Evansville African American Museum to display signature ‘Herblock’ pieces

"Higher Education in Mississippi," a 1962 cartoon by Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Herb Block, is among work featured in "The Long March," a traveling exhibition opening Tuesday in the a.inline_topic:hover { background-color: #EAEAEA; } Evansville African American Museum.

The cartoon depicts the government's decision to send in federal troops to enforce racial integration in Mississippi's public schools in 1962.

The exhibition, which focuses on civil rights struggles in the United States, features 20 panels of cartoons, text and photographs about the work of Block, the syndicated Washington Post political cartoonist who signed his work "Herblock."

Block was barely 20 when started in 1929 as a political cartoonist for the Chicago Daily News and the Newspaper Enterprise Association Service. Seventeen years later he joined The Washington Post, where he worked until his death in 2001. In that time, he created cartoons dealing with the administrations of presidents from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush.

His work won him three Pulitzers and he shared a fourth. He was the only living cartoonist to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the only one to see his work displayed in the National Gallery of Art.

The exhibition will remain up through Oct. 2 in the museum at 579 S. Garvin St. The Evansville African American Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesdays through Saturdays. Admission is $5 for adults, $3 for students, with special group rates available.

For more information on the museum, call (812) 423-5188. For more on Block, visit www.herbblock.org online.