Earlham College | News from Public Affairs

The Artist and Lecture Series presents Aaron McGruder as the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Keynote Speaker. The creator of The Boondocks will address "Negrology: The State of the Black America" on Monday, Jan. 19, at 7 p.m. in Goddard Auditorium.

RICHMOND, Ind. — Satirist Aaron McGruder is the keynote speaker during Earlham College's Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration on Monday, Jan. 19.

McGruder's talk is entitled "Negrology: The State of the Black America" and begins at 7 p.m. in Carpenter Hall's Goddard Auditorium. Tickets for the event, which is part of the Artist and Lecture Series, are $5 for adults and $3 for students and seniors. Tickets are available at the Runyan Center Desk.

McGruder is the controversial creator of The Boondocks, which launched in 150 newspapers in 1999 as a cartoon strip about two brothers who left inner city Chicago to live with their granddad in the suburbs. The comic strip grew in popularity and in November of 2005 The Boondocks, an animated television series with the same name, premiered on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. The series is in its third season of production.

Both the comic strip and animated series offer brash satire of race relations, stereotypes and American culture through the characters of Huey, a 10-year-old leftist revolutionary, his 8-year-old gangster-wannabe brother Riley, and the grumpy and tired Granddad.

"McGruder talks about black America today," says Lynn Knight, Earlham's Director of Events Coordination. "To mark the holiday in past years we've had a speaker with a stronger connection to the Civil Rights Movement, but McGruder talks about the history of moving forward today. Students have been requesting him for several years."

Indeed, Leslie-Ann James, a senior politics major from Greencastle, Ind., says she is a huge fan. James is a student representative on Earlham's Black History Month Committee.

"I am so excited about McGruder coming that I have been counting down the days to his arrival," James says. "I love the Boondocks comics and cartoons because I believe that he effectively addresses issues in not only the black community but also America at large. I believe that he speaks to everyone from young to old, black to white and many other groups."

Negrology is defined as "the science of exploring, understanding and demystifying all aspects of the American Negro," according to McGruder's press materials.

With Barack Obama as president and O.J. Simpson in jail, McGruder argues that there's no better time to study and understand the sometimes shocking truth about black Americans today.

In a controversial first-season episode entitled "Return of the King," McGruder portrays a revived Martin Luther King Jr. who is appalled by the state of black America today. When King tries to explain his non-violent ideal of turning the other cheek, he is termed a traitor.

The day after the episode aired, McGruder defended the show during a Nightline interview by explaining that if King were alive today he would be disappointed with the apathy and inactivity he would encounter. McGruder went so far as to say that King's philosophy and even his character would not work in a modern context.

James says the episode highlighted McGruder's creativity and insight. She says it caused her to really think about King and what he would think about the progress of racial equality and the state of black people today in the United States.

McGruder was born in 1974 in Chicago and at age 6 moved to Columbia, Maryland, a path similar to Huey and Riley's move to the suburbs. He graduated from the University of Maryland and is the co-author of Birth of a Nation.

The talk is sponsored by the Earlham Program Board, the Artist and Lecture Series Endowment Fund and the Holiday Inn of Richmond.

Contact:
Mark Blackmon, director of media relations
765/983-1256 — E-Mail Mark