darryl mccray by Emelyn Vicente Mendoza

darryl mccray or cornbread now widely known as the world's first modern graffiti artist was a 12-year-old troublemaker housed at Philadelphia’s McCray loved cornbread. He loved it so much, in fact, that the YDC’s cooks nicknamed him “Cornbread”.

2260090_1 — 2024-03-11 15:31:30 UTC

Instantly taken with his new name, Cornbread felt compelled to share it with the other boys. Rather than take part in the drug use and violence that ran rampant at the YDC, Cornbread passed the time by adding his unique signature to the facility’s walls, which, until then, had been covered exclusively in gang names and symbols.cornbread started tagging everywhere.

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He even used the blank brick canvases of North Philadelphia to win over his junior high crush, writing “Cornbread Loves Cynthia” all over the girl’s neighborhood and along the bus route she took to school.

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The plan worked, and Cornbread’s enigmatic tag soon inspired others, the city’s walls growing dense with various names and numbers, each writer trying to snag their share of the glory.

When a local paper mistakenly reported that Cornbread had been killed in a gang shooting, the prideful young writer was determined to prove the legend was still alive. “I knew it was up to me to bring my name back to life,” he toldPhiladelphia Weekly.

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In a bold display that would forever cement his status as an icon of 1960’s graffiti, Cornbread snuck into the Philadelphia Zoo, hopped a fence, and painted “Cornbread Lives” on both sides of an elephant.

2260090_1 — 2024-03-11 15:36:02 UTC

This particular graffiti art was created by me I was inspired by cornbread and it's also a representation of what graffiti artists do

2260090_1 — 2024-03-14 15:41:32 UTC