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Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African-American Newspapers

Pittsburgh Courier - August 9, 1975

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August - Archived Posts
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August 1, 1940: Los Angeles Sentinelcalls for abolition of poll tax.
August 2, 1958: Ghanian Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah welcomed in Harlem, reported in Norfolk Journal and Guide.
August 3, 1939: Clark University octet performs at Seventh World’s Poultry Congress and Exposition in Cleveland, reported in Call and Post.
August 4, 1983: Los Angeles Sentinel profile of Janice Darling, owner and fitness director of Sweat Shop in Culver City.
August 5, 1939: Singer Maxine Sullivan prepares for jazz version of “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” photo in New York Amsterdam News.
August 6, 1966: Advertisement for news carriers in Norfolk Journal and Guide.
August 7, 1909: Tenth Cavalry returns to New York City from Philippine Islands, reported in Baltimore Afro-American.
August 8, 1936: Jesse Owens dominates the 1936 Berlin Olympics, reported in Chicago Defender.
August 9, 1975: Chester Commodore editorial cartoon on black unemployment featured in Pittsburgh Courier.
August 10, 1946: World War II veteran Maceo Snipes killed for voting in Georgia, editorial in New York Amsterdam News.
August 11, 1964: Mothers of slain civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner at funeral, reported in Philadelphia Tribune.
August 12, 1972: “Page One Miss” Betty Jean Thomas in Chicago Defender.
August 13, 1955: “On the Divorce Docket” column in Cleveland Call and Post.
August 14, 1947: Los Angeles Sentinel welcomes Zetas, Kappas, Sigmas, Doctors, and Witnesses to city for conferences.
August 15, 1966: James Brown and Muhammad Ali ride in Chicago Defender’s Bud Billiken Parade.
August 16, 1975: Dawn Magazine supplement in Pittsburgh Courier and Baltimore Afro-American.
August 17, 1932: Langston Hughes and two dozen African-American artists stranded in Moscow after film project is cancelled, reported in Atlanta Daily World.
August 18, 1917: Great Migration in the Norfolk Journal and Guide.
August 19, 1911: Lynching of Zachariah Walker in Pittsburgh Courier.
August 20, 1931: Philadelphia Tribune advertisement boasting about paper’s printing technology, staff, and service to citizens of Philadelphia.
August 21, 1943: East Bronx merchants screen Stormy Weather, weeks after Harlem riot, reported in New York Amsterdam News.
August 22, 1950: Black troops in 24th Infantry Regiment fighting in Korean War, reported in Atlanta Daily World.
August 23, 1924: Dr. Robert Russa Moton speaks in Chicago, covered in Norfolk Journal and Guide.
August 24, 1939: “Dark Night” protest against discriminatory practices by Los Angeles Bureau of Power and Light, reported in Los Angeles Sentinel.
August 25, 1917: National Medical Association moves annual meeting from Memphis to Philadelphia in response to lynching of Ell Persons.
August 26, 1961: Fifteen-year-old Preston Cobb Jr. sentenced to death in Georgia, reported in Cleveland Call and Post.
August 27, 1977: New York Amsterdam News highlights what Elvis Presley took from black musicians.
August 28, 2001: Philadelphia Tribune mourns death of Aaliyah.
August 29, 1953: Philadelphia Tribune announces engagement of pianist Eunice Waymon (Nina Simone).
August 29, 1960: NAACP Youth Council stages “wade in” at Rainbow Beach, reported in Chicago Defender. Guest post by Nick Juravich, Ph.D. candidate in the department of History at Columbia University.
August 30, 1930: Riot breaks out at National Baptist Convention, reported in Baltimore Afro-American.
August 31, 1963: Philadelphia Tribune on the death of W.E.B. Dubois and a white mob harassing a black family for moving into all-white neighborhood in Folcroft, PA.
August 9, 1975 On August 9, 1975, the Pittsburgh Courier featured an editorial cartoon on black unemployment by Chester Commodore. The drawing features a young black man with wearing a t-shirt that reads “Job Seeker.” The man’s shoes are tattered, with the soles peeling back. The caption reads, “I’ve Walked ’Til My Shoes Look Like ‘Jaws,’” with a reference to the film about a killer shark that was in theaters earlier that summer.

Chester Commodore was an important cartoonist whose work appeared in the Chicago Defender and other black newspapers for several decades. In this interview on the website for Stanley Nelson’s documentary “Soldiers Without Swords”, Commodore commented on the importance of technique in drawing black characters:
Interviewer: Growing up, how were black people drawn in the white papers?
CC: Black were people were drawn, ah, from—in white papers as, ahm, eight-ball type. They were solid blacks, blacks were. When they made a black figure, they didn’t put in the highlights, you know, like up at the top and all. It was just a solid black with, ah, white lips, big white lips, and a big nose and, ah, little, tiny eyes with little dots in ’em for pupils. And that’s the way that white press did black people. And, ahm, it was, ah, insulting as—and they were all bald-headed. They were never with hair on their head. Sometimes if it was a woman, she had a solid black face and little nappy hair or braids most cases. So, ah, I didn’t like that.

INT: What would you do?
CC: I would draw mine in a order like, ah, so. I would come in and get, ahm, a outline and shape it up more natural, like it should be, and lighten it. No more eight-ball type. That wasn’t the way we look, never looked that way either. And, ahm ...

INT: How would you put some expression into it?
CC: I would put, ah, expression in it by thinnin’ the lips and, ah, usin’ a—a smile that we all have, and do use in the correct way. We’re not buffoons, as they liked to call us. They wanna make us look like we’re somethin’ from another world, and we’re just as human as white race.

INT: Why was it important back then for you to draw black people this way?
CC: Ah, we were signaling to—I think back in those days when black cartoonists were signaling to the black—to the white press, rather, that, ah, this is the correct way it should be done and we shaded with very few lines ...