Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Meet Jackie Ormes....First Black Woman Cartoonist

 


Ormes was born August 1, 1911 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to parents William Winfield Jackson and Mary Brown Jackson. Mary was a housewife who became a single parent when her spouse passed away from motor car mishap in 1917. Jackie and her sibling, Delores Jackson, were briefly raised by their auntie and uncle as an outcome. Eventually, Jackie'' s mom remarried and the household moved to the nearby city of Monongahela. Ormes drew and wrote throughout high school. She was arts editor for the 1929–-- 1930 Monongahela High School Yearbook where her earliest efforts as a cartoonist can be seen in the lively caricatures of her school' s students and teachers. After high school, Ormes acquired her first task as a proofreader for the Pittsburgh Carrier in 1930. Ormes likewise finished freelance pieces on police beats, court cases, and human interest topics. Eventually she began to produce comics for the newspaper and established her career as a cartoonist. While she delighted in "" a terrific profession running around town, looking into everything the law would permit, and blogging about it," "what she truly desired to do was draw. Her first cartoon, Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem ran for 12 months in between 1937 and 1938. Ormes moved to Chicago in 1942. She quickly began writing periodic articles and, briefly, a social column for The Chicago Protector, among the nation'' s leading black newspapers, a weekly at that time. For a couple of months at the end of the war, her single panel cartoon, Candy, about an attractive and wisecracking housemaid, appeared in the Defender; the panel ranged from March 24 to July 21, 1945. In 1946, Ormes created the cartoon Patty Jo 'n' Ginger which ran for 11 years. This was among her most prominent comic strips.


The popularity of the cartoon caused the production of  Patty Jo doll in 1947, the first African American doll based upon a comic character. With functions painted on by the cartoonist herself, the doll is now an extremely treasured item for collectors.

Zelda Jackie Ormes died in Salem, Ohio on December 26, 1985 at the age of 74. For more in depth info on Jackie, go to the side bar of this websites and tap on her picture.

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