“The first black superhero was the Black P…“
“The Black Phantom, yes. Published in 1964.”
The fans were sometimes ahead of the pros in comics — the Black Phantom being a case in point. Unconstrained by the commercial pressures that affected comic book publishers, fan artists were free to let superheroes fight the real evils abroad in the era, regardless of political fallout, if they so chose.
Published two years before Marvel’s groundbreaking Afrofuturist Black Panther in the fanzine Mask and Cape 4, the Black Phantom was the creation of writer Steve Perrin and artist Ronn Foss.
“Ronn Foss was one of the main figures in the comix fan scene of the 1960s,” noted Kristopher Mosby. “He got his interest in comics at high school in Fort Wayne, Ind., where he was best friends with Richard ‘Grass’ Green. He assumed editorship of the popular fanzine Alter Ego from its founder Jerry Bails.”
As with the Scarlet Pimpernel and Zorro, superheroes make the most sense when they are justice figures who must disguise their identities in order to protect the powerless from the powerful in a corrupt, exploitative society. That worked in favor of the Black Phantom and the Wraith.
“The Black Phantom was Lafayette Jefferson, an engineer and soldier who worked with the NAACP to address racial injustice in the southern United States,” noted the Afrosoul Chronicles. “While traveling, he meets a young white man and orphan named Joey Trager. Together, they become the Black Phantom and the Wraith to battle the likes of the Ku Klux Klan and other opponents of tolerance and change.”
Perrin introduces his Dark Defenders by citing a litany of slurs against blacks, Jews, Italians, Asians, Mexicans and Catholics, then explaining, “These are words from the vocabulary of haters. The people who must degrade their fellow men because they fear them. For too long, society has tolerated and even supported these blights upon the stanchion of mankind, and now the victims are rising. Among these insurgents in a rightful cause are a masked man and a boy who prowl the night, fighting terror with terror.”
“That was the first appearance of my Black Phantom character, with illustrations by Ronn Foss, who then went on to do a fully illustrated version for Bill Spicer’s Fantasy Illustrated,” Perrin recalled. “I am told that Black Phantom was the first black comic superhero, predating the first appearance of the Black Panther by several months. Several years later, Mike Friedrich asked me what my black friends thought of the story. I had to reply that, at the time, I had no black friends. It was mostly informed by my reading of current events and the desire to create a ‘relevant’ Batman-like character.”
“And I think I came up with the costume before I came up with the character,” Perrin told Alter Ego. “I drew a guy with a full face mask, and thought, ‘Wait a minute, a full face mask would work great with a costumed hero who was actually a black man. Great!’ It went on from there. Freedom Riders, busses…. Okay, yeah. That’s cool.’”
Civil rights issues dominated the news then. On June 11, 1963, Alabama Gov. George Wallace stood in a doorway at the University of Alabama to block two black students from registering.
On Aug. 28, 1963, 250,000 people joined in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom to hear Martin Luther King deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech.
On Sept. 15, 1963, four young girls were killed, and several other people were hurt, in a bomb blast prior to Sunday services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. Four members of a local Ku Klux Klan chapter had planted 19 sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device beneath the steps located on the east side of the church.
And on July 2, 1964, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, preventing employment discrimination because of race, color, sex, religion or national origin.
Meanwhile, while conversing with cross-country bus driver Lafe Jefferson, young Joey Trager notices when the driver suddenly drops his accent. Jefferson explains that he is in fact a university-trained engineer and Vietnam combat veteran who couldn’t land a job in his field.
“Everywhere I went, I got the same thing,” Jefferson says. “I was ‘too old’ or ‘too young’ or ‘wrong references’ or ‘wasn’t compatible.’ Every reason in the book except the real one.”
So Jefferson took the job as a bus driver, working with the NAACP on his time off. Finding they are both idealists, Lafe and Joey hit it off and decide to travel to New Beauregard, Ala., where a white-robed gang is terrorizing black people.
Jefferson’s “Clark Kent” disguise is to feign subservience before the armed bigots they find there. “Yessuh, we’ll be goin’ on. Thank you, suh,” he says to a cop who throws racial slurs at him, and throws him out of town.
“I learned long ago that as long as a white man thinks you’re following orders, he’ll ignore you,” Jefferson explains to his new friend.
Finding the town under siege by the Brothers of the Flaming Cross, a terrorist group backed by the police, Lafe reveals to Joey “…the fruits of my labors in engineering” — mystery man costumes complete with special high-tech handguns that fire acid, tear gas, water, smoke and an entangling plastic rope of tremendous strength.
“Also, our capes will absorb light rays with absolutely no reflection to mark us,” Lafe says. “This allows us to literally disappear into any shadows we run across.”
“Just who are we supposed to be in these getups — a revival of Captain Marvel Senior and Junior?” Joey asks.
“We’ll be travelers by night, striking and fading away like ghosts,” replies Lafe. “So I’m calling myself the Black Phantom. As for you, how does the Wraith strike you?”
“It strikes me that the Black Phantom and Wraith are going to have these hate mongers hiding under those sheets.”
In fact, although the Dark Defenders are able to mop up and intimidate the terrorist gang, Lafe recognizes their victory as equivocal.
“Black Phantom didn’t win anything,” he thinks. “He just joined the fight. This is going to be a struggle that will take the rest of my life, and probably Joe’s too, if he still wants to stick it out.”
“Sadly, this is the one and only Black Phantom comic book appearance,” Mosby wrote: “Although Mr. Perrin did write a follow-up story, ‘Death Trap in Harlem,’ it didn’t see the light of day.”
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