The act of creating art in public places has been around for centuries. Early mankind created paintings on the walls of caves. These basic pictographs found later evolved into the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt.
Modern graffiti sprang to life during the mid-1960s in Philadelphia. According to The Millions website, Philadelphia student Darryl Alexander McCray is credited as the first person to develop a graffiti tag when he began to scrawl the word "Cornbread" all over the city. Graffiti soon became a trend thanks to the activities of street artist gangs competing against rival groups to put their tags on architecture.
While some graffiti artists simply tagged walls to demonstrate the prowess and territory of their gangs, others had a more focused reason for their work. Political causes, often radical in nature, turned graffiti into a tool for some activist groups. This was especially true from 1966 to 1971, when graffiti was most often used as a method to deliver a political statement.
New York City is the place where graffiti really entered the national consciousness, with artists such as Super Kool 223 and Lil Soul 159 competing against one another in a quest to mark available spaces with tags and art. Graffiti artists would compete to see who could get their art onto the subway train with the furthest route. As the art developed stylistically, its reach also increased, with artists decorating trains that ran outside of the city.
Graffiti artists have been profiled in documentary movies as well as dramas such as "Beat Street. These media helped bring the street art style to viewers. Hip hop culture, frequently connected with graffiti, also began to gain in prominence during the 1980s in the U.S. and Europe, drawing more individuals to become graffiti artists,