Doll with a Call: A Tribute to Jackie Ormes
Celebrating the seminal impact of the first African American woman cartoonist
Drawn to art
By the early 1900s, Pittsburgh had established itself as a manufacturing powerhouse brimming with economic opportunity for potential settlers. Living up to its nickname, The Gateway to the West, the city became an attractive destination for immigrants and African Americans seeking work in mills and factories.¹ While the prototype of a thriving metropolis was forming, a sweet black girl by the name of Zelda Mavin Jackson (a.k.a., Jackie Ormes), was drafting a prototype of her own.
From an early age, the Pittsburgh native would often draw indiscriminately on whatever surface was available, leveling every pencil she could reach in the process. ² As a teenager, Ormes’s work was featured regularly in her high school yearbook, often in the form of lively caricatures of students and teachers. ³ Sooner or later, these frivolous cartoons would evolve into a conscious but subtle artform, inspiring generations of black women to rethink their value in society. This is the story of the first African American woman cartoonist, Jackie Ormes.
Courier of opportunity
After high school, Ormes wasted no time pursuing her dream in cartooning. She understood early on that if she wanted to reach her ultimate destination of cartoons, she would likely need to make a pit stop at journalism. Ormes reached out to Robert Vann, editor of the premier African American newspaper in town at the time: The Pittsburgh Courier. Ensuing conversations led to her first writing assignment with the newspaper, in which she covered a boxing match, becoming a fan of the sport in the process.
With this experience, Ormes had carved a niche for herself as a capable proofreader for a newspaper with a respectable readership. While there, she would take on additional roles as editor and freelance writer, covering “everything the law would allow, and writing about it.” ³ However, despite her newfound success, Ormes never lost sight of her true passion.
Cartoon chronicles
After several successful publications with the Pittsburgh Courier, Ormes was finally granted her first comic strip assignment in the May 1, 1937 edition of the newspaper. On this date, readers across the fourteen-city Courier network were introduced to a Southern, teenage entertainer searching for fame in the esteemed Harlem nightclub, Cotton Club. ³ ⁴ Although Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem enjoyed a relatively short run in the newspaper, the protagonist would return years later in another Ormes classic.
In 1942, Ormes left the Pittsburgh Courier and moved to Chicago, where she worked for the Chicago Defender, a national black weekly newspaper. During her brief stint at the Defender, she returned to writing, with an occasional article here and a social column there. Her most notable work at the Defender was Candy, a single-panel cartoon about an attractive, witty housemaid. However, after the four-month installment of Candy had run its course through July of 1945, Ormes found herself back at the Pittsburgh Courier the very next month. ² ³
Ormes’s second go-around at the Courier was arguably the most highly acclaimed chapter of her career. As alluded earlier, Torchy Brown would make a spectacular comeback in Torchy in Heartbeats on August 19, 1950. ³ ⁵ In this strip, Torchy is now an older independent woman who falls in love with a morally conflicted doctor in her restless journey across the country. The series would end in four years, but not before it changed the landscape of black beauty and fashion as we know it.
Of all the cartoons that Ormes produced throughout her illustrious career, the one that stands head and shoulders above the rest is Patty-Jo ’n’ Ginger. Debuting on September 1, 1945, this 11-year comic strip featured curious little sister Patty-Jo and chic big sister Ginger in a clever series of timely commentary. ³ ⁶ ⁷ So beloved was Patty-Jo that in 1947 the Terri Lee doll company tapped Ormes for permission to produce a play doll inspired by the outspoken fictional character. And just like that, Ormes created the first comic-inspired American black doll with a stylish wardrobe to match. Today, these dolls are a highly coveted collectors’ item and a symbolic icon for black girls in America. ³ ⁸
Tracing the times
Many artists reach a point in their career when they must decide whether to continue frolicking by the dock of social discourse or to dive headfirst into the messy torrent of issues. While each side holds merit of its own, the latter often makes for a less comfortable life. Yet, with each publication, you could reliably find Ormes somersaulting deep into the center. She had a strong grasp of the times she found herself in. Her very first comic, Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem, is testament to this, as Torchy’s journey from Mississippi to New York City mirrored the route taken by scores of African Americans who advanced northward during the Great Migration. ³ ⁴
