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Oliver W. Harrington Biography

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“Every soldier who fought put on a uniform and gave up two, three, four years of his life. He worked, he fought, sometimes he bled. Sometimes he lost a limb-but above all, he gave America those years of his life. And America said, "We won't forget you." That's simple justice. Now they're back. Most veterans are bitter men because the simple things they ask-a home, a job, security-they cannot have. But what, I ask, is it like to be a Negro veteran? You fought, if you are a Negro veteran, to tear down the sign "No Jews Allowed" in Germany, to find in America the sign "No Negroes Allowed." You fought to wipe out the noose and the whip in Germany and Japan, to find the noose and the whip in Georgia and Louisiana.”

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“I was raised in what is now the "jungle" of New York, the lower Bronx, and, indeed, at that time it was a very pleasant place. We played like all other kids. Where I lived was a very small enclave, a ghetto, but there were a number of ghettos. Most of the people there were immigrants; first generation Americans from Italy, Ireland, Poland, and there were a few French people. In a way, in a peculiar way, it was an integrated community composed of several separated ghettos. That was about the norm in those days. The idea of integration hadn't really gotten started, so I think that for anyone living today it would be a period that would be really difficult to understand...it was...in spite of some of the racism which I began to learn in school, a rather pleasant life.”

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“People, especially young white people, in America and in Europe are aware of what's happening in the ghetto even if their fathers maintain an obstinate ignorance. All over Europe I've seen young people who've studied the methods of the Black Liberation movement, applying those same methods to the job of forcing a bit of humanity into their profit-crazed and economically teetering countries. Of course it's got its amusing sides too and very often one is forced to rush somewhere for a drink after he's seen a group of the blond German youths with hair frizzled and worn in Afros. The parents of these kids have all picked the portrait of the President of the United States as a symbol of what was good in America...But I've been in no part of Europe where there wasn't the picture of a good American--and it was always Angela Davis!”

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“And what was the cost of this Jim Crow? Not merely that the precious words "America" and "freedom" became suspect in the eyes of the world, but more than that. It cost us lives. Lives of white men, of Frenchmen, Russians and Chinese-because there were many battles in this war when replacements were needed. But the American rule of war was "No Negroes allowed on the front lines" until the 92d finally got there. I listened to the Axis radio. Tokyo Rose said, and she quoted American sources, that Negroes were good enough to serve in the American Army, but they weren't good enough to pitch in the American Big League baseball. And they broadcast this not only to our own troops but also to the billion and a half colored peoples of the earth.”

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“I wasn't really interested in doing cartoons at that time, but I had one teacher, Miss McCoy, who used to call me and the other Black pupil in the school to the front of the room and present us to the class. She'd say. "These two, being Black, belong in a waste basket." Well, there was no way of defending oneself against that. So, I began to build up a kind of rage against her. There was no way that I could have gotten back at her because if I had, it would have been much more serious than it turned out. In the end, it turned out rather beneficial to me because I began doing cartoons of Miss McCoy in my notebooks.”

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