It was none other than Langston Hughes who called Oliver Wendell
Harrington America's greatest black cartoonist.
Yet largely because he chose to live as an expatriate far from
the American mainstream, he has been almost entirely overlooked by
contemporary historians and scholars of African American
culture.
Born in 1912 and a graduate of the Yale School of Fine Arts, he
was a prolific contributor of humorous and editorial cartoons to
the black press in the 1930s and 1940s, but he achieved fame for
his creation of a cartoon panel called "Dark Laughter," a satire of
Harlem society and featuring Bootsie, a character in the tradition
of the wise fool. Bootsie became widely known and loved wherever
black newspapers appeared.
For airing strong anti-racist views, Harrington was targeted
during the McCarthy era. And in 1951, he was self-exiled in Paris.
In 1961, he found himself trapped behind the Berlin Wall. But, he
chose to remain in East Germany. His powerful political cartoons
were published in East German magazines and in the American
Communist newspaper "The Daily World." He became a favorite among
students and intellectuals in the Eastern Bloc. In America he was
mainly forgotten.
Here, selected from the Walter O. Evans Collection of
African-American Art, is an omnibus of Harrington's best cartoons
from the past four decades. It highlights his exceptional talent,
his potent impact with editorial comment and social criticism, and
his deserving of acclaim in his native land.
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