Jackie Ormes is considered the first Black woman cartoonist to reach a national audience, publishing in the Pittsburgh Courier and Chicago Defender from 1937 until 1956. Ormes’s comic strips and panels featured dynamic Black female characters: Torchy Brown, Candy, Patty-Jo, and Ginger. Her comics provided readers of the Black press fashionable Black female characters who were educated and independent. Ormes’s characters represented Black women as beautiful and attractive – a stark difference from the ways in which Black women were depicted in American popular culture. In addition to her comics, Ormes’s Patty-Jo figurine was the first mass-produced Black doll with the Terri Lee Doll company. Throughout her life, Ormes broke glass ceilings.

This exhibition illustrates Ormes’s historic contributions to the Black press and Black culture. Britney Henry, curator of the exhibition, presents Ormes’s work as an act of Black feminist activism. Black feminist activism is invested in the political and social empowerment of Black women individually and collectively. By studying Ormes’s contribution to the Black press, Henry illustrates the importance of Black women’s cultural production in a male dominated field. Along with the exhibition are books to check out in relation to Ormes, the Black press, and works by contemporary Black women cartoonists.

“The Radical Jackie Ormes” will be on display in Room 115 of Morris Library from February 1 – 28, 2025, in honor of Black History Month.

Britney Henry is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English at the University of Delaware and a graduate certificate student in Museum Studies and Public Engagement. She is also an African American Public Humanities Initiative Scholar. Her research interests include Black popular culture, Black feminism, Black material texts, archives, and book history.

This exhibition is supported, in part, by the African American Public Humanities Initiative. Henry’s research on Jackie Ormes was supported by the Center for Material Culture Studies’ Graduate Research Fund in Black and African American Material Culture Studies.