page_title: George Herriman
section_title: Race and identity
hierarchical_section_title: George Herriman / Race and identity
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: George Herriman, 1902 (signiertes Foto) English: George Herriman, 1902 (autographed photo)
context_page_description: George Joseph Herriman was an American cartoonist best known for the comic strip Krazy Kat. More influential than popular, Krazy Kat had an appreciative audience among those in the arts. Gilbert Seldes' article "The Krazy Kat Who Walks by Himself" was the earliest example of a critic from the high arts giving serious attention to a comic strip. The Comics Journal placed the strip first on its list of the greatest comics of the 20th century. Herriman's work has been a primary influence on cartoonists such as Will Eisner, Charles M. Schulz, Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Bill Watterson, and Chris Ware.
  Herriman was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, to mixed-race Creole parents, and grew up in Los Angeles. After he graduated from high school in 1897, he worked in the newspaper industry as an illustrator and engraver. He moved on to cartooning and comic strips—a medium then in its infancy—and drew a variety of strips until he introduced his most famous character, Krazy Kat, in his strip The Dingbat Family in 1910. A Krazy Kat daily strip began in 1913, and from 1916 the strip also appeared on Sundays.
context_section_description: Herriman was born to mixed-race parents, and his birth certificate lists Herriman as "colored".  In the post–Plessy v. Ferguson U.S., in which "separate but equal" racial segregation was enshrined, people of mixed race had to choose to identify themselves as either black or white.  Herriman seems to have identified himself as white. According to comics academic Jeet Heer, his early work is "replete with black caricatures", such as Musical Mose, in which the lead character, an African-American musician, wishes his "color would fade".  Racial ambivalence crept into Krazy Kat, such as on two occasions where Krazy's black fur was dyed white.  Ignatz falls in love with the whitened Krazy, only to return to hatred and brick-throwing when the truth is revealed.  Similarly, in an oft-repeated joke, Ignatz would accidentally become covered with coal dust and would be spurned by the normally love-struck Krazy.  In one such episode, a brick thrown by the blackened Ignatz hits Krazy, who declares, "A lil Eetiopium Mice, black like a month from midnights.  Fuwi!" Once Ignatz reverts to his white self, Krazy loves him again.
  Herriman's ethnic heritage was unknown to his colleagues.  Fellow cartoonist Tad Dorgan nicknamed him "the Greek", a label which stuck and was taken up by his biographers and the press, who called him the son of a Greek baker.  At other times, he was identified as French, Irish, and Turkish.  He told a friend that he was Creole, and speculated that he may have "Negro blood" in him, as he had "kinky hair".  The friend said that Herriman wore a hat to hide his hair, which may have been an attempt to pass as white.  Herriman said that he dreamed of being reborn a Navajo.  On his death certificate, he was listed as "Caucasian", and his daughter Mabel had his father's birthplace listed as Paris and his mother's as Alsace-Lorraine.
  Sociologist Arthur Asa Berger made Herriman's mixed-race heritage known in 1971.  While researching for Herriman's entry for the Dictionary of American Biography,  Berger discovered the cartoonist's race was listed as "colored" on his birth certificate obtained from the New Orleans Board of Health.  The 1880 census for New Orleans listed his parents as "mulatto".  On reading this, African-American poet Ishmael Reed dedicated his 1972 novel Mumbo Jumbo to "George Herriman, Afro-American, who created Krazy Kat".  Herriman came to be identified as Black or Creole in comics literature, including his first book-length biography, Krazy Kat: The Comic Art of George Herriman (1986), while the "Greek" label stuck with some biographers, and was used by Bill Blackbeard in his introductions to the Krazy and Ignatz volumes in the early 2000s. Later research at the New Orleans Public Library by cartoonist Brian Nelson showed that Herriman's maternal grandmother was born in Havana, Cuba, that all his relatives were listed as "mulatto" on the 1890 census, and that Herriman may also have had Spanish or Native American ancestry.
caption: Herriman, who had mulatto heritage, kept his "kinky hair" under a hat (1902).
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