INT: What were black people drawn like in the white cartoons back then? CW: Black people in those days were drawn with big lips, you might say hot dog type lips and kinky hair, big white eyes, maybe a gingham shirt, overalls. INT: How'd that make you feel? CW: At that time, well, I just accepted the fact that this is the way they drew blacks. Just, ah, the way they, you know, pictured blacks. The same way with the Amos 'N Andy deal, you know. I'd just look at it as bein' a comic, ah, type of drawing. INT: Talk about Amos 'N Andy. Why were they insulting to black people? CW: Well, with Amos 'N Andy, they, ahm, I guess their type of English was what we call now "ebonics" and, they were ignorant characters. And dressed in, ah, with big -- where they had their lips painted so they'd, you know, be thick. INT: Why did black people have a problem with that show? CW: Oh, well, back in those days they didn't. It was just in the later years when they began to, ah, object to it. INT: But they got the comics taken out of syndication in the early '30s. CW: Well, really I -- in the early '30s I wasn't doin' too much drawin' at that time or reading too many papers inasmuch as I was livin' out in the country. I didn't know anything about protestin'. We had no radio. So, ah, at that time I don't know just how much protestin' the blacks was, you know, doin'. INT: Did you sell newspapers? CW: I sold 'em and then livin' out in the country without a post office or anything, we had stamps, postage stamps. I just paid for the papers I sold with postage stamps. INT: Tell me about being raised in the country. CW: Well, I was raised in Texas. And I was the sixth of seventeen children, or 16. (Laughs) I grew up on the farm doin' all types of farm work. As a matter of fact as I -- I was born in a log cabin and I think that was about the last time they were buildin' log cabins. I don't remember seein' any after I grew up. So I did all kind of farm work. My parents were sharecroppers and, of course, I picked cotton, picked peas, planted potatoes, cleared land for cultivation, and at the same time when I got a chance, I'd do a little drawin', because I began to draw -- if I don't have, ah, paper, I'd just draw on the ground. And, of course, ever day (Unintell.) my brother and sister'd walk on it. Because I had no -- at that time I had no check writing and didn't go to town to get a money order. So I just -- ah, at the post office I'd get -- instead of --I guess I could have gotten a money order, but for less than a dollar, I'd just send 'em postage stamps. The Pittsburgh Courier sold for ten cents. INT: Why were people in rural Texas interested in The Pittsburgh Courier? CW: I really don't know. I guess evidently they'd seen The Courier at some point in time, especially the, ah, schoolteacher. Schoolteacher was sent down to these rural schools from some city, one of the cities in Texas, Austin or Houston ... INT: What was the Pittsburgh Courier like? CW: Well, it had to have been an all-black paper. It had lots of news about blacks, their progress, of course. They had some good writers, good sports writers, and, ah, one writer, in -- in particular, was, ahm, W.E.B. DuBois. I used to read his column religiously. And there was, ah, the comics, Sunny Boy Sam, and, ah, naturally there was others, too. But, ah, then I read a column by George Schuyler. All those -- all those column was interesting. And, ah ... I was tryin' to recall another name ... INT: What do you remember about The Courier? CW: The Pittsburgh Courier had a wonderful sports section all -- also. I kept up with sports and like Joe Lewis and Satchel Page, Jessie Owen, and so forth. INT: How did the Courier connect black people around the country, from your experience? CW: I -- I really don't know how that paper really got out in the country. INT: What was your first job as a cartoonist? CW: My first job as a cartoonist was in sport cartoons. At my desk when I was in San Antonio, there was a white -- one of the white papers, their daily papers, had a daily cartoon, a sports cartoon. So I loved sports and I concentrated more on sports and my first job with the newspaper was The San Antonio Register. And that's when I drew sport cartoons for four years before movin' to California. INT: How much were you paid? CW: Well, I worked free, no pay whatever. My main purpose was to get experience rather than -- was more important at that time than money. And in the meantime I was a janitor at a clothing store. I washed dishes in the restaurants and, ah, that's how I made my livin'. INT: Was The Register a black paper? CW: San Antonio Register? Yes. It was the only black paper in San Antonio at the time. INT: How did you draw black people different from in the white papers? CW: Well, at that time I was drawin' black people from sports, 'cause they were real, you know, the way they really looked. I drew cartoons of Joe Lewis and Jessie Owens and Satchel Page and Woody Strode, Kenny Washington. They were at that time goin' to school at UCLA. INT: Why were Joe Lewis and Jessie Owens so important to black people? CW: Well, we blacks in that day looked up to those men. (Laughs) They were always in the news. INT: Why was it important to draw cartoons with black people in another way? CW: Well, really I wanted -- I wanted to feature blacks as they really existed, you know, rather than what I saw in the white papers, the comics. So I never drew blacks in that, you know, way. INT: Did your feelings about how black people were depicted change as you matured? CW: Well, I didn't feel any -- I didn't think anything of it. You know, that's just the way we -- they drew blacks, bein' grown up on the -- growin' up on the farm, you know, you had the -- your white boss and all. It didn't -- didn't bother us. INT: Who was your first hero in black cartoons? CW: My hero in black cartoonists was E. Sims Campbell. INT: Why? CW: I loved his cartoon. I loved his humor. And as a matter of fact, when I started studyin' cartoons I wrote him a letter. And, of course, he answered the letter and told me the best way to market my cartoons was to continue to show them to different magazines and newspapers. They might not accept it at first, but later on they will finally accept somethin'. And I found that to be true. INT: Why is Ollie Harrington important? CW: Well, Ollie Harrington drew, ah, comic cartoons, but they wasn't the, ah, type of cartoons that the whites was picturin' blacks as. But they were just everyday people on -- you know, the way they dressed at that time is the way he drew them. He drew, as I say, people as they actually were, and, ah, the way they dressed. That's just the way he drew them. INT: What do cartoons do? CW: In political cartoonin', it gets the idea across with minimum amount of time. They can look at a cartoon and it tells a story, whereas, otherwise, you'd have to sit there and read the whole column to get the meaning of what's happenin'. But in a cartoon you can tell at a glance what it's all about. INT: Why use humor? CW: Humor in cartoons, ah, makes people, you might say, laugh or smile. It has to be, ah, comical along with, ah -- it doesn't have to be so good a drawing all the time, but just get an idea across and makin' it, you might say, funny. INT: Can you get ideas across by putting humor in them that maybe you couldn't get across without humor? CW: What I can do with humor by drawin' expressions on the faces and also the caption of a cartoon. INT: Who was Ham Bone? CW: Ham Bone was a cartoon character with big lips, big white eyes, overalls, gingham shirts, straw hat, but, ah, he always had a lot of humor in whatever he had to say. I remember once, he said, "A lot of people ask the Good Lord -- they ask the Good Lord to guide them the way they wanna go. But they have their mind made up already, which were they g'wine (Unintell.)." (Laughs) (Unintell.) INT: Who drew Ham Bone? CW: I don't remember the name of the cartoonist. INT: He was drawn by a white person? CW: Yeah. A white person. INT: Why was it important for you and other black cartoonists to draw black people in a different way? CW: It was important to draw people in a different way, -- the way they actually looked as the same as a white cartoonist would draw their people the way they actually looked. INT: Why? CW: This gives, I guess, ah ... I guess the people loved it that way, rather than all this big lips and kinky hair and overalls. I think people enjoyed it that way. (END RECORDING)