Jackie Ormes

Jackie Ormes was born Zelda Mavin Jackson on August 1, 1911, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to parents William Winfield Jackson and Mary Brown Jackson. Her father William, the owner of a printing company and movie theater proprietor, was killed in an automobile accident in 1917. This resulted in the then six-year old Jackie and her older sister Dolores being placed in the care of their aunt and uncle for a brief period of time. Eventually, Jackie's mother remarried and the family relocated to the nearby city of Monongahela. Ormes described the suburb in a 1985 interview for the Chicago Reader as "spread out and simple. Nothing momentous ever happens here." She graduated from high school in Monongahela in 1930.

Ormes drew and wrote throughout high school. She was arts editor for the 1929–1930 Monongahela High School Yearbook where her earliest efforts as a cartoonist can be seen in the lively caricatures of her school's students and teachers. It was during this period that she wrote a letter to the editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, a weekly African-American newspaper that was published on Saturdays. The then-editor, Robert Vann, wrote back. This correspondence led to her first writing assignment—covering a boxing match. Her coverage of subsequent matches led to her becoming an avid fan of the sport.

Ormes started in journalism as a proofreader for the Pittsburgh Courier. She also worked as an editor and as a freelance writer, writing on police beats, court cases and human-interest topics. While she enjoyed "a great career running around town, looking into everything the law would allow, and writing about it," what she really wanted to do was draw.

Ormes's first comic strip, Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem, first appeared in the Pittsburgh Courier on May 1, 1937. Her work was not syndicated in the usual sense, but, since the Courier had fourteen city editions, she was indeed read from coast to coast. The strip, starring Torchy Brown, was a humorous depiction of a Mississippi teen who found fame and fortune singing and dancing in the Cotton Club. Torchy's journey from Mississippi to New York City mirrored the journey of many African-Americans who ventured northward during the Great Migration. It was through Torchy Brown that Ormes became the first African-American woman to produce a nationally appearing comic strip. The strip ran until April 30, 1938. The reason for the strip's abrupt end is uncertain, but it is presumed to have been due to an end of her contract.

Ormes moved to Chicago in 1942. She soon began writing occasional articles and, briefly, a social column for The Chicago Defender, one of the nation's leading black newspapers, a weekly at that time. For a few months at the end of the war, her single panel cartoon, Candy, about an attractive and wisecracking housemaid, appeared in the Defender; the panel ran from March 24 to July 21, 1945.
By August 1945, Ormes's work was back in the Courier, with the advent of Patty-Jo 'n' Ginger, a single-panel cartoon which ran for 11 years. It featured a big sister-little sister set-up, with the precocious, insightful and socially/politically-aware child as the only speaker and the beautiful adult woman as a sometime pin-up figure and fashion mannequin. The strip ran from September 1, 1945 to September 22, 1956.

Starting August 19, 1950, the Courier began an eight-page color comics insert, where Ormes re-invented her Torchy character in a new comic strip, Torchy in Heartbeats. This Torchy was a beautiful, independent woman who finds adventure while seeking true love. Ormes expressed her talent for fashion design as well as her vision of a beautiful black female body in the accompanying paper doll topper, Torchy Togs. The strip is probably best known for its last installment on September 18, 1954, when Torchy and her doctor boyfriend confront racism and environmental pollution. Ormes used Torchy in Heartbeats as a sounding board for several big issues of the time. In a 1985 interview for Chicago Reader she claimed she was "anti-war-I was anti-everything-that's-smelly". Torchy presented an image of a black woman who, in contrast to the contemporary stereotypical media portrayals, was confident, intelligent, and brave.