Morrie Turner was an American cartoonist famous for creating Wee Pals, a popular nationally syndicated comic strip that featured an integrated cast of ethnically diverse characters — the first of its kind at the time of its release in 1965.
Turner was born and raised in Oakland, California. He started attending McClymonds High School but graduated from Berkeley High School in June 1942. Turner was the youngest child of four to a father who was a Pullman porter and a mother who was a nurse and homemaker. While Turner never had any formal artistic training, he began drawing caricatures at a young age and expanded to include cartoons during high school. From the 1950s to the early 1960s, Turner worked as a clerk for the Oakland Police Department while he created cartoons on the side. Turner lived in the same house that his father had purchased back in 1945 and passed away on January 25, 2014.
Turner’s career started to take off after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when over 100 newspapers were featuring Wee Pals. In addition to his philanthropic work in the US, Turner also traveled to Vietnam, where he spent a month drawing caricatures of service people during the Vietnam War.
After expressing concern about the absence of minorities in comic strips, Turner created Dinky Fellas, a comic strip that featured an all-black cast. Due to its unpopularity, Dinky Fellas evolved into Wee Pals, which subsequently became an animated television series called Kid Power and Wee Pals on the Go. Turner later became co-chairman of the White House Conference on Children and Youth, launched summer art exhibitions at the East Oakland Youth Development Center, and appeared in the television series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
Most of his early work was created outside of his childhood neighborhood in Oakland. Some of his early work can be found in issues of Stars and Stripes, an American military newspaper, when he served as a mechanic for the Tuskegee Airmen during WWII.
Haunts:
- McClymonds High School, 2607 Myrtle Street, Oakland, CA 94607. From freshman to junior year, Turner attended McClymonds High School in West Oakland. During this time, his illustrations became more refined, and his illustration style started to resemble comic panels. Some say that his time at McClymonds High School was a pivotal time for his style of work.
- Oakland Police Department, 455 7th Street, Oakland, CA 94607. Working as an illustrator on the side, Turner worked for the Oakland Police Department as his primary source of income. During his time with the OPD, the first comic that Turner was paid for was featured in Bakers’ Helper magazine, which helped pave the way for his later work.
~ by Vy D. Hunyh ~
External Links:
Oakland Public Library – http://oaklandlibrary.org/blogs/library-community/celebrating-life-morrie-turner-anniversary-wee-pals
African American Literature Book Club – https://aalbc.com/authors/author.php?author_name=Morrie+Turner
National Cartoonists Society – https://www.nationalcartoonists.com/2014/01/morrie-turner-1923-2014/
