Spencer T. Banks: Unsung Cartoonist and Cultural Leader

Step into the creative world of St. Louis artist Spencer T. Banks, a popular African American graphic designer and comic strip artist of the 1930s-1960s whose important legacy has been overlooked. The State Historical Society of Missouri Art Curator Joan Stack explores Banks’s early struggles and career as a freelance artist in St. Louis, Missouri, and his groundbreaking 1939 comic strip "Pokenia," an adventure cartoon featuring a stylish professional Black Woman as its hero. Stack also examines Banks’s comics created during his WWII service, as well as his post-war role in establishing the Black-owned “Veteran Sign and Art Shop” in St. Louis’s historic “The Ville.” This shop became a vital training ground for young Black artists in Missouri throughout the 1950s and 60s. Stack reflects on the bold imagery of Banks's self-produced posters of the 1970s and 1980s, which celebrated African American history and protested social injustices.