Cartoonists of Color Sit-In

This Sunday a dozen or so cartoonists of color (and a few allies) got together to protest the glaring lack of diversity on the comics pages and in editorial cartooning with a comic strip "sit-in." Participants included Cartoonist With Attitude Keith Knight, as well as Corey Thomas, Darrin Bell and others. Here are the details, via editorial cartoonist Tim Jackson:

Cartoonists of Color Unite for February 10 comic strip demonstration

On February 10, 2008, about a dozen cartoonists of color (and a few who are not) united to help bring attention to the lack of diversity on newspaper comic pages. In order to show the world that our comics are not all interchangable, we all did our own version of a strip that was originally done by Cory Thomas. Unless you have ever been in our shoes, it may be very difficult to see the uniqueness and frustration of our predicament. And when you see the responses to our "protest" (and you will), I'm sure you'll hear things like "Black cartoonists are given the same shot as everyone else" and " we pick strips based on quality, not race."

To see all the cartoons in one place, please visit:
http://mamasboyz.com/news/protest.html

That link seems to be down right now, but I'm sure it'll recover once everyone stops trying to visit. There's also a video about the protest on the CBS website. CBS notes that only 25 percent of newspapers in this country have even one strip by a black creator.

And you can read a spirited pre-discussion of the protest by many well-known cartoonists in the comments here.