Oliver Harrington

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dedication for Oliver Harrington in the book Bid og Vid by Herluf Bidstrup (1983)

Oliver Wendell "Ollie" Harrington (born February 14, 1912 in Valhalla , New York ; † November 2, 1995 in Berlin ) was an African-American cartoonist , writer and a fighter against racism and for civil rights in the United States . In 1961 Harrington applied for political asylum in the GDR ; he lived in Berlin for the last three decades of his life.

Living in the USA

Harrington was born to Herbert and Eugenie Turat Harrington in Valhalla, New York, and was the oldest of five children. His father had come from North Carolina to work on the many construction projects in the area. His mother was a Hungarian Jew from Budapest . He began drawing to vent his frustrations with a viciously racist sixth grade teacher and graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in 1929 . Harrington worked for the New York Amsterdam News for some time after city editor Ted Posten became aware of Harrington's already remarkable skills as a cartoonist and political satirist . Harrington thereafter wrote regularly for many of the best-known African-American newspapers in the United States , including the New York Amsterdam News, the Pittsburgh Courier, and the Baltimore Afro-American .

In 1935, Harrington created Dark Laughter , a regular series cartoon. The flick was later named after its most famous character, Bootsie , a common African American confronted with racism in the United States, who Harrington described as "a cheerful, fairly well-fed, but soulful character". Harrington enrolled at Yale University 's School of the Fine Arts in 1936 to study painting and art history . He obtained his BFA degree there in 1940 . 1942 Harrington received his first full-time job and worked as an art director for The People's Voice , a progressive weekly that of the priest Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was established. The following year, Harrington left the Voice to work primarily for the Pittsburgh Courier , where his duties were more varied and demanding. At Courier in 1941 he presented Jive Gray , an adventure comic that illuminated World War II from the perspective of an African-American military aviator. He continued this until 1951.

In January 1944, the Courier sent Harrington abroad to cover World War II in North Africa and Europe . While reporting in Italy, he met the executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Walter White . White was so impressed that after the war ended, he invited Harrington to set up a public relations department for the organization. Harrington accepted the job in 1946. At the same time, Harrington published the article "Terror in Tennessee," a controversial exposure of the increase in lynching in the post-war era in the southern United States. At the end of 1946, he debated with Attorney General Tom C. Clark on the subject of "The Struggle for Justice as a World Power". He confronted Clark about the US government's failure to curb lynching and other racially motivated violence.

In 1947 Harrington left the NAACP and began drawing again. He also tried his hand at book illustration, including a. for The Runaway Elephant , a popular children's book by Ellen F. Tarry at the time . In the post-war period, he was watched by the FBI and the Committee on Un-American Activities for his notoriety and social activities .

Exile in France

Hoping to avoid further scrutiny by the US government, Harrington emigrated to Paris in 1951 . In Paris, Harrington joined the community of African American writers and artists, including James Baldwin , Chester Himes and Richard Wright , who became a close friend. During his stay in Paris, Harrington mainly drew cartoons for the Courier and the Chicago Defender , which he sent to the USA by post. His presence at home was also maintained by the appearance of an anthology of his caricatures in 1958. The book Bootsie and Others was by Dodd, Mead & Company published and contained an admiring introduction of Langston Hughes .

Emigration to the GDR

The calm in Paris ended in 1960 with the sudden death of Wright, whom Harrington was very close to. Harrington suspected that Wright had been murdered on behalf of US intelligence. Shortly after, Harrington wrote an article for the magazine Ebony , entitled The Last Days of Richard Wright , in which he outlined the suspicious circumstances surrounding Wright's death. Without Wright, Paris was no longer so attractive to Harrington and in 1961 he traveled to East Berlin . An offer from the Aufbau Verlag awaited him there . Harrington was supposed to illustrate a number of English-language classics. Soon afterwards he applied for political asylum in the GDR. He spent the rest of his life in the eastern part of Berlin, where he was soon one of the most famous cartoonists in the GDR. He illustrated and wrote publications for Eulenspiegel , Das Magazin and the Daily Worker . He had a close friendship with the Danish cartoonist Herluf Bidstrup and he appeared at events with the US singer Dean Reed, who also emigrated to the GDR . During his time in the GDR, he was also observed by the State Security .

In 1964, Harrington met Helma Richter, a radio journalist. The two married and son Oliver Jr. was born. Except for Oliver Jr. Harrington had three daughters.

The Daily World published a collection of Harrington's Soul Shots in 1972 . To promote the publication of this book, Harrington made his first visit to the United States since leaving the country more than 20 years earlier. He also gave a number of lectures during the trip. After returning to Europe, Harrington wrote Look Homeward, Baby , a piece for Freedomways magazine comparing how America looked after his return to his memories of Harlem in the 1940s.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Harrington drew almost only caricatures. The exceptions were two reviews of books by other black cartoonists for Freedomways : Through Black Eyes in 1974 and Like Most of Us Kids in 1976.

Harrington did not return to American soil until 1991 when he was invited by Walter O. Evans, a Detroit surgeon and collector of African American art. During that visit, Harrington gave a speech at Wayne State University in Detroit, entitled Why I Left America , describing the circumstances under which he had emigrated 40 years earlier. In 1994 Michigan State University invited Harrington to spend a semester as an artist-in-residence at their journalism school. During his semester, Harrington led a seminar on the role of political cartoons in journalism. Harrington began the spring semester course by "showing students that political cartoons and journalism are the same thing and have been for thousands of years," he told a reporter for Emerge magazine .

Harrington died in Berlin in 1995. The New York Times named him the pioneer of African-American cartoon and the Library of Congress named him one of the greatest black cartoonists.

Private

Harrington had four children. Two daughters of US nationality and another British nationality, all from the time before emigrating to the GDR. His youngest child, a son, comes from his marriage to Helma Richter, a German journalist.

Works (selection)

  • The Runaway Elephant (with Ellen Tarry). Viking, 1950.
  • Hezekiah Horton (with Ellen Tarry). Viking, 1955.
  • Bootsie and Others . Dodd, Mead & Company, 1958.
  • “Elections made in USA” in the Urania universe: Volume 11 (XI) . Urania-Verlag, Leipzig, Jena, Berlin, 1965
  • Laughing on the Outside: The Intelligent White Reader's Guide to Negro Tales and Humor . Edited by Philip Sterling. Grosset Dunlap, 1965.
  • Soul shots. Daily World, 1972.
  • Cover pictures of Eulenspiegel u. a. Issues 47/1982 and 38/1988
  • Why I Left America and Other Essays. University Press of Mississippi, 1993, ISBN 0878056556 .
  • Dark Laughter: The Satiric Art of Oliver W. Harrington . Edited by M. Thomas Inge, University Press of Mississippi, 1993, ISBN 0878056564

Exhibitions

  • 1979 Greiz State Museums in the exhibition part Satiricum Greiz
  • 1985 Kulturbundgalerie Berlin-Weißensee
  • 1991 Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Detroit
  • 1992 “pro” Berlin-Treptow meeting place of the Association of Antifascists Treptow e. V.
  • 1992 Elijah Pierce Gallery of the Martin Luther King Jr. Performing and Cultural Arts Complex in Columbus

Awards

  • American Institute of Graphic Arts Award for The Runaway Elephant 1951
  • Eddi (Cabaret Prize) 1985
  • Price of Swann Foundation for outstanding achievements in 1992

Receptions

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Harrington, Ollie · FB Eyes Digital Archive: FBI Files on African American Authors and Literary Institutions Obtained Through the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In: WUSTL Digital Gateway Image Collections & Exhibitions . Accessed August 22, 2018 (English).
  2. ↑ Jürgen Henschel: Small picture negative: Dean Reed, Oliver Harrington, Kulturensemble, 1978. In: Photo collections. FHXB Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum , accessed on August 22, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Larry A. Greene, Anke Ortlepp (eds.): Germans and African Americans: Two Centuries of Exchange . Jackson, Mississippi: University of Mississippi Press 2011. ISBN 978-1-60473-784-4 . P. 185ff.
  4. ↑ Christine G. McKay: Harrington, Oliver W. In: Henry Louis Gates, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (eds.): Harlem Renaissance Lives from the African American National Biography . Oxford University Press, New York, 2009, ISBN 978-0-19-538795-7 , pp. 240-242, here p. 242 (English).
  5. ↑ Four decades of cartoons from an African American who was a favorite of the intelligentsia and the Left. University Press of Mississippi, accessed on August 22, 2018 (English, presentation of the book Dark Laughter: The Satiric Art of Oliver W. Harrington on the publisher's website ).
  6. ↑ a b Thomson Gale: Harrington, Oliver W. 1912–. In: encyclopedia.com / Contemporary Black Biography. 2005, accessed on August 22, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Harrington, Oliver
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Harrington, Oliver Wendell; Harrington, Ollie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American cartoonist, writer and civil rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH February 14, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Valhalla , New York
DATE OF DEATH November 2, 1995
Place of death Berlin