/jegede-dele/

Congratulations and best wishes to Dr. Jegede for the recognition he has received.

Copyright 2022, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Tom Floyd (1928-2011)

Cartoonist and commercial artist Thomas Wesley Floyd, Sr., was born on July 13, 1928,* in Gary, Indiana, to William Webster Floyd (1894-1936), a laborer in a steel mill, and Alice James Floyd (dates unknown), a housewife. Tom Floyd's parents came from the South, William from Wetumpka, Alabama, Alice from Mississippi. They were married on March 1, 1923, in Crown Point, Indiana.

Tom Floyd was their fourth child, but only three of those four showed up in the census of 1930, Tom, his older sister (Mary) Juanita, and his older brother James Frederick. All three were born in Indiana, and the family lived in Gary, the largest American city founded in the twentieth century and one known for its steel mills. In the census of 1940, Tom and his siblings were living in the household of their maternal grandparents, Walter and Ollie James. Walter James died in 1945.

Tom Floyd graduated from the University of Illinois in 1953 with a bachelor's degree in commercial art. He ran his own advertising business in Gary and worked as a designer of visual aids in the training department of Inland Steel Company, also in Gary. By 1971, he was vice president of W.V. Rouse & Associates of Chicago, a management consulting firm engaged in minority relations. Over the course of his career, Floyd also worked as an editorial cartoonist, single-panel cartoonist, comic strip artist, and comic book scriptwriter.

Race and minority relations were a continuing theme and interest in his life and work. He is best known for his cartoon collection Integration Is a Bitch! (1969), subtitled "An Assessment by a Black-White Collar Worker," but he also wrote and drew the cartoons for a second book, The Hook Book . . . The ABC's of Drug Abuse . . ., which he self-published in 1973 under his own firm, Tom Floyd Visuals of Gary, Indiana. It's a cute book on a serious and deadly subject. I stand with the late Mr. Floyd in his opposition to drugs and drug abuse, which has helped to ruin not just black people but all kinds of people in America and the world over. Integration Is a Bitch! won the Book of the Year Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews in 1971.

In 2012, comics historian Allan Holtz published a monumental work, American Newspaper Comics: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide. In the index of authors and cartoonists, there is a single-name credit, "Floyd," for a person who created three comic features for the Chicago Defender during the 1960s. I don't think there can be any doubt that the artist in question was Tom Floyd. The three features credited to "Floyd" are:

• At the Brink with J.J., which ran from December 11, 1965, to February 3, 1968 (It was renamed King Freedom. I don't have dates for that title.)
• Color Cuties, which ran from December 11, 1965, to March 30, 1968
• Integration Chuckles, which ran from December 11, 1965, to March 23, 1968

I have a sample only of the first title (shown below). Comparing a sample of Integration Chuckles with the cartoons in Integration Is a Bitch! might be all the evidence we need to show that "Floyd" and Tom Floyd were the same person. (A comparison of signatures, also shown below, makes pretty good evidence, too.)

Beginning in the 1960s, Floyd was involved in a project for which every comic book fan, especially every Hoosier comic book fan, can shout Yay! The project was a comic book about a black superhero called Blackman, who flies by pulling on his own bootstraps and who likes to eat peanuts. (We should remember that Floyd's parents were both Southerners.) Blackman finally made it into print in 1981 as a one-shot comic book pencilled by Eric O'Kelley and inked by Danny Loggins working from Floyd's script. It was published by Leader Comics Group, which is supposed to have been based in Indiana. I would like to think that that makes Eric O'Kelley and Danny Loggins Hoosier cartoonists, as well. By the way, Tom Floyd developed a supergroup that included Blackwoman, The Brotherhood, and The Big Dunker. 

In the 1980s, Floyd drew editorial cartoons for the Gary Post-Tribune. One of his drawings was included in the 1984 edition of Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year, edited by Charles Brooks. (See below.) Tom Floyd married Wynona Marie Gibson, a native Illinoisan, on February 25, 1956, in Cook County, Illinois, presumably in Chicago. They had three children. Thomas W. Floyd, Sr., died on September 22, 2011, in Gary, Indiana. He was eighty-three years old.

