Superman, famously, fought the Klan (on radio). Tons of Golden Age comic heroes fought the Commies, the Nazis, the Japs & assorted evil aliens. Did any other (besides Superman) Golden Age comic heroes do anything to engage and fight the pervasive racism in the US, in comics published before 1965?
There were little one-page vignettes in DC comics extolling brotherhood in the eary 1960s. I clearly recall one with a cartoony version of Bob Hope (!) doing this (Bob Hope, like Jerry Lewis, had a comic book named after him, featuring a highly stylized version of himself in comic adventures). There were probably ones with superheroes as well, but I can’t recall any of them right now.
i also recall a Batman story pre-1965 in which he trains detectives from several ethnic backgrounds (it’s the story that revealed the “chemical bath” origin of the Joker, later sorta adapted for the first Tim Burton film, and by Alan Moore in “The Killing Joke”)
There were a lot of things like that, showing that you should accept people of different color and different background, which is “fighting racism”, although not as flashily as taking on the KKK. They got flashier around 1969, when Green Lantern started teaming up with Green Arrow and they started doing explicitly anti-racist stories.
(By the way – Starting in about 1957 and going into the 1970s is pretty clearly the Silver Age.)
One interesting (although not superhero) case in the mid 1960s is in the underappreciated Catholic Comic Treasure Chest of Fun and Fiction, which featured a story entitled “Pettigrew for President”, and followed a couple of easy-to-identify kids as they helped out in the campaign of a candidate named Pettigrew, who had some very serious and determined enemies working against them. You didn’t see Pettigrew until the last triumphant panel, where he’s declared winner of the election.
Pettigrew was black.
Well, Namor fought to earn respect for sea-people.
I’d argue it started with the October 1956 issue of Showcase (#4) and the first appearance of the Barry Allen version of The Flash.
The EC comics often had stories attacking racism, with racists getting their just desserts. But no superheroes, of course.
I’d also argue that The Spirit was attempting to be antiracist in its portrayal of Ebony White. The portrayal varied, and some episodes degenerated into stereotype (and the drawing was defintely so), but Ebony was often shown as a loyal friend of the Spirit, who usually treated him as human being.
This guy might be considered heroic.
Indians were often treated well in comics (although some portrayals were as casually stereotypical as in an other media). E.g., Batman’s Sunday newspaper strips regularly took him out of Gotham City and around the U.S. (This allowed the strip to be promoted and sold to more newspapers, especially during the war when all papers were cutting pages to save newsprint. Also gave the artists some new backdrops.) I remember one in which evil ranchers were trying to take advantage of the Indians, whose aid Batman and Robin come to.
That’s fascinating, I never even knew that story existed.
I’d seen the dramatic final panel before and knew some vague details, but until now never knew what the larger story was about. Thanks for the link, Ky.
Wow. Good stuff. the linked story (.i.e linked after the comic book robot story) was fascinating too. All that censorship. Let’s hope we don’t go that way again.
You’re absolutely welcome. 
If you’ve got a spare hour or so, here’s the tag for all the EC stories up so far. Some really fascinating–and disturbing–stuff in there.
Wow. That’s some find. The story seems trite and heavy-handed in 2008, but obviously was pretty shocking and powerful back in the day. The comments on the back-story are intresting and scary. It’s like the country went through a giant psychic shift. I hope we don’t shift back.
Isn’t that an adaptation of a Ray Bradbury story?
(Not that it wasn’t still groundbreaking for a comic book to publish it.)
WARNING! I just got an “Adult Content” notice from my work filter by clicking on that link.
My God… Fredric Wertham was right!
The “adult” warning is on all the comics in that thread whether it applies or not. It’s utterly non-adult re anybody showing a square inch of skin. It’s completely around the “bend” of what you would expect to be addressed in that era re dealing with straight up transgender modification.
Batman and Robin gave some training to Batman Jones in the 1950s…
Right…I’m sure it’s no big deal…however, many of us visit the dope from work, and some workplaces have strict rules regarding content. I was just giving a heads up to anyone who might be in the same boat as I.
Wow. Were those robots being constructed out of recycled anvils?