It is unknown whether young George Herriman accompanied his parents to the historic Café de la Monde coffee stand, which opened in the New Orleans French Market in 1862, 18 years before Herriman was born. Establish. What's certain, though, is that the restaurant's signature café au lait will become one of Herriman's favorite metaphors for describing the complexities of racial and social identity.

Growing up in a mixed-race family in 1880s New Orleans, young Herriman would experience the very real consequences of having an identity that changed legally and culturally over the years. Whether called "Creoles," "free men of color," "mulattoes," or "negroes," Herrimans understood that each new name meant the disappearance of hard-won rights. So it's perhaps not surprising that as a cartoonist Herriman explored the changing nature of reality, creating desert backgrounds that moved from panel to panel and creating a protagonist who often changed color and gender.

Herriman uses many clever visual metaphors to convey these ideas. Katie's curved tail may represent hair, which is often considered a sign of a person's race. A beauty salon may be visited to lighten skin tone, demonstrating how tints of color may mean greater or lesser value. But it is in a series of essays about coffee that Herriman finds one of his most ingenious ways of discussing meaning and identity. In a 1919 "Klezkat" cartoon, Klezka asks why it's called a café when the coffee has milk. "When I put my foot in my shoe, don't my shoe stand still?" Krezy asked. In a 1931 article, Ignatz Mouse serves a customer and asks Krazy, who is working in the kitchen, for a cup of black coffee, which may be read as a subtle comment on the passing of race. Klez put it through the window. Ignatz frowned and said, "Hey, it's not black coffee!" Of course," Klezy replied. "Look at the milk.

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