*Although his year of birth is everywhere given as 1929, Tom Floyd's birth certificate states clearly that he was born in 1928.

A cartoon from Integration Is a Bitch! by Tom Floyd. Floyd's book was published more than half a century ago, yet many--if not all--of his cartoons are still pertinent. This is one of my favorites--". . . And this is our Negro!"--an outright acknowledgment of a kind of tokenism that is never supposed to be spoken of or noticed. Note that one of the people applauding is a clergyman. I take that to be a poke at the virtue-signaling liberalism of mainstream religion in America.

At the Brink with J.J. by "Floyd" from the comics page of the Tri-State Defender, Memphis, Tennessee, July 9, 1966.

The cover of Blackman #1, a one-shot comic book written by Tom Floyd, penciled by Eric O'Kelley, and inked by Danny Loggins.

An editorial cartoon by Tom Floyd from the Gary Post-Tribune from 1984. Note the signature on the upper right and its resemblance to the signature in the comic strip At the Brink with J.J. from 1966. The same signature is on the cartoons for Integration Is a Bitch!

A photograph of Tom Floyd with his comic-book superhero, Blackman, in an article from 1995. Photograph by Milbert Orlando Brown.

Text copyright 2021, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Pictures for a Year's End-No. 4

I was happy to find this book recently at a secondhand store in Indianapolis. It's called The Hook Book . . . The ABC's of Drug Abuse (1973), and it's by Tom Floyd. A native of Gary, Thomas W. Floyd, Sr. (1928-2011) was a newspaper cartoonist and commercial artist who ran his own firm called Tom Floyd Visuals. He also contributed cartoons to Jet magazine. I hate drugs and drug use and am happy to have shared those feelings with the late Mr. Floyd, who wrote in his introduction, addressed to young people: "Don't ever start. Don't let anyone, under any circumstances, 'con' you into trying something that is so life destroying as drugs and the abuse of alcohol." By the way, The ABC's of Drug Abuse was printed by Cornelius Printing Company of Indianapolis, at one time the printer of Weird Tales magazine.

Original text copyright 2020, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Scoopie by Jerry Stewart (1923-1995)

Many years ago, I found a website called Pioneering Cartoonists of Color by cartoonist Tim Jackson. That's where I learned that Jerry Stewart of the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel was also the creator of a comic strip in one of the nation's leading black newspapers, the Pittsburgh Courier. In recognition of Jerry Stewart's pioneering efforts as a black cartoonist and newspaperman in Indiana, I would like to show a sampling of his comic strip Scoopie, from 1948-1950. 

Born in Arkansas, Gerald W. "Jerry" Stewart (1923-1995) came to Indiana in 1946 to work for the News-Sentinel, first as an office boy but very soon after that as a cartoonist. His character Scoopie is also a newspaperman, though not always up to snuff. As you can see in the strips below, Jerry inserted himself into his comic strips from time to time. As you can see, too, Scoopie was a good strip, well drawn and with some very funny gags. So here's Scoopie.

Oct. 9, 1948

Oct. 23, 1948

Oct. 30, 1948

Nov. 6, 1948

Nov. 27, 1948

Dec. 11, 1948

Dec. 18, 1948

Dec. 25, 1948

Jan. 1, 1949

Jan. 8, 1949

Jan. 15, 1949

Jan. 28, 1950

Mar. 4, 1950

Text copyright 2016, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Moses L. Tucker (1868-1926)

In 1888, Edward Elder Cooper (1859-1908), originally of Jacksonville, Florida, began publishing the Indianapolis Freeman, a successor to the Indianapolis Colored World and soon to be billed as "America's First Illustrated Colored Weekly." Although it did not start as an illustrated paper, The Freeman switched to that format in September 1888. Late that year or early the next, Cooper recruited Henry Jackson Lewis (ca. 1837-1891) of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, to work for him as a cartoonist and illustrator. According to Marvin D. Jeter, Lewis' earliest surviving cartoon in The Freeman is from February 2, 1889. (1) The cartoon is political in nature, making it perhaps the first of its kind by a black artist in an American newspaper. As a pioneer working for a pioneering newspaper, Lewis blazed a trail for other black cartoonists and illustrators, including Garfield Thomas Haywood (1880-1931) and Hale Aspacio Woodruff (1900-1980). Both men worked for The Freeman before it came to a close in 1926.

