Encyclopedia of Black Comics by Sheena C. Howard

Author:Sheena C. Howard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fulcrum Publishing
Published: 2017-03-18T04:00:00+00:00

Holloway began working at the Courier as a staff artist in 1928. Holloway created Sunny Boy Sam in that same year, initially producing the strip in black and white. From 1950 through 1955, the strip ran in color as part of the Courier’s color magazine section. After the demise of the newspaper’s color section, Holloway returned Sunny Boy Sam to its earlier black-and-white format, producing the strip until his death in 1969. It continued after his death with thematic and stylistic variations by Bill Murray and other artists.

Sunny Boy characters, largely male, were initially rendered with stereotypical physiognomic features, spoke in dialect, and were engaged in the numbers racket. Later, as pointed out by John D. Stevens (1976), Sheena C. Howard (2013), and Tim Jackson (2016), Holloway dramatically departed from physiognomic stereotypes. In addition, by 1947, as Stevens noted, Sunny Boy had begun to speak in a more refined fashion, more like a college graduate.

Holloway wrote editorial cartoons as well as gag strips, winning numerous awards for his editorial cartooning. His editorials in the Courier addressed the Ku Klux Klan, immigration, labor issues, the 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, and the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini. In May 1927, Holloway’s political cartoon titled “Senator Lynch of Mississippi,” a satirical critique of hypocritical, racist legislators, was published in The Messenger (1917–28), a Harlem Renaissance-era, African American monthly periodical. The comic depicts a white senator with two mixed-race children seated on his lap. Below, the caption reads “Senator Lynch of Mississippi whiles away an hour or so with his children after a strenuous fight in the legislature for the passage of his racial integrity bill.”

Holloway also produced the logo for the Pittsburgh Courier’s extremely popular 1942 “Double V” campaign. Arising from a letter to the editor, it linked victory over racial discrimination in America to victory over Axis fascism abroad. As Courier editors noted in an editorial statement regarding the popular campaign, “We, as Colored Americans, are determined to protect our country, our form of government and our freedoms … therefore, we have adapted the Double ‘V’ war cry – victory over our enemies on the battlefields abroad. Thus in our fight for freedom we wage a two-pronged attack against our enslavers at home and those abroad who would enslave us. WE HAVE A STAKE IN THIS FIGHT … WE ARE AMERICANS TOO!”

Other African American newspapers soon joined the Double V campaign, with several printing reproductions of Holloway’s logo. In Sunny Boy Sam, Hollway made the Double V campaign an overarching theme of the strip for several months. In one strip, Holloway incorporated a cartoon image of boxer Joe Louis to provide African American service members with words of support and encouragement.

After his death, the National Newspaper Association, a trade association of Black community newspapers, established the Wilbert L. Holloway Award for Best Editorial Cartoonist. He is remembered as a pioneering newspaper artist of color.

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