"Go back to your lily-white world, where you belong!" LOIS LANE #114, September 1971

Despite the romantic triangle cover, Lois Lane focuses on race relations in this September 1971 issue of the long-running "Superman's Girl Friend" DC comic book series. Yes, DC had "Girl Friend" as two words. No all-one-word "girlfriend." She was a friend who was a girl. Right?

Oops. Maybe not! Poor Lois!

Some great panels in LOIS LANE #114, September 1971, which is credited to writer Bob Kanigher, with art by Werner Roth and Vince Colletta (with an assist by Murphy Anderson). It was a sequel to #106 ("I Am Curious (Black)"). My thanks to Bob Buethe for this information! It's copyright 1971 National Periodical Publications, Inc.

But Lois does not go back to her lily-white world! She becomes an activist!

And we get a gallery exhibit of famous black people: Joe Louis, Harriet Tubman, Thurgood Marshall, W.C. Handy, Jesse Owens, George Washington Carver, Marian Anderson, Frederick Douglass, Jackie Robinson,

And then, some black people that are lesser known: Peter Salem, hero of Bunker Hill;  Daniel Hale Williams, performed first successful open heart surgery; Jim Beckworth, explorer-scout-mountain man - adopted Indian chief; Benjamin Banneker, scientist; Bill Pickett, cowboy; Alexander Pushkin, Russian writer; General Benjamin O. Davis, "first American Negro general;" Ira Aldridge, actor; Alexandre Dumas, writer.

It's interesting to see some names that we now consider as important African American people missing from that list: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, Josephine Baker, W.E.B. DuBois, Billie Holiday, Langston Hughes ... to name a few.

Here's the story:

 

 

 

 

- Edited from a January 16, 2012 blog entry.