Probably the first to follow in Lewis' footsteps was Moses Lenore Tucker. Little is known of Tucker's life, but according to James E. Brunson III, Edward E. Cooper hired the Georgia native in 1889 after Henry Jackson Lewis had contracted what would prove to be a fatal case of pneumonia. (2) Edward H. Lee of Chicago joined Lewis and Tucker at The Freeman at about the same time. "Having added a new force to our staff of artists," Cooper announced, "we are now prepared to give a larger quantity and a better quality of illustrations." (3) Together, Lewis, Tucker, and Lee drew the newspaper's masthead, column headings, political cartoons, portrait drawings, and other graphics. As Lewis' illness worsened, more work fell upon Tucker and Lee, and though Tucker was reputed to be a lightning-fast artist--he could draw rapidly with either hand--both men became dissatisfied with their treatment by their editor. That dissatisfaction arose from Cooper's practice of paying flat rates, retaining all rights to his artists' work, and selling that work to other newspapers, presumably without compensating them. (Today we would call that kind of arrangement work-for-hire.) Tucker and Lee finally left The Freeman for another black newspaper called The Appeal. (4) Henry Jackson Lewis' last drawing for The Freeman in his lifetime was published on March 28, 1891. He died less than two weeks later, on April 9, 1891.

Moses Tucker's career in Indianapolis didn't end when he left The Freeman, but there is scant information on his life after his break with the paper. There is only a little more information about him before he arrived in Indianapolis. His story hinges, in part, on the identity of a man named Moses Tucker who was enumerated in the U.S. census as an inmate in Indianapolis in 1900 and 1910. That man had been born in Georgia in 1868. But was he Moses Lenore Tucker, the artist previously with The Freeman? In his article on Edward E. Cooper, James E. Brunson provides evidence that Moses L. Tucker was indeed institutionalized later in life:

Tucker's wild lifestyle, coupled with addictions to cigarettes and opium, [Cooper] wrote, caused a mental breakdown, forcing the artist to enter an insane asylum. There is truth to this claim: in the 1920s, the artist resided in a local asylum, while continuing his creative output. (5)

Mr. Brunson's point is that Cooper often "scolded his critics" and "publicly chastised those who crossed him" (6). By leaving Cooper's employ, Tucker must have brought down Cooper's wrath upon himself. But the quote above also serves to connect the census records with the artist, Moses Tucker. Combined with what we previously knew of him, the knowledge that Tucker was institutionalized helps us draw a fuller portrait of him, although there is still plenty of room for conjecture.

Moses Lenore Tucker was born in 1868 in Georgia less than four years after the Civil War had ended and almost certainly to former slaves. In the 1880 census, Tucker was in Atlanta. When Edward Elder Cooper found him almost a decade later, Tucker was working at the Atlanta Engraving Company and drawing portraits, cartoons, and caricatures for a periodical called The Georgia Cracker. Tucker is also supposed to have contributed to Life and Judge, both of which had been in print since the early 1880s. Tucker would have been about twenty-one when he made the move to The Freeman. 

Moses L. Tucker presumably arrived in Indianapolis in 1889. In the city directory of 1890, he was listed as an engraver at The Freeman, with an address of 518 North West Street. In his article, Mr. Brunson suggests that Tucker left The Freeman not long after that (perhaps in 1890 or 1891) for a job at The Appeal. He may very well have left with Edward H. Lee for Chicago, Lee's home city, where The Appeal had regional offices and published a local edition. In any case, Tucker was in Indianapolis by 1900 when he was enumerated in the census as an inmate. He was again enumerated as an inmate in 1910. According to James E. Brunson III, Tucker remained in "a local asylum" into the 1920s, where he continued to create works of art. As it turns out, that place was the Marion County Asylum for the Incurably Insane, located in Julietta, east-southeast of Indianapolis on the county line. The asylum was opened in 1899. It seems likely that Moses Tucker was at the Julietta asylum in 1900, 1910, and 1920. He died there in September 1926 of tuberculosis.

