How did "The Jones Family" reflect the reality of black life in urban American during the 1930s?
What will be an ideal response?
Ideal Answer: The ideal answer should:
1. Explain that this comic strip, drawn by an editorial cartoonist named Branford, centered on the young Jones boy's search for the "good life" of money, success, love, and a happy marriage. But at every turn he confronts a harsh reality. Unable to get a job because of the Depression, he becomes an outlaw and narrowly escapes jail. Constantly "on the run" from oppression, his only consolations are his family and his beautiful, ever-faithful girlfriend.
2. Point out that "The Jones Family" illuminates the gray areas that most African Americans, regardless of their class, faced when attempting to live rational, coherent lives in the northern cities. Although they cherished middle-class values, they often had to live with poverty, crime, and racial oppression.
3. Conclude that the black comic strips sought to provide entertaining, nonjudgmental prescriptions and blueprints for middle-class life, but to more cynical and alienated black people they seemed to be promoting unattainable values and lifestyles.
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