Aaron McGruder

He is a big-time dog lover and has three dogs, Remix, Retro, and Hooligan.

Aaron McGruder was born in Chicago, Illinois, on May 29, 1974, to Bill McGruder and his wife Elaine. He has one elder brother, Dedric. His family is multiracial.

His father, a communications expert, took up a job with the National Transportation Safety Board in Columbia when Aaron was six years old. Thus the family relocated to Columbia where they finally settled.

The family lived in a predominantly white neighborhood, and the young brothers received a normal upbringing, filled with movies, video games, and rap music. Aaron was sent to a Jesuit school with highly restrictive rules. Even though he initially felt repressed, he later stated that the regressive atmosphere of the school compelled him to express his frustrations in a creative way.

Eventually he was shifted to a predominantly black high school where he became increasingly aware about the racial inequality in his country and became associated with groups that encouraged the black youth to challenge the status quo and bring about reform.

His interest in the African-American culture led him to pursue a degree in Afro-American studies from the University of Maryland. It was here that he began his work on the comic strip ‘The Boondocks’ at the Presentation Graphics Lab on campus. The strip was run in the university’s newspaper, ‘The Diamondback’ under its then-editor, Jayson Blair.

Aaron McGruder’s ‘The Boondocks’ was a satirical take on the Afro-American culture and American politics. While his brash, unapologetic and politically incorrect language intrigued and delighted many readers, it also alienated him from a few. Following a misunderstanding with Jayson Blair, McGruder removed his strip from the college newspaper.

The popular strip was later printed in the monthly hip hop magazine, ‘The Source.’ Even though it did not appear in the magazine for long, McGruder’s association with ‘The Source’ led to a chance meeting with Harriet Choice of Universal Press Syndicate at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention.

Choice was highly impressed with the young man’s comic strip and offered McGruder a lucrative deal. Their association proved to be very fruitful and within a few years, the comic started appearing in hundreds of newspapers.

By 1998, ‘The Boondocks’ was running in 160 newspapers. In February 1999, it was appearing in 195 newspapers. The figures continued to rise steadily and as of 2005, the strip was running in 250 newspapers.

The comic strip offered a satirized commentary on African-American culture and American politics, as seen through the eyes of a ten-year-old black boy, Huey and his brother Riley. The strip was humorous, with heavy doses of political content and commentary about issues like interracial marriages, racism, modern black culture, and class-divide in the United States.

Aaron McGruder is best known as the creator of the comic strip ‘The Boondocks.’ The series debuted in 1996 on Hitlist.com, an early online music website, and was also printed in the magazine ‘The Source’ before being picked up by the Universal Press Syndicate. The strip which satirizes African-American culture proved to be a highly popular one, though also controversial at times.

The television series, ‘The Boondocks’, based on the comic strip was also a huge success. McGruder created the series and co-wrote some of the episodes. The series premiered in November 2005 on Cartoon Network's late-night programming block, Adult Swim and ran until June 2014. McGruder, however, was not involved with the production of the fourth and final season of the sitcom.