This came up after talking with a friend recently. I commented that, with my relative lack of knowledge of comics, I didn't think I had seen any minority superheroes in comics until I saw the Justice League cartoon on Boomerang and realized they had a new Green Lantern (John Stewart). My understanding is there are more minorities in comics than when I was growing up and got to read the odd comic book or two, but when I look at posters for DC and Marvel, most of the characters seem to still be Caucasian.
When and who was the first minority superhero in the two big comic lines (Marvel and DC) in the U.S.?
Note: My intent here was to look at larger US publishing groups, such as Marvel and DC, who were in a situation where they could, for years, publish stories about people within one group (in this case Caucasian and mostly males). With that group in mind, my thought was, "When did they start to make changes and open up to different groups and move past designing all their characters to appeal to one group." That's why I wasn't looking at independent publishers, or cases where a small publisher was publishing within a minority group.