Literature Review
Jackie Ormes: The First African American Woman Cartoonist chronicles the life of a multiply talented woman who became a successful cartoonist. Ormes’s cartoon characters–Torchy Brown, Candy, Patty-Jo, and Ginger–delighted readers of African American newspapers such as the Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier between 1937-56. This biography provides an invaluable glimpse into the history and culture of that era. As a member of Chicago’s black elite, Ormes’s social circle included leading political figures and entertainers of the day. People who knew her say that she modeled some cartoon characters after herself as beautifully dressed and coiffed females, appearing and speaking out in ways that defied stereotyped images of blacks in the mainstream press. Ormes’s politics, which fell decidedly to the left and were apparent to even a casual reader of her cartoons and comics, eventually led to her investigation by the FBI during the McCarthy era. In the late 1940s, Ormes (1911-85) transformed cartoon character Patty-Jo into a doll that is now a collector’s item.
The book presents one hundred and thirty one of Jackie Ormes’s cartoons and comic strips, some in color, some from original art work, and most digitally photographed from actual newspaper with only a few reproduced and restored from microfilm. Her topics include fashion, modern life, and human foibles, as well as racial injustice, foreign and domestic policy, educational equality, the atom bomb, and environmental pollution, among other pressing issues of those times, and indeed, of ours today.
Jackie Ormes is widely considered the first African American cartoonist in the United States. She created four comic strips, Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem (1937), Candy (1945), Patty Jo ‘n’ Ginger (1946), and Torchy Brown, Heartbeats (1950).
Ormes was born August 1, 1911 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to parents William Winfield Jackson and Mary Brown Jackson. Jackson owned and operated a printing business and was the proprietor of a movie theater. Mary was a homemaker who became a single parent when her husband died from motor vehicle accident in 1917. Jackie and her sister, Delores Jackson, were briefly raised by their aunt and uncle as a result.
Jackie Jackson married Earl Ormes in 1936. They lost their only child, Jacqueline, to a brain aneurysm at age 3. They remained married for 45 years until Earl’s death in 1976.
Zelda “Jackie” Ormes drawing Torchy Brown Courtesy Judie Milese Collection
The strip was called Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem, and it ran for a year. It chronicled the adventures of a Black heroine who moved to New York to become an entertainer at Harlem’s famous Cotton Club. The cartoon reflected the contemporary struggles of many African Americans who moved from the Jim Crow South to the urban north in search of social, economic, and political opportunities. In 1950, Ormes re-invented her Torchy character in a new comic strip, the full-color Torchy in Heartbeats. Ormes used this comic strip to advance her views on serious topics—alongside depictions of romance, adventure, and fashion, Torchy tackled timely issues such as violence against women and the impact of environmental racism.
https://kaygraham.nyhistory.org/interactive/stories/jackie-ormes-
Torchy Brown was made into a popular paper doll in 1947. Torchy Brown was made into a popular paper doll in 1947.
References:
https://kaygraham.nyhistory.org/interactive/stories/jackie-ormes-