Jackie Ormes: The First African American Woman Cartoonist (review)

Jackie Ormes: the First African American Woman Cartoonist is a fascinating story about a trailblazing, multi-talented artist. Author Nancy Goldstein first encountered Jackie Ormes's remarkable story while researching the Patty-Jo Doll inspired by the cartoonist's popular cartoon series, Patty-Jo 'n' Ginger.

Ormes's career as a cartoonist began in 1937 with the character Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem, which ran in the Pittsburgh Carrier for one year. Torchy Brown, a teenager from Mississippi, became a successful nightclub entertainer at the famed Cotton Club in New York. In 1945 the single panel cartoon entitled Candy ran for four months in the Chicago Defender. It featured a young, beautiful, and articulate housemaid known for her outspoken verbal jabs on a variety of social issues during the World War II era. Patty-Jo 'n' Ginger was Ormes's longest running cartoon. She produced about five hundred Patty-Jo cartoons that were featured in the Pittsburgh Courier from 1945 until 1956. Torchy in Heartbeats was Ormes's final comic strip. Her story of a mature self-confident black woman who sought true love but at the same time led the purposeful life of an activist and community leader concerned with environmental and racial issues, ran in the Pittsburgh Courier from 1950 until 1954.

How did Jackie Ormes manage a professional career as a cartoonist when such opportunities for women, black or white, were extremely rare? Goldstein situates Ormes within a specific urban history and cultural context; the world of elite, middle class black Chicago during the pre-Civil rights era. The author shows how Ormes's roots in a small, hard working middle class rural community in Pennsylvania, encouraged ambition. When Earl and Jackie Ormes migrated to Bronzeville in 1942 they were ready to seize upon the opportunities, diversity, and ideas vital city life in Chicago offered. While her husband managed an upscale hotel for African Americans, Jackie drew upon her talent, beauty, and social connections to create a popular, visual form of cultural expression that served as a critical voice for a mostly African-American audience.

The high quality of Ormes work is evident in the large sampling of comic strips and cartoons Goldstein rediscovered. Her detailed, finely drawn figures, objects, and settings showcase interesting storylines defined by glamour, intelligence, and style. Influenced by race, gender, and class, Ormes drew upon black women's beauty practice and imagery to create characters that articulated self-pride and modernity. She rejected caricatures and rarely used famous people. She spoke 'truth to power' through everyday people and circumstances her readers recognized.

Goldstein's book is a preliminary study. The author admits that the lack of scholarly articles and personal letters or papers limited her investigation. However this is still a significant book on an important American cultural expression, and rarer still, the first African-American woman cartoonist. Further research of Jackie Ormes prodigious output awaits comics scholars, art historians, American studies, feminists, and social historians.