Etta Hulme (1923–2014)

Etta Hulme was born in Somerville, Texas. She submitted cartoons to The New Yorker Magazines as a teenager, though unsuccessfully. In 1944, she graduated from the University of Texas with a bachelor's degree in fine arts and went to California to work for the Walt Disney animation studio. During World War II, she worked on propaganda films and later on some feature films such as Song of the South (1946) and Make Mine Music (1946). Hulme returned to Texas in 1946 and became a freelancer in commercial and advertising art. She designed everything from flyers to newspapers ads, travel brochures, health brochures, weather reports, and invitations. In the 1950s, she did work for The Texas Observer.
She persistently applied at the Fort Worth Star Telegram until the paper agreed to print some of her work on a freelance basis. In 1972, the work turned into a regular full-time job, with Hulme producing six cartoons a week for the afternoon edition of the paper. At this time, she became the first woman in the paper’s editorial department. In 1978, Hulme also became the first woman editorial cartoonist to be syndicated when she was picked up by the Newspapers Enterprise Association (NEA). By 1981, Hulme was one of only three women cartoonists in the USA. She was the first woman to win the National Cartoonists Society Editorial Cartoon Award in 1981 and then won it again in 1998. In 1987, she was elected president of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists.
In 1995, Hulme appeared in the documentary Political Cartoons in the 1990s, and she was the subject of another documentary entitled Trailblazer: The Editorial Cartoons of Etta Hulme in 2004. A collection of her cartoons, Ettatorials, The Best of Etta Hulme, was published in 1998.