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| - When cartoonist Morrie Turner began questioning why there were no minorities in the comic strips, his mentor, Charles M. Schulz of Peanuts fame, suggested he create one. Morris' first attempt, Dinky Fellas, featured an all-black cast, but found publication in only one newspaper, the Chicago Defender. Turner integrated the strip, renaming it Wee Pals, and on February 15, 1965, it became the first American syndicated comic strip to have a cast of diverse ethnicity.
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abstract
| - When cartoonist Morrie Turner began questioning why there were no minorities in the comic strips, his mentor, Charles M. Schulz of Peanuts fame, suggested he create one. Morris' first attempt, Dinky Fellas, featured an all-black cast, but found publication in only one newspaper, the Chicago Defender. Turner integrated the strip, renaming it Wee Pals, and on February 15, 1965, it became the first American syndicated comic strip to have a cast of diverse ethnicity. Initially syndicated by Lew Little Enterprises, it was then carried by the Register and Tribune Syndicate, before moving to United Feature Syndicate in the 1970s. When it debuted, the strip originally appeared in only five daily newspapers, as many papers refused to run a strip featuring black characters. After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the number of papers carrying the strip grew to 60; today it appears in over 100 dailies. By the early 1970s, Wee Pals was followed on a daily basis by nearly 25,000,000 readers. As the comic strip's popularity grew (in many ways also due to the Kid Power animated program [see below]), Turner added characters. He included children of more and more ethnicities, as well as a child with a physical disability. He also added a weekly section called "Soul Corner," which profiled notable African Americans from history. As of 2014, the strip is distributed by Creators Syndicate. Turner still wrote and drew the strips up until his death in early 2014.[citation needed]
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