Jackie Ormes: Google Doodle celebrates the first African-American woman cartoonist and activist

Google celebrates the first African-American woman cartoonist and activist Jackie Ormes with an animated slideshow doodle on September 1, 2020.

Who was Jackie Ormes?

Jackie Ormes was born Zelda Mavin Jackson on August 1, 1911, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was known as the first and only Black female newspaper cartoonist of her time in the US and maker of the Torchy Brown comic strip and the Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger panel.

Jackie Ormes graduated from secondary school in Monongahela in 1930. Ormes drew and wrote all through secondary school. She was arts editor for the 1929-1930 Monongahela High School Yearbook where her soonest endeavors as a cartoonist can be found in the lively caricatures of her school’s students and teachers.

It was during this period that Jackie Ormes composed a letter to the editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, a weekly African-American newspaper that was published on Saturdays. The then-editor, Robert Vann, composed back. This correspondence prompted her first writing assignment- covering a boxing match. Her coverage of future matches led her to become a devoted devotee of the sport.

Jackie Ormes’ first comic strip, Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem, first showed up in the Pittsburgh Courier on May 1, 1937. It was through Torchy Brown that Ormes became the first African-American woman to create a nationally seeming comic strip. The strip would run until April 30, 1938. The purpose behind the strip’s unexpected end is unsure, however it is dared to be because of an end in her agreement.

Jackie Ormes moved to Chicago in 1942 and soon started writing occasional articles and, quickly, a social column for The Chicago Defender, one of the country’s leading black newspapers, a weekly at that time.

By August 1945, Jackie Ormes’ work was back in the Courier, with the approach of Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger, a single-panel cartoon that ran for 11 years. It included a big sister-little sister set-up, with the bright, keen, and socially/politically-aware child as the only speaker and the lovely grown-up woman as an at some point pin-up figure and fashion mannequin. The strip ran from September 1, 1945, to September 22, 1956. Torchy presented a picture of a black woman who, rather than the contemporary stereotypical media depictions, was intelligent, confident, and brave.

What makes Jackie Ormes so phenomenal is that in addition to the fact that she broke past the expected roles as a woman and as an African American in the 20th century, however, she did as such with the rich content of her work. Her courageous women, similar to the famous Torchy Brown, Candy, and Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger, all ignored the grievous, though expected, stereotypical look and activities of a black woman in media (fat, slow, idiotic, ungraceful, and so on).

In every aspect of her life the cartoonist was engaged with humanitarian causes, and her passion for left-wing ideologies post-World War II even prompted an examination by the FBI.

Jackie Ormes retired from cartooning in 1956, even though she kept on making art, including murals, still lifes and pictures until rheumatoid arthritis made this impossible. Jackie Ormes made a character that could step into a world that was illegal to her.

Google Doodle Celebrating Jackie Ormes

On September 1, 2020, Google slideshow Doodle, delineated by Philadelphia-based visitor artist Liz Montague, praises Jackie Ormes to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the first publication of the comic strip Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger.

On 1 September 1945, Jackie Ormes’ historic single panel “Patty-Jo ‘n’ Ginger” appeared in the Pittsburgh Courier, acquainting the world with the smart and fashionable Ginger and her intelligent 6-year-old sister Patty-Jo. Each slide of the present Google Doodle gives a brief look into phases of Ormes’ life, from her beginnings as a self-trained artist to a powerhouse cartoonist and humorist whose work keeps on inspiring.