In this Black History Month, and the 126th anniversary month of what may have been the first political cartoon drawn by a black artist and printed in and American newspaper, we can celebrate Edward Elder Cooper and the artists of The Freeman, including Henry Jackson Lewis, Edward H. Lee, Garfield Thomas Haywood, Hale Aspacio Woodruff, and Moses Lenore Tucker.

Notes

(1) Jeter, Marvin D., ed. Edward Palmer's Arkansaw Mounds (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1990), p. 78.
(2) Brunson, James E., III. "Edward Elder Cooper: Entrepreneur, Journalist, Aesthete, and Baseball Enthusiast," Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History, Fall 2010, p. 32.

(3) Quoted in Brunson, Traces, pp. 32-33.

(4) Originally The Western Appeal, the newspaper was first published in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1888, the publishers opened regional offices in Chicago and Louisville. The opening of other regional offices followed. The title of the newspaper was shortened from The Western Appeal to The Appeal in 1889. It is ironic that the editor of a newspaper called The Freeman would treat its artists--one of whom had been born into slavery and at least one other as the child of slaves--in the way that it did, but this is how the world treats artists in general.

(5) Brunson, Traces, p. 33.

(6) Ditto.

Further Reading

Brunson, James E., III. The Early Image of Black Baseball: Race and Representation in the Popular Press, 1871-1890 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2009). Tucker is mentioned in several places in this book.
Brunson, James E., III. "Edward Elder Cooper: Entrepreneur, Journalist, Aesthete, and Baseball Enthusiast," Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History, Fall 2010, pp. 30-35.
Jeter, Marvin D., ed. Edward Palmer's Arkansaw Mounds (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1990), p. 78. The book includes a lengthy discussion of the life and work of Henry Jackson Lewis.

Sachsman, David B., et al., eds. Seeking a Voice: Images of Race and Gender in the 19th Century Press (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2009), p. 134.

Taylor, Garland Martin. "Out of Jest: The Art of Henry Jackson Lewis," Critical Inquiry, Comics and Media issue, Spring 2014 (Vol. 40, Issue 3), pp. 198-202.
And a source that I would very much like to see but which is unavailable to me:
Covo, Jacqueline. "Henry Jackson Lewis and Moses L. Tucker: 19th Century Cartoonists: The Indianapolis Freeman." A paper presented at the 61st Annual Meeting of the Study of Afro-American Life and History, Chicago, Illinois, Oct. 27-31, 1976.

An editorial cartoon by Moses Lenore Tucker from the Indianapolis Freeman, March 21, 1890. From the blog Songs Without Words, "a digital exhibit made possible by a Faculty Development Grant from the State University of New York, College at Old Westbury."

An unsigned cartoon from The Freeman from January 18, 1890. The blog Songs Without Words says that it is probably Tucker's work. Note the reference to Tucker's former home state.

Another cartoon by Tucker, from The Freeman, September 27, 1890. 

The asylum at Julietta, along Brookville Road in far eastern Marion County, Indiana. Moses L. Tucker was institutionalized here as of 1903, probably before and certainly after. At the time, the institution was called the Asylum for the Incurably Insane. It went by other names and served other purposes over the course of its history, from its founding in 1899 to its closing in the 1990s.

Central State Hospital, the Old Main Building and the place where male patients were kept. If Moses L. Tucker was ever institutionalized here, he may very well have lived in this building. Update (Mar. 8, 2017): Based on updated information, it seems unlikely now that Tucker ever lived at Central State.

Updated March 8, 2017. Thanks to Terry S. for further information on Moses Tucker.
Text and captions copyright 2015, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Jerry Stewart (1923-1995)

Gerald W. "Jerry" Stewart was born on May 18, 1923, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, onetime home of Henry Jackson Lewis, who is considered the first black political cartoonist in American history. As a high school student, Stewart attended Fort Wayne Art Institute. During World War II he was staff artist on the Dalhart Bomber, camp newspaper of Dalhart Army Air Field in Dalhart, Texas. On March 25, 1946, Stewart started work as a copyboy for the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel. He was the newspaper's first black employee. Three months later he was promoted to staff artist. Stewart spent the next forty years with the News-Sentinel working alongside editorial cartoonists Eugene Craig and William Sandeson.

