mere cat

Pettigrew for President

Timothy Pettigrew to be precise. I went to Catholic schools for grades 1 through 10 and during elementary school, subscribed to Treasure Chest, a “Catholic-oriented comic book series created by Dayton, Ohio publisher George A. Pflaum and distributed in parochial schools from 1946 to 1972” [Wikipedia]

I had a distinct memory of a story about the 1976 Presidential campaign with a surprise ending in which it was revealed on the last page of the final episode that the candidate Timothy Pettigrew was African-American. (For some reason, I didn’t think it was odd that you never saw Pettigrew’s face until the last page.) Some Googling filled in all the details.

From the NPR News Blog, I learned that the story ran in 1964 (I was 10 years old). Catholic University in Washington, DC has scans of most issues from 1946 through 1963. Unfortunately, the issues from 1964 forward are still under copyright. You can see a YouTube video of the comic, however.

1964 was a momentous year for other reasons than this footnote in comic-book history. Three civil-rights workers were murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi (dramatized in Mississippi Burning and Murder in Mississippi) and shortly thereafter The Civil Rights Act, which had been introduced the year before, was finally signed into law by Lyndon Johnson. It only took another 44 years before an African-American would have a chance at the nomination.