Oliver Wendell Harrington was an American cartoonist of multi-ethnic descent and an outspoken advocate against racism and for civil rights in the United States.
11 Facts About Ollie Harrington
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Ollie Harrington requested political asylum in East Germany in 1961; he lived in Berlin for the last three decades of his life.
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Ollie Harrington later continued his educational career at the Yale School of Fine Arts and The National Academy of Design, where he graduated with a degree in Fine arts in 1940.
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In 1935, Ollie Harrington created Dark Laughter, a regular single-panel cartoon, for that publication.
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On October 18,1941, he started publication of Jive Gray, a weekly adventure comic strip about an eponymous African-American aviator; the strip went on until Ollie Harrington moved to Paris.
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In that capacity, Ollie Harrington published "Terror in Tennessee," a controversial expose of increased lynching violence in the post-WWII South.
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In 1947, Ollie Harrington left the NAACP and returned to cartooning.
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In Paris, Ollie Harrington joined a thriving community of African-American expatriate writers and artists, including James Baldwin, Chester Himes, and Richard Wright, who became a close friend.
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Ollie Harrington was shaken by Richard Wright's death in 1960, suspecting that he was assassinated.
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Ollie Harrington thought that the American embassy had a deliberate campaign of harassment directed toward the expatriates.
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Ollie Harrington's youngest child, a son, was born several years after Harrington married Helma Richter, a German journalist.