Sanders, Bill

Bill Sanders (1930- ) is an American editorial cartoonist.

Bill Sanders was born in 1930 in Springfield, Tennessee. While attending Western Kentucky University (then Western Kentucky State College), he set a NCAA football record as a quarterback. He also received a B.A. in English while minoring in art under the direction of a watercolor artist. Sanders was pursued by the Cleveland Browns but Sanders was drafted from the Army ROTC into the Army where he was a lieutenant in the Korean War and also in Japan. While in the military he contributed to the Pacific version of Stars and Stripes .

Following the war, Sanders sought a position at the Greensboro Daily News and became a sports writer-cartoonist for the paper in 1959. Sanders also started his own syndicate and while working for the Daily News, his cartoons were reprinted in several papers in North Carolina, Georgia and Japan. Having grown up and worked in the South, Sanders had been influenced by civil rights issues and his liberal treatment of civil rights issues prompted heated debates about his cartoons.

In 1963, Sanders moved to the Kansas City Star and in 1967 he became the editorial cartoonist at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel which he retired from in 1991. During this time, Sanders’ work was also syndicated by the King Features Syndicate and appeared in over 200 publications.

Sanders received several awards including Kansas City Civil Liberties Achievement Award, the International Salon of Cartoons Award, the National Headliners Award (1975) and the Wisconsin Civil Liberties Special Award. In 2002, Western Kentucky University formally exhibited his work at a show titled "Bill "Whitey" Sanders: Comic Opera". His cartoons have appeared in the collection: Getting Angry Six Times a Week: a Portfolio of Political Cartoons: 14 major cartoonists and he has published books of entirely his own cartoons: Run for the oval room: they can't corner us there (1974) and Adventures in Whopperland : a collection of political cartoons, written opinions and essay s (2006) .

In retirement, Sanders continues to submit cartoons to his local paper, the Fort Myers New Press, and publishes them online along with some of his writings through his blog.

From the guide to the Bill Sanders Cartoons., 1963-1967., (Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries)