Background

Herbert Block was born on October 13, 1909 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of a chemist David Julian Block and his wife Tessie (née Lupe) Block. He had a brother named William who was his earliest mentor.

Education

Demonstrating artistic talent early, Block received a scholarship to the Chicago Art Institute at age twelve, and while attending Nicholas Senn High School he began contributing cartoons to suburban newspapers under the pen name of "Herblock, " which he continued to use throughout his career. After graduating from Senn in 1927, he attended Lake Forest College for two years, where he studied English and political science before dropping out. In 1957 he received LL. D. from Lake Forest College and in 1963 from Rutgers University. He also received L. H. D. from Williams College (1969), Haverford College (1977), and University of Maryland (1977).

Career

When only 19 Herblock began his career as journalist with the position of editorial cartoonist on the Chicago Daily News (1929-1933). He then moved to the Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA) in Cleveland, Ohio, where his personal opinions, as always, guided his drawings toward a definite idea, which disturbed some of the management. The job ended when he joined the Army Information and Education Division (1943-1945), where he rose to the rank of sergeant. After discharge he accepted the job of editorial cartoonist on the Washington Post, where he found editorial views compatible with his own and management that did not become "jittery. " His cartoons were distributed by the Hall Syndicate and in the early 1950s appeared in 200 periodicals from Washington to Bangkok, including the Manchester Guardian and the Economist (London).

Herblock's cartoons were expressions of his personal concern for the human condition. He produced many cartoons that attacked governmental policies intended to keep documents hidden from public scrutiny. It is important to remember that Herblock was still in the early years of his career when the Cold War broke out in the late 1940s and during its most tense phase in the 1950s. In his view far too many lower and medium level bureaucrats exercised their power to classify documents. Numerous cartoons displayed the hostility of bureaucrats toward scientists, intellectuals, and even fellow civil servants who dared to raise their voices against the system. Careers of truly patriotic persons were ruined during this period.

It was the parading of false patriotism that particularly aroused him. Herblock attained the height of his critical powers during the years when Joseph McCarthy was rampantly accusing persons in and out of government of communist sympathies or, worse, of being agents of the Soviet Union. To symbolize this dishonesty, Block displayed Senator McCarthy as an unshaven mud-slinger, smearing innocent people with unproven accusations dragged up from the sewer or garbage cans. He was convinced that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was involved in these violations of civil rights. He was equally convinced that McCarthy personified a dangerous current of the times, enjoying wide support.

From the later 1950s Richard Nixon became the chief villain. President Eisenhower held that position, and in Block's cartoons he is consistently depicted as a weak, ineffective politician, the unwitting partner of Richard Nixon. The cartoonist brought to light dishonest deals carried on by Nixon long before the Watergate scandal. Block's books reproduced his cartoons and their captions and provided a more extensive commentary on his times. They put his cartoons in their historical setting.

After recovering from a heart attack in late 1959, Block returned to work in January 1960. He originally supported Hubert Humphrey for the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination but eventually came to respect John F. Kennedy, although he was never particularly friendly with Kennedy's brother Robert, who became attorney general. Richard M. Nixon's recognition of the cartoonist's influence was such that the Republican candidate believed that erasing, in the minds of voters, Block's artistic image of Nixon as an unshaven and suspicious-looking character was a key to the 1960 election. After Kennedy won the presidency, Block criticized him occasionally on some issues; one of his best-known cartoons appeared on 1 November 1962 and portrayed Kennedy and the Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev struggling to contain the "monster" of nuclear war.

Block displayed mixed attitudes toward President Lyndon B. Johnson, but his artwork definitely expressed support for Johnson's efforts in the 1960s on behalf of programs such as civil rights, the Great Society, and the War on Poverty. One of his most well-known pieces on civil rights, entitled "House Divided, " appeared on 5 March 1968, and his ongoing editorial commentary in the 1960s included societal concerns such as gun control, aid to education, antismoking, and environmental protection.

