Bluford Library Archives: Garrett Whyte ’39 – Muralist and Civil Rights Cartoonist
In the first 20 years of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University’s visual arts program, it was established in 1927 by H. Clinton Taylor. The program’s most outstanding graduate may have been Garrett Whyte ‘1939 (1914-2000).
Whyte was a Mt. Sterling, Kentucky native who transferred to North Carolina A&T from Hampton University’s art department. A review of his achievements shows that he remains one of A&T’s greatest art alums over 80 years later.
An active and creative student, young Whyte pledged to the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporate, taught Sunday School, served as a publicity person for the student YMCA, and was a member of the technical Club. His drawing and writing talents were showcased as a feature editor of the A&T Register. He published the paper’s earliest known comic panel, “Do You Know,” a take on “Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”
Whyte was also part of a team of remarkable students who created the first edition of the Ayantee yearbook for the class of 1939. As its art editor, several of his illustrations enlivened this edition. His peers included James Pendergast, a popular student leader and manager of the first Ayantee, Pearl Garret Bradley Miss A&T 1938-39 and later an influential A&T instructor, Mildred Bright Payton famous poet and dramatist, and Veda Spellman Stroud, who is currently our eldest living alumna.
As a summer graduate from A&T, Whyte completed two wall murals for the Murphy Hall dining room title “Thank God for the Crops” and “Men of Industry,” each representing agriculture and commerce. The murals garnered national attention and were unveiled at a program with noted artist Rex Goreleigh as the speaker and his peer Pearl Garrett as a mistress of ceremonies. These murals were the beginning of a lifetime of creating artwork of cultural and social significance. After leaving Greensboro, he was hired as a staff artist for the Chicago Defender newspaper. His work was also published in the Norfolk Journal and Guide and the Louisville Defender.
Whyte made national news again during World War II for a mural he painted while stationed at Camp Wolters (now Fort Walters) in Minerals Wells, Texas. Titled “In Training” the 6’ x 16’ work depicted warfare training regiments of soldiers at the base. He was also cartoonist for the Camp Wolters Bugle, a newspaper for black soldiers.
After World War II, Whyte continued working for the Chicago Defender where he wrote and illustrated a civil rights satire comic strip called “Mr. Jim Crow.” One of the first of its kind, the lead character was a racist Southern politician who literally looked like a crow, complete with a beak. In a 1974 interview, Whyte said that he wanted to express the “ineptitude” of “social and racial segregation.” The comic strip ran from 1946 – 1951 during the pioneering age of African American cartoonists. His contemporaries at the Defender included staff artist Jack Chancellor, and Zelda “Jackie” Ormes the first Black female cartoonist.
In 1948, Whyte’s fame as an artist grew when a chalk talk with Jack Chancellor was filmed for the “All American News.”
Being the first newsreel series exclusively for African Americans, Whyte and Chancellor were said to have been the first Black cartoonists shown on the big screen. While some film archives have preserved dozens of these newsreels, the edition with Whyte is not known to exist today.
Whyte remained active in the Chicago’s art community for decades. His style of art was a contemporary abstract style, with “religiously oriented” and “symbolic and impressionistic” themes. His art work was featured in many exhibitions with some of the greatest black artists of the 20th century like Augusta Savage and Charles White, and at collections and exhibitions for Purdue University, the University of Illinois, Northwestern University, and Garrett Theological Seminary. He also taught art in the Chicago Public Schools from 1956 to 1972, and was a professor of art in the Chicago City College System (City Colleges of Chicago).
Whyte was also head of the art department at Chicago’s Kennedy-King College, and taught art seminars at the Southside Community Arts Center. He retired in 1980, and little is known about the last 20 years of his life. He passed away in Beaufort, South Carolina in 2000 at the age of 86. Garret White was inducted in the Notable Kentucky African Americans Database.
Current A&T faculty, staff, and students have access to Whyte’s comic strips, images of his student murals, and other historical achievements through the “Black Studies Center” and “ProQuest Chicago Defender Newspapers” databases via the F. D. Bluford Library’s homepage. Everyone, including alumni, and friends of A&T can view Garrett Whyte’s student editorials and his Aggie comic panels and yearbook art through our Digital Collections. If you have more information about this story, or would like to know more about A&T history please contact us at libraryarchvies@ncat.edu.
