Ahmed Samuel Milai (March 23, 1908 – April 30, 1970), better known as Sam Milai, was an

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

editorial An editorial, or leading article (UK) or leader (UK) is an article written by the senior editorial people or publisher of a newspaper, magazine, or any other written document, often unsigned. Australian and major United States newspapers, suc ...

and

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary and ...

who drew for the ''

Pittsburgh Courier The ''Pittsburgh Courier'' was an African-American weekly newspaper published in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from 1907 until October 22, 1966. By the 1930s, the ''Courier'' was one of the leading black newspapers in the United States. It was acqu ...

''. From 1940–c. 1971, Milai illustrated ''Your History'' (later known as ''Facts About The Negro''), written by

Joel Augustus Rogers Joel Augustus Rogers (September 6, 1880– March 26, 1966) was a Jamaican-American author, journalist, and historian who focused on the history of Africa; as well as the African diaspora. After settling in the United States in 1906, he lived i ...

. Patterned after the look of ''

Robert Ripley LeRoy Robert Ripley (February 22, 1890 – May 27, 1949) was an American cartoonist, entrepreneur, and amateur anthropologist, who is known for creating the '' Ripley's Believe It or Not!'' newspaper panel series, television show, and radio show ...

s popular '' Believe It or Not'' cartoons, multiple vignettes in each cartoon episode recounted short items about African Americans from Rogers' research. The feature began in the ''

'' in November 1934, with art by George L. Lee. In 1940, the art chores were handed over to Milai, who stayed with the feature through the rest of its run. Two collections were published, ''Your History'' (1940) and ''Facts About The Negro'' (c. 1960). Milai created ''Don Powers'', an adventure strip distributed from August 19, 1950, to November 1, 1958, by the Smith-Mann Syndicate, about a superlative athlete. In addition, he created the strips ''Bucky'' (under his own name) and ''Society Sue'' (under the name Bobby Thomas). Milai's 1960s political cartoons for the ''Pittsburgh Courier'' are curated at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum is a research library of American cartoons and comic art affiliated with the Ohio State University library system in Columbus, Ohio. Formerly known as the Cartoon Research Library and the Cartoon Library ...

. Milai was the ''Couriers editorial cartoonist for 33 years.

References

External links

The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum: Sam Milai Collection Guide

* ttps://cartoons.osu.edu/digital_exhibits/sammilai/intro.html/ Sam Milai Exhibit: The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum
Don Powers: The Museum of Uncut Funk
1908 births 1970 deaths American editorial cartoonists American comic strip cartoonists African-American comics creators 20th-century African-American people {{US-cartoonist-stub