Edmund Duffy

Edmund Duffy
Born	March 1, 1899 Jersey City, New Jersey
Died	September 12, 1962 Manhattan
Occupation	Cartoonist
Employer	The Baltimore Sun (c1924-c1948) Saturday Evening Post (c1948-c1962)
Known for	Three Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning
Spouse(s)	Anne Elizabeth Rector

Edmund Duffy (March 1, 1899 – September 12, 1962), was an American editorial cartoonist. He grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey, eventually moving to main metropolitan areas. Duffy did not attend high school, but instead went into the Art Students League of New York. Duffy’s career took him London, Paris, New York, and finally to Baltimore where he spent the majority of his professional career working for The Baltimore Sun. Throughout his career Duffy won three Pulitzer Prizes for Editorial Cartooning in 1931, 1934, and the last one in 1940. Duffy began to work for the Baltimore Sun in 1924, when he was only about 25 years old, but he received high praise from the famous journalist, H.L. Mencken.

Duffy first came into the journalism field with his submission of a page of sketches for Armistice Day. The sketches were put into the New York Tribune, under the Sunday section. Duffy then worked on a variety of assignments in order to save up money, and then he began his European career. He moved to London and worked for the London Evening News. Following London, Duffy worked in Paris for a few years, and finally returned to the United States in 1922. He worked for two years with both the New York Leader and the Brooklyn Eagle. The longest period of his career began in 1924 when he began working for The Baltimore Sun. Duffy worked there until 1948, in order to work a less tiring job, working for the Saturday Evening Post. During his career, Duffy drew numerous noteworthy cartoons and also approached major issues and incidents, such as lynching and the Ku Klux Klan, but also the famous Monkey Scopes Trial of 1925.

Duffy was known for his daring nature in relation to his work. H.L. Mencken saw promise in his work and “Duffy with his sometimes savage artwork, did the kind of thing that delighted Mencken, who loved nothing more than to ‘stir up the animals’”. Duffy was not afraid to please Mencken, and held nothing back. He was one of the few people of his time that would boldly approach the topic of racism. He blatantly condemned lynching and the actions of the KKK. This was one of his main issues that he approached during his career. During the time period that Duffy worked it was not popular to advocate against racism, so Duffy was civil rights before it was a wide movement in the United States. S.L. Harrison, a late professor of Communication at the University of Miami, wrote that Duffy “displayed uncommon vigor in attacking the Ku Klux Klan”.

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