Archie and Veronica

The following poem of mine was published on riehlife.com:

Sparta, Illinois
1963

Like half the town
I work at “The Comic Book,”
where white men adjust
printing presses and bindery machines
that spew white heroes
Superman,
Archie,
Casper the Friendly Ghost,
while blacks wield brooms, load freight cars.

Six months pregnant
with our first child,
Marian walks to the plant,
our tiny black poodle,
Voodoo, on a leash.
As we stroll home for lunch,
she tells me the dog bit her hard.
We chat about baby names.

Later, I go to Rotary.
The minister sitting next to me says:
You’re the first Jew I’ve ever talked to.

I prefaced the poem on the site with the following:

We lived and worked in Sparta from 1962-1964. It was a tipping point in the transition of this town/area from segregation toward integration in jobs and where you could live. While the printing plant put out magazines and comic books for urban center consumption, the town was southern-Illinois rural.

In an “art imitates life imitates art” moment, the movie In the Heat of the Night was filmed there in 1966 and had a real impact on the community. Originally set in Mississippi, the IMDB database states: “Mississippi was eventually ruled out as a location due to the existing political conditions. Sparta, Illinois, was selected as the location, and the town's name in the story was changed to Sparta so that local signs would not need to be changed.”

This led to African-American mid-level managers. One of their sons became the first African-American physician in town (and was taken as a partner by a while physician). It was not until 1971 for there to be an African-American hero in a comic book.

Today, our son sent me this link about Archie and Veronica. So it took from the dawn of comic books until 1971 to have an African-American hero and, I guess, until 2010 to have a gay regular character.