Chester Commodore (August 22, 1914 – April 10, 2004) was an African-American cartoonist who made political cartoons and satirical comic strips. He won numerous awards from 1972 to 1980. Commodore developed an interest in comics and art at an early age, and was encouraged by his uncle John Prophet. While living with his grandmother, he had the opportunity to meet prominent African-American musicians and entertainers who were turned away from white-owned hotels and restaurants in the Chicago and Milwaukee area.
Career
While studying at Tilden Technical High School, he continued to practice art. After graduation, he worked various odd jobs to support himself, including as a chauffeur and a mechanic, and got a job with the Pullman Company. He was always drawing, and posted his drawings on company bulletin boards. American lawyer and comics writer James Rice was impressed by Commodore's work and recommended him as an artist to the Minneapolis Star in 1938, and the newspaper offered Commodore a job. However, the job offer was rescinded after he arrived, as the staff had been unaware that he was African-American.
In 1948 a national printers' strike led to a job opening at The Chicago Defender, where he excelled despite having no prior experience as a printer. doing layout, but soon started drawing cartoons for the paper. His first strip, in 1948, was called The Sparks. He took over Jay Jackson's strip Bungleton Green in the early 1950s and contributed to the cartoon features The Ravings of Professor Doodle and So What?. When Jay Jackson died in 1954, shortly before the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, Commodore took over his role drawing editorial cartoons for the paper.
After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Commodore began to focus more broadly on the social issues facing the African American community, including poverty, and exclusion from politics. From 1974 he drew a weekly full-page caricature for the cover of the Defenders weekly arts supplement, Accent. The series lasted for more than five years. While working at The Defender, Commodore took artist Marie Antoinette Merriweather under his wing, and she later went on to found her own company, Teddy Bear Graphics. Commodore also appeared in the 1998 documentary The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords, directed by Stanley Nelson Jr.
Legacy
Throughout his career, Commodore portrayed African-Americans in a humanizing dignified way, and his work is widely considered to have been a major step away from racial stereotyping of African-Americans, particularly in comics.
Awards and honours
Over the course of his career, Commodore won awards for his work as a comic strip artist and editor, and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize 12 times.