Wee Pals cartoonist redrew the lines on race and culture.

When cartoonist Morrie Turner visited Karen Oyekanmi’s second grade classroom back in 1964, he launched the 7-year-old on a career as an artist. Turner, who was born in Oakland and died in January at age 90, was the first black cartoonist to be nationally syndicated. His strip Wee Pals features an integrated group of kids, diverse in their ethnicities, religions. and abilities. In the strip, the kids chat about their everyday lives as Turner’s gentle humor shakes up stereotypes and promotes tolerance.

Turner frequently visited schools in the Bay Area and across the country. “He spellbound kids with facile drawings,” says his longtime friend Malcolm Whyte, founder of San Francisco’s Cartoon Art Museum. At the same time, Whyte adds, “He slyly extolled the rewards of staying in school and learning.” Oyekanmi recalls that each member of her Lockwood Elementary class showed Turner some of his or her artwork. Oyekanmi loved dolls and drawing and says the cartoonist took the time to write her a little note. “He told me to never stop drawing and to fulfill my dreams,” she says. “It stuck with me. It validated me at that young age.” She went on to get a degree in commercial art illustration from California College of the Arts, and she became a doll artist. In 1984, she founded the nonprofit American Black Beauty Doll Artists to create appreciation for black dolls.

Morrie Turner’s Wee Pals. Click on image for a larger version.

Oyekanmi is one of many artists inspired by Turner and the Wee Pals gang. An upcoming exhibition at the San Francisco Main Library will explore Turner’s reach, with a focus on how he influenced other cartoonists and the culture at large. The exhibitition is called, “The Morrie Movement: The Influence of Wee Pals Cartoonist Morrie Turner.” It runs Nov. 8–Jan. 29, 2015, at the African American Center of the San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin St., with an opening and panel discussion planned 1–3 pm Nov. 16, in the Koret Auditorium.

Exhibit curator Kheven Lagrone says this show will be different from a retrospective, something he presented at the library in 2009. “I want to take him to the next level,” says Lagrone. “Every artist wants to influence a movement; I’m trying to articulate a Morrie Turner movement.” The exhibit will feature writing as well as artwork from a mix of people directly impacted by Turner.

One of Morrie Turner’s letters to Karen Oyekanmi’s mother. Letter courtesy of Karen Oyekanmi.
Click on image for a larger version.

The cartoonist grew up in Oakland, the youngest son of a Pullman porter and a nurse. A self-taught artist, he launched his career in the Army, drawing for military newspapers. Wee Pals was syndicated in 1965, and still runs in the Oakland Tribune and the Contra Costa Times. After a slow start, the strip gained a broad readership in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Turner has said it was “bittersweet” to gain recognition due to the death of one of his heroes.

—————–

As the first black cartoonist to gain national syndication, Turner inserted his voice into the conversation about race relations while opening doors for strips like Luther, Quincy, Friday Foster, and Curtis. Cartoonist Barbara Brandon-Croft (the daughter of Luther’s inventor, Brumsic Brandon Jr.) says that with this group of strips “not only was the black perspective being acknowledged in the mainstream press, it also established to a wider audience that black folks are not a monolithic lot.”

Rainbow Power: Morrie Turner celebrated diversity. Click on image for a larger version.

Ray Billingsley pens Curtis, the nationally syndicated strip about a close-knit black family in Harlem. Like Turner, he says, “I wanted to express what black life was like. It’s not actually black humor; it’s just characters who happen to be black.” Billingsley describes Turner as a warm, sincere, and emotional person who “didn’t try to hurt anyone, but still pushed boundaries.” Lagrone has reached out to Billingsley, Brandon-Croft, and many other cartoonists, who will contribute art or remembrances of Turner for the exhibit.

The Wee Pals gang features Nipper (based on Turner himself), several other black characters, and an assortment of kids who are Asian, Latino, white, and Jewish. Wee Pal Charlotte uses a wheelchair, and Sally is deaf. Nearly 20 years before Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, the Wee Pals gang promoted Rainbow Power, the idea that diverse people can get along and learn from one another.

Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, a good friend and champion of Turner’s, highlights an example of his colleague’s ability to confront assumptions with a light touch. In the forward to Turner’s book Nipper, Schulz describes a favorite section in which Nipper gets the chance to pitch for his baseball team. Unfortunately, Nipper is uncoordinated and falls flat on his face while pitching. The coach banishes him from the mound because he lacks rhythm.

One of Lagrone’s favorites is a strip in which Wee Pals Sybil and Connie comment that everyone loves pizza. Nipper overhears the girls as he sits at his Soul Food stand. In the next scene, Nipper has changed his Soul Food sign to read “Chitlin Pizzas.”

“Black people, especially in integrated situations, are often ashamed of black culture,” says Lagrone. “Chitterlings represent that shame. It is especially embarrassing when it is called chitlins. Growing up, we embraced chitlins as a militant position. In this strip, Turner embraces that part of our culture.”

In addition to Wee Pals, Turner drew Soul Corner, a strip that celebrated the achievements of African Americans. He tells the stories of heroes such as Thurgood Marshall and Rosa Parks, with humorous touches added by the Wee Pals characters.

Turner himself was a hero not only to children like Oyekanmi, but to many local groups and causes. “I don’t think he knew the meaning of the word no,” says his son, Morris Turner Jr. “If he thought it was worthwhile, he got involved.” Using his Wee Pals characters, Turner created materials for the local symphony’s children’s concerts, an area police league, and a public library’s summer reading program, the NAACP, and many more organizations. In books, pamphlets, calendars, and coloring books, he taught kids about crime prevention, neighborhood gangs, the value of staying in school, nutrition, disability, AIDS, and sickle cell anemia.

Oyekanmi recalls sitting with her mother and sister on Sunday mornings reading Turner’s cartoons in the Oakland Tribune. She says that her mom was ahead of her time and tried to uplift her children in terms of knowing who they were and being proud of who they were. “We were the oddballs in school in the ’60s,” says Oyekanmi, referring to herself and her sister. She was teased at school for having an afro and telling people that her roots were in Africa, but Turner’s cartoons made it easier to embrace her mom’s message of pride. “It was fascinating to look at his cartoons, because he had children of different colors, and it was something I could relate to and understand,” she says.

During the ’70s, the Wee Pals made the leap from page to screen in a Saturday morning cartoon called Kid Power. Turner himself appeared on TV as a guest on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. He received many awards, including the 2000 Sparky Award (named for Charles “Sparky” Schulz) from the Cartoon Art Museum. Groups including the American Red Cross, the NAACP, the Boys & Girls Clubs, and B’nai B’rith International honored him for his work.

Cartoonist Brandon-Croft observes that the American public owes a great debt to Morrie Turner. “He opened a window that offered a peek into what it was like to be a person of color in this nation at that time,” she says. “And he opened a door for black creators to get their chance to show their side of the experience as well.”

—————–
Rachel Trachten is a regular contributor to The Monthly, Oakland Magazine and Edible East Bay.

On Display
“The Morrie Movement: The Influence of Wee Pals Cartoonist Morrie Turner,” an exhibition of the cartoonist’s works, will be up at the African American Center of the San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin St., San Francisco, from Nov. 8 to Jan. 29, 2015. An exhibit opening and panel discussion are set for 1–3 p.m. Nov. 16 in the Koret Auditorium.