Brumsic Brandon Jr.

Brumsic Brandon Jr. (April 10, 1927 – November 28, 2014) was an African-American cartoonist whose 1969-1986 Luther was one of the earliest mainstream comic strips to feature an African American in the lead role.

Early life and career Brandon Jr. was born in Washington, D.C., on April 10, 1927, the second of five children born to Brumsic Brandon Sr., a Washington Union Station porter, and Pearl Brooks Brandon. His employers included RCA and Bray Studios, where he worked as an animator.

He published his first cartoon in 1945, and drew editorial cartoons as well as caricatures, some of which were collected in the 1966 book Damned If We Do, and Damned If We Don't, published by the San Jose, California chapter of the Civil Rights organization CORE and the Santa Clara Valley Friends of SNCC.

Luther and television He then conceived of Luther, a comic strip about inner-city African-American children, imbued with a gently satirical theme about the struggle for racial equality. He named his title character, a third-grader, after Civil Rights activist the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1968, the Long Island newspaper Newsday in conjunction with Reporters' News Syndicate, In 1970, following the purchase of Newsday by Times Mirror, the strip became syndicated widely through the corporation's Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

Following the June 1986 discontinuation of Luther upon Brandon's retirement, Afterward, they lived in the Pocono Mountains area before finally settling in Florida for more than 25 years.

2022 "Still... Racism in America: A Retrospective in Cartoons" (Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, Columbus, OH) — joint exhibition with Brandon-Croft and her father Brumsic Brandon Jr.

2024 "Still... Racism in America: A Retrospective in Cartoons" (University of California-Davis Design Museum, Davis, CA) — joint exhibition with Brandon-Croft and her father Brumsic Brandon Jr.