Jerry Stewart was the author of a number of syndicated comic strips and cartoons, most of which ran in black newspapers. Chickie and L'il Brother, both from 1947, were his first. Those features ran in the Washington Afro-American and possibly other papers. Scoopie, syndicated by the Pittsburgh Courier, was in syndication from June 19, 1949, to August 12, 1950. The title character, as his nickname suggests, is a newspaper reporter. Stewart's longest-running feature was Little Moments, also called Life's Little Moments. A single-panel cartoon, it ran from 1963 to 1972. Beginning in 1977, Stewart also wrote and illustrated a weekly column called "Cooking with Jerry" for the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel.

Stewart retired from the News-Sentinel on May 30, 1986. That same year he won the Indiana Journalism Award from Ball State University, calling it "a nice way to cap off my career." Since 1977, Stewart had been teaching art at St. Peter's Catholic Church in Fort Wayne. He continued that work after retirement. On October 29, 1995, Jerry Stewart died in Fort Wayne. He was buried in the Catholic Cemetery of Fort Wayne.

Jerry Stewart illustrated Lines and Angles, a collection of newspaper columns by Cliff Milnor published in 1980. That's the artist in the upper right looking upon the world from his own little corner as artists often do.

And here is a larger self-portrait from the same book. Jerry Stewart made a place for himself in the history of comics by having his work syndicated in the nation's black newspapers. Unfortunately, that's a chapter missing from the story of American journalism, and especially American newspaper cartooning. We very desperately need a history of black comics. If one is to be written, we must begin by gathering sources. Does anyone have information about the newspapers, the publishers and editors, the syndicates, the comics, and the cartoonists?

Text and captions copyright 2015, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Herbert Temple (1919-2011)

Herbert Temple was born in 1919 in Gary, Indiana, to Herbert Temple and Carey Britt Temple. He grew up in Evanston, Illinois, and graduated from Evanston Township High School before enlisting in the U.S. Army. Temple was a veteran of World War II and used his G.I. Bill benefits after the war to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. "He had been drawing his whole life," Temple's daughter, Janel Temple, remembered, "and he didn't want to go work in the steel mills or slaughterhouses. He envisioned a different future for himself." (1) His first job was at Container Corporation of America, where he designed cartons, containers, and packaging. In February 1953, Chicago publisher John H. Johnson hired Herbert Temple to be an artist on Ebony and Jet magazines. Temple was promoted to art director in 1967 and spent an amazing fifty-four years at the company. He also illustrated record covers and children's books. He and his daughter created JanTemp Greetings, a greeting card company. Herbert Temple lived on the South Side of Chicago and in South Holland, Illinois, and was involved in the South Side Community Arts Center. Herbert Temple died on April 13, 2011, in Hammond, Indiana, at the age of ninety-one.

Note

(1) Quoted in "Herbert Temple, 1919-2011: Longtime Art Director for Ebony and Jet Magazines" by Lolly Bowean, Chicago Tribune online, April 26, 2011.

Ebony, August 1969, with a cover illustration by Herbert Temple.

Text copyright 2014, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Ted Chambers (1920-2009)

Theodore T. "Ted" Chambers was born on November 21, 1920, in Indiana, probably in Indianapolis. His parents were William S. and Pearl Chambers, both from the South but in Indianapolis by 1920.

Ted Chambers graduated from Crispus Attucks High School, the Indianapolis high school for black students, in 1938. (Oscar Robertson also graduated from Crispus Attucks.) He studied architecture at Howard University, but only for a year and a half. By 1940 he was back in his home city and working as a draftsman.

Chambers joined the U.S. Navy in 1942. While in training in Boston, he became cartoon editor of Tracer, a monthly service magazine. A member of the first graduating class of black midshipmen, he was stationed in China towards the end of the war and was discharged in May 1946 after attaining the rank of lieutenant/junior grade.