Ormes used Patty-Jo ’n’ Ginger as the primary vehicle to deliver her most charged content. One of her more pointed sketches came after the brutal killing of Emmett Till, who was wrongly accused of the heinous act of whistling at a white lady in 1955. In the bold panel, Patty-Jo quips, “I don’t want to seem touchy on the subject…but, that new little white tea-kettle just whistled at me!” ⁴ ⁵ ⁷ In an earlier strip from 1948, the innocent little girl makes a cheeky remark about racial inequality a week ahead of a presidential election that conveniently shone a cloying spotlight on the sensitive topic. ⁵
Other topics addressed by the forward comic series include the nuclear arms race, civil rights, and environmental injustice. Ormes was open about her left-wing ideologies, once claiming to be “anti-everything-that’s-smelly.” Over time, her openness earned her unwanted attention from the FBI. ³ ⁶
Breaking the mold
In a time when black women were often depicted as unintelligent, clumsy, Mammy-like caricatures with big lips and bandanas, Ormes’s characters offered a refreshing alternative to this image. Patty-Jo encouraged young black girls to be themselves unapologetically. She taught them that hidden injustice ought to be exposed in one fell swoop. And in Ginger, readers found a young, beautiful, slim, college-educated woman often depicted in a pinup style. She represented a new beauty standard that young black women could aspire to reach. ⁷
Meanwhile, Torchy represented adventure, independence, and resourcefulness stirred with the vulnerable desires of love. “Torchy Brown could never have been some kind of mushy soap opera,” Ormes said. “She was no moonstruck crybaby, and she wouldn’t perish between heartbreaks. I have never liked dreamy little women who can’t hold their own.” ⁹
In a popular panel of the series, Torchy finagles her way into the white section of a northbound train. While there, she befriends a white male passenger through a riveting discussion of the recent Joe Lewis boxing match. Pleased with her company, he defends her against an angry conductor who tries to send her back to the colored section. ⁷ ⁹ Such stories had the dual effect of igniting the black imagination and revealing the humanity of African Americans.
A lasting image
Ormes paved the way for several black women cartoonists. The most notable figure of this group is Barbara Brandon-Croft. Generally celebrated as the first nationally syndicated African American female cartoonist, Brandon-Croft insists that “I’m just the first mainstream cartoonist, I’m not the first at all.” ⁴
In a tribute to the life of Ormes and her alter-ego, Torchy Brown, Susan Reib created the Torchy Brown Film Project. Moved by an image of the beautiful, intelligent black heroine featured boldly on the cover of the Chicago Reader, she knew instantly that this was a story worth telling. ⁹
The list of black female cartoonists that were inspired by Ormes’s work continues. When Philadelphia native, Liz Montague was invited to create a Google Doodle tribute for Ormes, she reflected that Ormes “is why I create cartoons as social justice and why I feel valid doing it.” ¹⁰
Californian Marvel artist, Brittney Williams expresses a similar sentiment when she notes that “if a black woman could do it during segregation, I could definitely do it now.” Many more of Ormes’s descendants can be found in the Ormes Society, an online support group for black women in the comic industry. ⁴
Today, Ormes’s work can be found in the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago, for which she was a founding board member, as well as the Library of Congress in Washington, which recently featured her work in an exclusive exhibit of women cartoonists. ⁴
References
- A Brief History of Pittsburgh — https://popularpittsburgh.com/history-pittsburgh
- Cartoonist Zelda Ormes inducted into NABJ Hall of Fame — https://amsterdamnews.com/news/2014/01/23/cartoonist-zelda-ormes-inducted-nabj-hall-fame
- Jackie Ormes — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Ormes
- The Subtle Radicalism of Cartoonist Jackie Ormes — https://www.shondaland.com/live/a26668329/jackie-ormes-comic-radicalism
- Black and White and Color — https://web.archive.org/web/20081210195123/http://www.comixology.com/articles/96/Black-and-White-and-Color
- Fifty Years Before Boondocks There Was Patty-Jo ’n’ Ginger — https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/08/patty-jo-n-ginger-the-ground-breaking-african-american-cartoon-of-the-1940s.html
- Comics Crusader: Remembering Jackie Ormes — https://www.npr.org/2008/07/29/93029000/comics-crusader-remembering-jackie-ormes
- Comic Book Legends Revealed #470 — https://web.archive.org/web/20140513011437/http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2014/05/09/comic-book-legends-revealed-470/2
- Torchy Brown Film Project — https://www.torchybrown.com
- Celebrating Jackie Ormes — https://www.google.com/doodles/celebrating-jackie-ormes
