Golden Legacy was the umbrella title for a line of educational Black history comic books published by Fitzgerald Publishing Co. from 1966 to 1976. Golden Legacy published comic book biographies of such notable figures as Toussaint Louverture, Harriet Tubman, Crispus Attucks, Benjamin Banneker, Matthew Henson, Alexandre Dumas, Frederick Douglass, Robert Smalls, Joseph Cinqué, Walter F. White, Roy Wilkins, Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King Jr., Alexander Pushkin, Lewis Howard Latimer, and Granville Woods.

After acquiring corporate sponsorship from Coca-Cola Company and a number of other prominent corporations, Golden Legacy published a total of nine million copies of its 16 32-page full-color volumes, distributing many of them to schools, libraries, churches, and civil rights organizations.

Golden Legacy was the brainchild of African American accountant Bertram Fitzgerald, who also wrote seven of the volumes. Many of the other contributors to the Golden Legacy series were also Black, including Joan Bacchus and Tom Feelings. Other notable contributors included Don Perlin and Tony Tallarico.

Bertram A. Fitzgerald, Jr. (b. November 6, 1932, in Harlem, New York; died January 10, 2017, in New York City) became interested in Black history thanks to his seventh-grade history teacher, who made sure to highlight the contributions of Blacks in various fields. Fitzgerald read Classics Illustrated comic books as a child, but was frustrated to see the African American experience either negatively stereotyped or omitted in their pages.

After serving in the U.S. Air Force, he eventually graduated from Brooklyn College in 1956 with a degree in accounting. By the mid-1960s, at that point employed by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, Fitzgerald decided to create a line of nonfiction comic books to inspire and educate his fellow African Americans.

Fitzgerald's goal was to help "develop greater pride and self-esteem in Black youngsters and adults." Fitzgerald felt that whites were also harmed by the omission of Blacks in the history books. As he said, "It encourages them to think that they made every worthwhile contribution to society, and it misleads them to believe that they are somehow superior."

Contacting former Air Force colleague Leo Carty, Fitzgerald commissioned Carty to write and illustrate a comic book story about Toussaint Louverture and the birth of Haiti. After some difficulty finding a printer willing to print color comics on Black history, Fitzgerald now had to find distribution. Shut out of the traditional newsstand distribution system due to the focus on Black history, Fitzgerald hooked up with a group of independent distributors called "commission men", who supplied the Black community with specialized beauty products and books. The result was the first volume of the Golden Legacy Illustrated History Magazine, published in 1966.

Joan Maynard (as Joan Bacchus), became an early contributor to Golden Legacy. She worked with cartoonist Tom Feelings on the Saga of Harriet Tubman volume (issue #2; 1966). (She later also wrote and pencilled issues about Matthew Henson [issue #5; 1969] and Joseph Cinqué and La Amistad mutiny [issue #10; 1970].)