Ted Chambers graduated from Tufts University and studied at the Art Students League in New York City. He began selling cartoons to Argosy, Pic, and This Week Magazine in the summer of 1947. He lived and worked as an artist in New York City as late as 1960 and specialized in product illustration. He also lived in Yonkers and Sag Harbor, New York, and in Cliffside Park, New Jersey. He was a member of the Society of Illustrators.

Ted Chambers, Sr., died on June 16, 2009. His last residence was Sarasota, Florida. He was survived by his wife, son, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Thanks very much to Ted Chambers, Jr., for the information used in this update (April 23, 2014). To Mr. Chambers: I am unable to reply to your comment in the space below, so I will reply here. If you have any artwork by your father that you would like me to post here, please send it along to:

info@hoosiercartoonists.com

I hope you don't mind that I have used the cartoons shown below. Thanks again.

Three magazine gag cartoons by Ted Chambers.

Text copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Gorhea M. Offutt (1920-1998)

Gorhea M. Offutt was born on August 11, 1920, in Indiana. She attended Lincoln High School in Evansville, Indiana. As a young woman, she lived in that city with her parents. Her name appeared several times in the Evansville Argus, a black newspaper in print from 1938 to 1943. Gorhea (which may sometimes be spelled Gorohea) attended the Herron School of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Butler University. In February 1945, her art appeared on the cover of World Call, the magazine of the Disciples of Christ, illustrating a poem called "For George Washington Carver." The poem, a sonnet, was written by Graziello Maggio, a sixteen-year-old resident of The Bronx, New York, and winner of first prize in an essay contest sponsored by the Grand Street Boys Association. Entries in the contest were to be "on lessons to be gathered from the life of the great Negro scientist, who was born in slavery" (quoted from the New York Times, Feb. 13, 1944). Eleanor Roosevelt took note of the poem in her "My Day" newspaper column of May 4, 1944. Graziella Maggio's poem:

For George Washington Carver

by Graziella Maggio

He took the warm, brown earth into his hand,

The warm, brown earth which matched his own dark skin.

He closed his fist and felt the heat expand,

The heat a Southern sun had put therein.

He took the pure bright colors of the earth

And to the world he made a gift of them.

He took a plant man said had little worth

And found a use for fruit and leaves and stem.

But though he did these things and many more,

He did not take the praise, instead disclosed

That it had been the hand of God that tore

The lock which keeps the Book of Knowledge closed.

Good fertile fields he made from useless sod—

This man with willing hands and faith in God.

And Gorhea Offutt's illustration from the following year:

I know nothing more about the artist except that she lived in Indianapolis and passed away on December 4, 1998.

Thanks to the Indiana State Library for its invaluable work in preserving information and images from the past. Gorhea Offutt's illustration above is from the library's collections. I hope that the Indiana State Library is not the only place where this image still exists.

Text copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Richard Lonsdale Brown (1892-1917)

The story of Richard Lonsdale Brown's life is--like the story of all lives--one of triumph and sadness. It's a story of a young and very talented artist, determined to make his way in the art world despite his humble origins and the view society had of people of color. He was born on August 25, 1892, in Evansville, Indiana. It would appear that his father was an itinerant tradesman, a bricklayer and construction worker who went where there were jobs. Nineteen hundred found the family in Pittsburgh. They later took up residence in Parkersburg, West Virginia, where Brown spent most of his youth. In his late teens, he attended the Charleston Institute, a trade school in which he learned the skills and techniques of house painting, graduating in 1910. West Virginia proved an inspiration to the young artist, and he began creating impressionistic watercolor landscapes of his father's home state.

At the age of seventeen, Brown ventured from home, pursuing his art career in Pittsburgh before moving on to New York City. He approached numerous art galleries in New York with no success. His youth, inexperience, and color blocked his entry into the mainstream art community. In the spring of 1911, Brown, penniless and in search of affirmation, arrived on the doorstep of an established artist, George de Forest Brush (1855-1941), and asked him to review his work. Brush was impressed and took Brown under his wing. That summer, thanks to a scholarship from the NAACP, Brown studied under Brush at the art colony at Cornish, New Hampshire, and returned with him to New York in the fall. In March 1912, he had a very successful solo exhibition at the Ovington Gallery. He produced illustrations and cover art for The Crisis magazine, and in May 1913, won a bronze medal in the city’s National Academy of Design show. 

