By Meghan Streit
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

When Franklin McMahon talks about some of the most significant events of the last century, he is not talking about what he saw on the evening news or read in a book. He was actually present for many of the moments that changed the course of American history.

Working as a freelancer for magazines such as Look, Life, and Fortune, McMahon has chronicled presidential inaugurations, civil rights protests, and precedent-setting trials through his "reportorial drawings." Crafted with just a lead pencil and a large pad of paper, McMahon’s drawings depict scenes that capture the essence of whatever was happening at the time. After sketching in pencil, McMahon would later color many of the drawings using acrylic watercolors.

‘The man who draws history’
If it can be said that a picture is worth a thousand words, then McMahon’s now extensive collection of drawings has as much to teach about American politics and culture as most history books ever could.

McMahon has been drawing since he was a young boy at Fenwick High School in Oak Park. During his senior year, he sold his first drawing to Collier’s magazine in the late 1930s, but his big break came later when Life hired him to sketch courtroom scenes from the now-famous trial of the two men accused of killing Emmett Till, an African-American man whose murder was a catalyst for the civil rights movement.

"That made me think there was a market for my work," McMahon recalls.

As it turns out, there was a market—a large one. McMahon went on to publish thousands of drawings in magazines and newspapers. His work includes depictions of John F. Kennedy at the 1960 Democratic convention, Richard Nixon aboard Air Force One, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preaching at a church in Alabama, and Hillary Rodham Clinton chatting with Barack Obama, who was a junior senator at the time.