Profiles in Black Cartooning: Bertram A. Fitzgerald

In celebration of Black History Month, CBLDF has partnered with Black Nerd Problems to spotlight Black comics creators and cartoonists who made significant contributions to free expression. Visit CBLDF.org throughout the month of February to learn more! This is the story of a mild-mannered accountant, Bertram A. Fitzgerald, who unexpectedly became a pioneer in comics publishing. At a time when the field of African American Studies was largely confined to academia, Fitzgerald saw the pedagogical potential of both the comics format and Black history as a means to engage youth who had seldom seen themselves reflected in their history books. Growing up in Harlem in the 1930s and ‘40s, Fitzgerald was an avid reader of history and classic literature. Among the books he devoured were the Classics Illustrated series of comic adaptations, but he later came to realize that the African heritage of authors such as Alexander Pushkin and Alexandre Dumas had been completely omitted in the short biographies included in the books. Despite this lack of representation in the mainstream press, Fitzgerald developed an interest in Black history thanks to his seventh grade history teacher, who noticed his students were more engaged when the curriculum included the contributions of people of African descent in all eras and sectors of society, rather than just a brief unit on slavery. That history class, Fitzgerald later told the New York Times, “was like an elixir. Like a shot in the arm. It made th…