Herbert Lawrence Block created newspaper editorial cartoons under the name “Herblock” from 1929 (at the Chicago Daily News) until his death at age 91 in 2001, by which time he had worked at The Washington Post for 55 years. His syndicated cartoons, which appeared in over 400 newspaper in the US, satirized public figures in power across the political spectrum. An advocate for civil rights, gun control, and campaign finance reform, he attacked demogogues, bigots, and blowhards at home and abroad. In a 1950 cartoon, he coined the term “McCarthyism.” In 1966 he was chosen to design the US postage stamp marking the 175th anniversary of the Bill of Rights.

Among his frequent targets was the tobacco industry, as illustated by the cartoons in this section.

The Herb Block Foundation helped defray the cost of shipping the original framed cartoon artworks in “Cartoonists Take Up Smoking” to the exhibition’s debut at the 2004 annual convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists in Lexington, Kentucky, then on to the Alabama Museum of Natural History in 2004-5 and the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, DC in 2006-7

Examples of Herblock cartoons can always be seen in the Herblock Gallery at the Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/herblock-gallery/, to which he willed over 14,000 ink and graphite drawings. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/herblocks-history/about.html