The Boondocks (comic strip)
American comic strip (1996–2006)
The Boondocks was a daily syndicated comic strip written and originally drawn by Aaron McGruder that ran from 1996 to 2006. Created by McGruder in 1996 for Hitlist.com, an early online music website, it was printed in the monthly hip hop magazine The Source in 1997. As it gained popularity, the comic strip was picked up by the Universal Press Syndicate and made its national debut on April 19, 1999. A popular and controversial strip, The Boondocks satirizes African-American culture and American politics as seen through the eyes of young African American radical Huey Freeman. McGruder's syndicate said it was among the biggest launches the company ever had.
Publication history
The strip debuted on Hitlist.com on February 8, 1996. It later appeared in the University of Maryland newspaper The Diamondback under editor-in-chief Jayson Blair on December 3, 1996, paying McGruder $30 per strip—$17 more than other cartoonists. McGruder ended the strip's run in The Diamondback on March 18, 1997, two weeks after the strip was omitted due to a technical error and a Diamondback staffer printed the word "OOPS" in its place without an explanation. He pulled the strip after the paper refused to run an apology. (Upon the revelation in 2004 of news article fabrications by Blair, by then a reporter for The New York Times, McGruder's comic strip joined others in lampooning Blair.)
The strip was rejected by six syndicates — including the Washington Post Writers Group, Creators Syndicate, United Media, and Chronicle Features — before finally being picked up.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q562294. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996, 2006, 1997 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Boondocks (comic strip)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.