How Fat Albert Helped Change Cartoons Forever

For decades, black cartoon characters were mostly reduced to racist caricatures. A new exhibition shows how all that changed with a 1970s cartoon revolution.

Fat Albert, Schoolhouse Rock, The Harlem Globetrotters: with their retro animation styles, these 1970s cartoons seem dated now, but in their time, they were groundbreaking. Before the 1960s, black characters in cartoons were uniformly reduced to racist caricatures--the more than 600 cartoon shorts featuring black characters from 1900 to 1960 were basically animated minstrel shows. But with the Civil Rights Movement came Saturday morning cartoons that featured black animated characters in a more positive light.

Read Full Story