Cartoonist Charlie Daniel inducted into East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame

Congratulations to Charlie Daniel, who was recently inducted into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame!

Charlie Daniel delighted Knoxvillians with his editorial cartoons for 60 years — first at the Knoxville Journal and later at the News Sentinel, retiring in 2019 at age 89. Daniel received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the gala event on March 24.

The East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame honors local and regional writers who have created an outstanding body of work. The UT Libraries holds virtually the entire body of work created by Knoxville’s beloved editorial cartoonist.

In 2011, Daniel donated more than 20,000 of his hand-drawn, original cartoons to the UT Libraries. That collection resides in the Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives. Special Collections selected more than 1,500 cartoons from that body of work to create the Charlie Daniel Editorial Cartoon Collection, which is freely viewable online at digital.lib.utk.edu/charliedaniel.

The digitized drawings are prepress versions; they represent the state of the artwork as it left Daniel’s desk and not as the cartoons appeared in the printed newspaper editions. Many of these original drawings lack captions or dates. To make the collection accessible, the digitized drawings are organized around ten main themes (See the Introduction to the collection): Causes; International Politics; Knoxville; Labor Unions – Strikes; National Politics; Sports; TVA; Taxes – Economy; Tennessee; UT. Or one can simply browse or try a keyword search.

As an editorial cartoonist, Charlie Daniel is a keen observer of our culture and an astute political commentator. Daniel’s cartoons can make readers laugh, cringe, and more than anything else, think.

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Cartoons from the Charlie Daniel Editorial Cartoon Collection. MS.3526. Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.