Liberia: A Tribute to Black Baby (Harrison C. Jidueh): From the Observer Family - FrontPageAfrica

Harrison C. Jidueh, popularly known as Black Baby, BB, or Blackie, emerged on the national scene as a cartoonist and social commentator, weaving stories of husband and wife drama, games of boys and girls in love play, and political schemes unfolding in the country during the military regime led by Head of State Samuel K. Doe. The platform was simple: the pages of the Daily Observer newspaper, published by the Liberian Observer Corporation since 1981, where he worked as Layout Editor before its closure in 1985.

By The Observer Family

Before becoming a part of the Daily Observer Family, he worked for the Curriculum Materials Center at the Ministry of Education as art illustrator for posters, textbooks and banners.

At Daily Observer, Black Baby provided graphic illustrations for news and feature articles, poems, and advertising materials.

In our office, he was the nerve center of production. He interacted directly with typesetters (Comfort Appia, Sam Van Kessely, Johnathan Neon) who typeset content and passed to the layout section for cut-and-paste into the pages of the newspaper dummy. Blackie would then liaise with the photography department (Sando Moore, Foley Siryon, Mozart Dennis, among others) to print photos that go with news items and feature articles with appropriate captions. Black Baby also demarcated slots for advertisement ready to run for that day.

Black Baby worked seamlessly with staff members from these departments without any break in the chain of production. He was among the first set of staff to arrive at the office in the morning and was among the last line editors to leave after dispatching the newspaper dummy to the printers.

Everybody in the office revolved around Blackie due to the nature of his work – Layout Editor, cartoonist, illustrator. He was approachable and passionate about his work. He would take instructions from any staff member to make changes in content or layout for quality assurance.

Black Baby was inspired to start a cartoon series called Dr. Owl, with short, witty captions full of humor, proverbs, and everyday happenings in the lives of Liberians prominently placed on the earpiece of the frontpage. Whether it was social commentary, political issues or scandals, Harrison was at his best to educate, inform and entertain the readers.

BB was also a great teacher who taught us how to design and lay out our special pages in the Daily Observer – Foreign News, Letters to the Editor, Poetry, Educational Matters, Religion and Sports. Some of us acquired this skill to produce newspapers and magazines after the closure of our office.

When Blackie and Sub-Editor Isaac Thompson (Rasta Ike) rented an apartment near our office, their home became our stomping ground for food but no “chilling” since both of them did not drink or smoke. Sometimes, some office workers would spend the night there when they could not get a ride home.  Here, the woman who became BB’s wife, Margaret, was very accommodative of our unannounced visits and sleep-overs.

Following the closure of the Daily Observer newspaper in 1985, half of the staff joined Black Baby to start the Daily Star newspaper and the other half joined Rufus Mammah Darpoh to start Sun Times newspaper. Those who could not be absorbed joined Footprints Today. At Daily Star, Black Baby exhibited the skills of a shrewd businessman and administrator. However, control of the paper was wrestled from him when the military government labeled his publication as another source of opposition to the presidential ambition of  then military ruler Samuel K. Doe.

His dual-volume voice, infectious smile and a generous heart, made him a great team-player in our office for which he will be greatly missed!

Rest in peace, Blackie!