(USPS) Art director Ethel Kessler and stamp designer Greg Berger, both of Bethesda, MD, chose to approach this project through photographic montage. Pairing two pioneers in each stamp was a way of intensifying the montage effect.
Post Office Honors Civil Rights Pioneers
Delicious Reddit

JANUARY 03, 2009
USPS

The public is welcome to attend the Feb. 21 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Board Meeting in New York City, when the Postal Service immortalizes the courage, commitment and achievements of 12 civil rights leaders. The dedication ceremony will take place at 10:15 a.m. in the New York Hilton Hotel and Towers’ Trianon Ballroom, 2nd Floor, 2335 Ave. of the Americas.
Art director Ethel Kessler and stamp designer Greg Berger, both of Bethesda, MD, chose to approach this project through photographic montage. Pairing two pioneers in each stamp was a way of intensifying the montage effect.
Top row of stamps:
Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954)
Throughout her long life as a writer, activist, and lecturer, she was a powerful advocate for racial justice and women’s rights in America and abroad.
Mary White Ovington (1865-1951)
This journalist and social worker believed passionately in racial equality and was a founder of the NAACP.
J. R. Clifford (1848-1933)
He was the first black attorney licensed in West Virginia; in two landmark cases before his state’s Supreme Court, he attacked racial discrimination in education.
Joel Elias Spingarn (1875-1939)
Because coverage of blacks in the media tended to be negative, he endowed the prestigious Spingarn Medal, awarded annually since 1915, to highlight black achievement.
Oswald Garrison Villard (1872-1949)
He was one of the founders of the NAACP and wrote the “Call” leading to its formation.
Daisy Gatson Bates (1914-1999)
She mentored nine black students who enrolled at all-white Central High School in Little Rock, AR, in 1957. The students used her home as an organizational hub.
Bottom row of stamps:
Charles Hamilton Houston (1895-1950)
This lawyer and educator was a main architect of the civil rights movement. He believed in using laws to better the lives of underprivileged citizens.
Walter White (1893-1955)
Blue eyes and a fair complexion enabled this leader of the NAACP to make daring undercover investigations.
Medgar Evers (1925-1963)
He served with distinction as an official of the NAACP in Mississippi until his assassination in 1963.
Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977)
She was a Mississippi sharecropper who fought for black voting rights and spoke for many when she said, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
Ella Baker (1903-1986)
Her lifetime of activism made her a skillful organizer. She encouraged women and young people to assume positions of leadership in the civil rights movement.
Ruby Hurley (1909-1980)
As a courageous and capable official with the NAACP, she did difficult, dangerous work in the South.
More stories about stamps:
Chinese New Year and Statehood Commemoration
200th Anniversary of Lincoln's Birth
USPS: www.usps.com