The artistic passion and desire for learning that delivered Brown to New York next carried him to Boston, where he continued his studies and paid his way by painting houses. He painted the Robert Gould Shaw House, and while there, produced illustrations for The Crisis as well as civil rights posters, commissioned by W.E.B. Du Bois, the founder of the NAACP. Then, Brown's life took a turn that we--a century later--can only wonder about: He inexplicably abandoned his artistic pursuits on the East Coast and returned home to his parents, moving with them to Muskogee, Oklahoma, in the winter of 1916. It was in Muskogee, in the fall or early winter of 1917, that Brown died at the age of twenty-five, from an "incurable illness," possibly pneumonia. According to an auction website, only three known works by Richard Lonsdale Brown survive. I would suggest that the inextinguishable spirit of the artist also survives.

"An Indian Mound" (ca. 1914), a watercolor by Indiana artist Richard Lonsdale Brown.

"Mount Monadnock" (1911), a work in gouache of a prominence in New Hampshire, where Brown studied with George de Forest Brush at the Cornish art colony.

Brown was also an illustrator, creating work for The Crisis, the magazine of the NAACP under the editorship of W.E.B. DuBois. Here is his cover for the Easter number, April 1912.

Trivia: It's interesting to note that Brown, a painter of landscapes, found benefactors in two men with names having similar meanings: de Forest and DuBois.

Written by Bridget Hanley, Proficient Pen, and Terence E. Hanley
Text and captions copyright 2012 Terence E. Hanley

Elton Clay Fax (1909-1993)

Born on October 9, 1909, in Baltimore, Maryland, Elton Clay Fax attended Claflin College and the College of Fine Art at Syracuse University. He began his career as a lecturer and art teacher at Claflin College in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in the 1930s. He was a prolific artist, illustrating more than thirty books and a multitude of magazine articles, and he produced the weekly comic strip Suzabelle, which ran in several black newspapers during the 1940s. He was also an accomplished writer who travelled extensively throughout the United States and overseas. During his illustrated lectures abroad, Fax brought news of the American Civil Rights Movement to other peoples. He held formal positions as a U.S. Department of State International Exchange Program Representative in South America and the Caribbean, a delegate to the International Congress of Society of African Culture in Rome, and a lecturer with the U.S. State Department in East Africa.

No matter where his other commitments and interests led him, Fax never lost sight of his calling as an educator, teaching courses in colleges and universities throughout the United States, lecturing in schools around the world, and conducting workshops and talks for children in schools and community centers. He held teaching, guest lecturer, and artist-in-residence positions at several colleges and universities over the course of his career, including a residency at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Fax's career as an illustrator began in 1942 with pictures for Astounding Science-Fiction. Illustrations for Science Fiction Stories, Unknown Worlds, and Weird Tales followed. Fax went on to illustrate many children's books, from Tommy Two Wheels by Robert Norris McLean (1943) to The Seven Wishes of Joanna Peabody by Genevieve Gray (1972), which was adapted to the ABC Weekend Specials in 1978. In addition, Fax illustrated his own books on his travels and on the lives of black Americans.

After a long and distinguished career, Elton Clay Fax died at his home in Queens, New York, on May 13, 1993. He was eighty-three years old.

Renowned author, artist, and educator Elton Clay Fax began his illustration career in science fiction magazines. The image is small, but here's an illustration for "The Cave" by P. Schuyler Miller from Astounding Science-Fiction, January 1943. 

This drawing in ink, of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, shows Fax's facility with a pen and with portraiture.

In later years, Fax turned to weightier subjects, such as famine in Africa. The title of this piece is "Bread," and it was part of a series of lithographs called "Black and Beautiful," executed between 1964 and 1968. From the collection of Temple University.

Elton Clay Fax (1909-1993)

Postscript: A portrait of George Washington Carver from the second book illustrated by Elton Clay Fax, Dr. George Washington Carver, Scientist (1944).

Written by Bridget Hanley, Proficient Pen, and Terence E. Hanley

Text and captions copyright 2012 Terence E. Hanley