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The comics have not been kind to African Americans.
Until very recently it was rare for comic strips or comic books to portray black characters as real human beings. Instead, most comic artists mocked African American characters as jungle creatures, or condescended to them as superstitious figures from minstrelsy, or—when feeling kindly—painted them as good servants. In this context, Roland Laird's Still I Rise is a rarity: it's a book-length graphic telling of African American history, from colonial days through Barack Obama's inauguration.

History is often a matter of perspective, but point of view is largely in the control of the politically and socially powerful. Reading “Still I Rise,” a graphic history of African Americans by Trentonians Roland Laird with his wife, Taneshia Nash Laird, the experience for at least this white reader was like a step into a different skin. The “facts,” if such things exist, were familiar, but their nuances were eye opening.

The Lairds and illustrator Bey have given us--all Americans--an enduring standard to meet, not merely as a teaching tool, but in sequential art storytelling.

Posro Media CEO Roland Laird appears on NBC Philadelphia's The 10! Show to talk about Still I Rise a Graphic History of African Americans. Click "Full Text" to see the video.

Black History People's Hugh Smith interviews Roland Laird (video)

I liked the book so much I'm going to propose that it become a necessary text for teaching African-American history at my school. It is the perfect compliment to any text. There is not an event in African -American history left unturned.

In the early 1990s Posro Komics was the only black-owned comic-book company in New Jersey. It published popular comics that addressed the reality of young inner-city blacks, and their star was on the rise.

Blogger Christy Lockstein reviews Still I Rise

Chicago Sun-Times includes Still I Rise in a round-up of notable new books.

One of the invaluable features of Still I Rise, the first cartoon history of black America, is the wealth of information it provides about the marginalized -- and often suppressed - political, economic and cultural contributions black people have made on this continent since the 17th C

Still I Rise is a graphical novel (aka “comic strip” style) structured around the history of America and the complex, interwoven African American contributions and sacrifices to its success and greatness.

Spreading open the front and back covers of Roland and Taneshia Laird's "Still I Rise" gives a sense of the cartoon history book's epic scope. On the left, a rebellious black slave holds a spear; next to him is the founder of a leading black church, the abolitionist Harriet Tubman and, over the book's spine, the country's first woman millionaire.

As we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the inauguration of the first black president, three new books focus on the African-American experience.