People, Locations, Episodes

Tue, 01.02.1906

Elmer S. Campbell, Cartoonist born

Elmer Campbell was born on this date in 1906.  He was a Black cartoonist.

Elmer Simms Campbell was born in St. Louis. While still in high school, he won a nationwide cartooning contest. He later studied at the University of Chicago and the Art Institute of Chicago. He then worked as a Red Cap railroad dining-car waiter, amusing himself by drawing caricatures of the passengers. One of them was so impressed with his work that he gave him a job in a commercial art studio in St. Louis.

Campbell later moved to New York City, where he worked for an advertising agency while gradually becoming a regular contributor to various humor magazines.

In 1933, Esquire (the magazine) was established, and Campbell became its foremost cartoonist, with as many as a dozen drawings in an issue. His work was also published in Cosmopolitan, The New Yorker, and Playboy.  He is best known for his representations of voluptuous women, frequently in a harem setting.

The first Black to publish his work in general-circulation magazines, Elmer Campbell died on Jan. 27, 1971, in White Plains, New York.

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