How the Trayvon Martin tragedy led to Darrin Bell’s historic editorial cartooning Pulitzer [The Washington Post]

Panels from "Candorville," by Darrin Bell, from April 2012. (WPWG) 

There is a direct line between Trayvon Martin and Monday’s editorial cartooning Pulitzer.

Darrin Bell, the California-based writer and artist, was the creator of the comic strip “Candorville” and co-creator of the strip “Rudy Park” when Martin, a Florida teenager, was shot to death in 2012. Bell’s syndicate, The Washington Post Writers Group, had urged him to try his hand at regular political cartooning — especially after he published a poignant week of Martin-inspired strips seven years ago this month.

On Monday, Bell was named the 2019 winner of the Pulitzer Prize “for beautiful and daring editorial cartoons that took on issues affecting disenfranchised communities, calling out lies, hypocrisy and fraud in the political turmoil surrounding the Trump administration,” as announced by the Pulitzer Board and Columbia University. Bell, who lives in the Sacramento area, is the first African American recipient of the editorial cartooning Pulitzer, which has been awarded since 1922.

To read the full article by Michael Cavana of The Washington Post, please click here.