In the United States at midcentury - a time of few opportunities for women in general and even fewer for African American woman Jackie Ormes (1911-85) blazed the trail as a popular cartoonist with the major black newspapers of the day. Ormes's work provides an invaluable glimpse into American culture and history, with topics that include racial segregation, U. S. foreign policy, educational equality, the atom bomb, and environmental pollution among other pressing issues of the times. This biography's more than 150 illustrations include photographs of Jackie Ormes and a large sampling of her cartoons and color comic strips