"Desegregating Comics: Debating Blackness in the Golden Age of American Comics explores race and blackness in comic books, comic strips, and editorial cartoons in the United States from the turn of the twentieth century through the height of the industry's popularity in the 1950s. The historical perception of Black people in comic art has long been tied to caricatures of indecipherable minstrels, devious witch doctors, and brutal savages. Yet the chapters in this collection reveal a more complex narrative and aesthetic landscape, one that was enriched by the negotiations among comics artists, writers, editors, distributors, and readers over how blackness should be portrayed in popular culture. This book brings together an extraordinary group of scholars in comics studies to consider the lasting impact of the Jim Crow era's tumultuous racial politics on the most prolific decades of the American comics industry"-- Provided by publisher.