Andrews, Bill, 1937-

Bill Andrews, born William Grant Andrews on June 2, 1937 in Tucson, Arizona, is a graphic artist, photographer and journalist.

Raised in a working class family, Andrews began drawing at an early age, copying popular comic strip characters and inventing his own while still in middle school. After graduating from high school in 1955, he worked as a copy editor, writer, photographer and staff cartoonist at the Arizona Republic in Phoenix. During this time, he became politically radicalized through an acquaintance (and Communist Party member) named Joe Owen with whom he traded recordings of early jazz and blues musicians. In 1959, he moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and enrolled in the University of New Mexico, where he majored in Art Education and minored in Goverment. He graduated with honors in 1963 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree. While attending classes, he worked as a one-man art department at KNME-TV in Albuquerque.

In April 1963, shortly after graduating from the University of New Mexico, Andrews moved to New York City to become a graphic artist. He found short-term employment as a commercial artist, as well as a cartoonist for La Nueva Voz . After being introduced to staff at The Worker through his contacts at New World Review in 1964, he began to draw cartoons for the paper. When The Worker changed its name to The Daily World and began daily publication in 1968, he was hired as a staff photographer. He worked for the paper and its associated Spanish-language papers El Mundo Diario and Voz del Pueblo until October 1977. Although initially hired as a photographer, Andrews soon became a staff cartoonist as well, creating artwork for the paper on a daily basis, as well as authoring comic strips including "Is This the Way it Was?," "Nix!" and "The Optic Nerve." In addition, he wrote articles and music reviews for the paper, sometimes under the pseudonyms of Stark Jeffreys and Neil Harris. During this time, he received the Newspaper Guild of New York's Page One Award honoring outstanding achievement in journalism for his cartoons in 1972, 1973 and 1974. He was also awarded a Silurian Society Medallion in 1974.

After leaving the paper in October 1977, Andrews returned to Arizona, where he worked in Arizona State University's Graphics Department from January 1978 until 1997.

From the guide to the Bill Andrews Editorial Cartoons and Papers, Bulk, 1968-1977, 1941-2009, (Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive)