Crossing the Divide: Jesse Owens

Some time back (Feb 17, 2011) Out Of This World featured a Jack Kirby Losers story where Kirby introduced an African American soldier, Mile-a-Minute Jones, who was based on the real life African American athlete Jesse Owens. The Catholic comic book Treasure Chest vol. 7, #20 (June 5, 1952) featured a biography of Jesse Owens in which his undermining of Aryan supremacy in Hitler's Germany at the Berlin Olympics of 1936 is recounted, as is his subsequent recognition by post-Nazi Germany. The scans here are low resolution:

The Ziff-Davis title, Bill Stern's Sports Book Vol. 2 #2, doesn't have a sequential art story about Jess Owens, but does have a 2 page illustrated text feature that is an interesting read:

Of all American sports personalities, Jesse Owens and Joe Louis, by virtue of their direct confrontation with, and victory over, Aryan supremacists, were at the forefront of the intellectual challenge to the racist philosophies of the Nazis.

Crossing the Divide: The Harlem Globetrotters (2)

The Hanna-Barbera TV cartoon series of the Harlem Globetrotters aired from Sept 1970 through Oct 1971. In July 1971 Gold Key published Hanna-Barbera Fun-In 8 featuring an adaptation of the cartoon show. The Globetrotters were again featured in issue 10 of Fun-In. The Harlem Globetrotters cartoon show then had its own 12-issue Gold Key comic book series that ran from April 1972 through January 1975. Here's issue 7, from October 1973. Some of the early issues were actually adapted straight from a cartoon story, but I don't know whether this is one of those. It certainly reads like it could be a kids' cartoon. The artwork is rather nice, but the artist is not credited. The Globetrotters cartoon show was the first to feature predominantly African American main characters, and the comic book was one of the earliest also. It would be interesting to know what the thinking was behind giving the Globetrotters a white granny as a manager. It speaks to the Globetrotters incredible appeal as entertainers that they ended up being used as characters in a kids' cartoon show and comic book series.

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Crossing the Divide: Joe Louis (2)

This comparative look at the peaks of the respective careers of Joe Louis and Jack Dempsey in Bill Stern's Sports Book Vol.2 #2 is interesting, not least because it doesn't mention race. In 1952 when this comic was published by Ziff-Davis in a still-segregated America, it was remarkable in that it features an African American, and still more remarkable that Joe Louis is not billed as representing his race. It's refreshing to read a comic from that time that simply presents Louis as a normal, if accomplished, member of the human race. This was one approach to racial integration in comics used by some writers of Silver Age comic books later on, presenting diversity as if racial harmony was a reality in society. Interestingly, the art on this story is by famed inker Frank Giacoia.

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Crossing the Divide: Satchel Paige

The Catholic comic Treasure Chest is actually a mini-gold mine for someone looking for Golden or Silver Age comic books featuring African Americans. In Treasure Chest there are a mixture of fictional and factual stories, and it is true accounts of the lives and activities of famous African Americans that are sometimes depicted. I picked this story about the baseball player Satchel Paige especially because of the last three panels, but generally because Paige is someone I had never heard of before, and it was interesting reading about him. Those last three panels really drive home the role that African American sports personalities played in bridging the racial divide. That they had to shoulder this responsibility speaks to the power of prejudice against difference that develops in unenlightened societies, as people allow themselves to be driven by their animal instincts instead of their intelligence. Unfortunately, the achievements of so many other African Americans remain unknown because of a color-filtered mechanism of apportioning worth to human activity. Anyway, this is a charming tale about someone who was, by this account, a good man and someone well worth knowing about. We know about him because of his success in baseball, something the majority in society recognized as an accomplishment and that earned him respect. "The Ageless Satchel Paige" is from Treasure Chest Vol. 8 # 17, April 23, 1953.

Published by George A. Pflaum of Dayton, Ohio, the original Treasure Chest series ran from 1946-1972 and was only available on subscription or through Catholic schools, where they were a classroom resource. Until the 1960s the comics were published bi-weekly, and thereafter were monthly and twice the size. More information on Treasure Chest is available in a Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Chest_%28comics%29