Block's commentary on gun control escalated in 1968, fueled in part by the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , and Robert Kennedy. On 20 March 1968 he released his well-known cartoon entitled "Shooting Gallery, " which pictured American citizens as the targets in the gallery. His most controversial cartoon was in 1968; entitled "The Vote to Kill, " it listed the names of eighteen senators who had voted against a gun control bill. The cartoon drew protests from the U. S. Congress and the National Rifle Association.

Throughout the 1960s Block, initially a "hawk" on the Vietnam War, increasingly questioned President Johnson's conduct of the war and his growing hostility toward the press and other critics. A low point in their relationship came when Johnson was extremely angered by the cartoon "Happy Days on the Old Plantation" on 30 June 1965, in which Block contradicted the White House public-relations efforts to portray the president as a sensitive, cultivated, and warm-hearted man.

The political journalist Walter Lippmann's criticism of the war also came under attack from Johnson. In 1967 Block wrote an article for the Post in which he defended Lippmann; a cartoon showing an angered president hurling lightning bolts at the journalist accompanied the article. Block's questioning of the war was highlighted by cartoons that showed Johnson on an upward-bound Vietnam escalator (17 June 1965), Uncle Sam neck-deep in a forbidding swamp called Asia (28 January 1968), and a beleaguered general in Vietnam still pumping out favorable news dispatches from his destroyed headquarters (1 February 1968).

Block continued to criticize the war, including the apparent contradiction in Nixon's planning to win the war while also building an undisclosed peace plan, and these criticisms would eventually include the escalation of the bombing in Cambodia in 1971. He regularly attacked Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew for their attempts to censor the war news, and Agnew once denounced the cartoonist as a "master of sick invective. " Block continued to produce editorial cartoons into the 1970s on the conduct of the war, and he was one of the most active commentators on the unfolding scandals of the Nixon administration, including Watergate.

Over the next three decades Block continued to cover the administrations of several more presidents. His last cartoon appeared on 26 August 2001, and while on vacation he contracted pneumonia and passed away at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D. C. , at the age of ninety-one.

Achievements

• A leading cartoon spokesman of liberalism, Herblock attacked injustices in politics, big business, industry, labour, and economics. He is probably best known for his cartoons of the early 1950s attacking the threat of native fascism as personified by Senator Joseph McCarthy. He received numerous awards in recognition of his place among the U. S. 's most important and influential political commentators of the twentieth century. In addition to three Pulitzers and a fourth he shared with The Post for its coverage of Watergate, Herblock received several honorary degrees and won dozens of journalism prizes. In 1966 he was selected to design the postage stamp commemorating the 175th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. President Bill Clinton, who was often at the end of Herblock's sharp quill, in 1994 awarded him the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Herblock on All Fronts

    (Three time Pulitzer Prize Winning Cartoonist; Herbert Blo...)

  • Herblock Through the Looking Glass

    (More than two hundred satirical drawings supported by a t...)

  • Herblock at Large

    (Offers a collection of cartoons that explores aspects of ...)

  • Herblock: The Life and Works of the Great Political Cartoonist

    ( A celebration of the man and his work, including a DVD ...)

  • Herblock's special for today

    (Oversize hardcover book of political cartoonist Herblock'...)

  • The Herblock book
  • Herblock's Here and Now
  • Herblock: A Cartoonist's Life
  • Herblocks State of the Union

Views

Quotations: "My cartoons are opinion pieces and are recognized as such. "

"I don't know what's so fascinating about the 'middle of the road, ' but for a lot of people this position has the kind of magnetic attraction that a coffee cup has for cigarette ashes; and it's regarded as the ideal place to dump any kind of decision…. In a choice between right or wrong, I think something better than a middle-of-the-road policy is needed. "

Personality

Block was a tireless searcher for truth and for the documents required to discover it.

Quotes from others about the person

• Lowell Mellet:
  
  "He is truly a great cartoonist. He makes some people laugh. He makes some people swear. He makes everybody think. "

Connections

Block never married.

Father:

David Julian Block

He suggested Herbert his pen name ‘Herblock’.

Mother:

Tessie Lupe Block

Brother:

William Block

He was active in journalism and induced Herbert to enter that field.