Comics and Racial History

The recent episode of the Graphic Possibilities Podcast featured Dr. Rachel Marie-Crane Williams. She is the author of Run Home If You Don’t Want to Be Killed: The Detroit Uprising of 1943 (2021) and Elegy for Mary Turner: An Illustrated Account of a Lynching (2021). Her work highlights the way comics can add depth and clarity to racial history. As comics have a direct link to the definition of Afrofuturism, those artists committed to uncovering racial history are worthy of our consideration. While the original definition emphasized black-written and black-drawn comics, I think the ideology of recovery in these works makes a case for their Afrofuturist intent. Give this conversation a listen.