Aaron McGruder - Life

Life

Aaron McGruder was born in Chicago, Illinois. When McGruder's father accepted a job with the National Transportation Safety Board, McGruder moved to Columbia, Maryland at age six with his parents and his older brother. He attended a Jesuit school from grades seven to nine, followed by public high school at Oakland Mills High School and the University of Maryland, from which he graduated with a degree in African American Studies. The Boondocks debuted in the campus newspaper, The Diamondback, in late 1997, under its then-editor, Jayson Blair. McGruder created the comic while working at the Presentation Graphics Lab on campus. At the time, he was also a DJ on the "Soul Controllers Mix Show" on WMUC.

McGruder currently lives in Los Angeles, California, where his projects include the Boondocks animated series and the Super Deluxe variety comedy series, The Super Rumble Mix Show. He is the author of five Boondocks collections: All The Rage, Public Enemy #2, A Right To Be Hostile, Fresh for '01: You Suckaz, and Boondocks: Because I Know You Don't Read The Newspaper. McGruder is also the co-author, with Reginald Hudlin, of a 2004 graphic novel, Birth of a Nation: A Comic Novel, drawn by cartoonist Kyle Baker, and a frequent public speaker on political and cultural issues.

He recently worked as screenwriter in the final treatment of the film Red Tails. With George Lucas as executive producer, the story is based on the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of African American combat pilots during World War II.