The Fight For Civil Rights - The Black Experience on Stamps

Since the founding of the United States, African Americans have played a pivotal role in American history and heritage. This series of exhibits showcases the black experience in the United States through the lens of American postage stamps.

The Fight For Civil Rights: MLK

Ever since the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865, which abolished slavery as an amendment to the United States Constitution, African-Americans have been fighting for equal rights. Many of these influential black Americans have been portrayed on postage stamps.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was the most powerful and popular leader of the African-American protest movement of the 1950s and 1960s. He spearheaded mass action through marches, sit-ins, boycotts, and nonviolent demonstrations that profoundly and positively affected America’s attitudes toward racial prejudice and discrimination. In 1963, he became the first African-American honored as TIME magazine’s Man of the Year, and he was presented the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

The Fight For Civil Rights

Roy Wilkins was a U.S. civil rights leader. In 1931, he was appointed assistant executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the largest civil rights organization in the United States. In 1955, he was named the NAACP’s executive secretary, a position he held for the next 22 years. As a writer and spokesman for the civil rights movement, he inspired presidents and members of Congress to pay attention to the rights of African Americans. When asked to describe his greatest satisfaction in life, he pointed to the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954 that ended segregation in public schools.

One Activist: From Slavery To Civil Rights

As an educator, scholar, feminist and activist, Anna Julia Cooper (c.1858-1964), gave voice to the African-American community during the 19th and 20th centuries from the end of slavery to the beginning of the Civil Rights movement.

Cooper, best known for her groundbreaking collection of essays and speeches, A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South, also exhibited educational leadership, most notably challenging the racist notion that African Americans were naturally inferior.

The Fight For Civil Rights

Famed civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall was one of the best known lawyers in the history of civil rights in America. He became the first director-counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. In 1954, Marshall and his legal team prevailed in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, that struck down segregation in public schools. President Kennedy appointed him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1961. In 1965 President Johnson appointed him the first African-American solicitor general of the United States. Marshall made history again in 1967, when he was sworn in as the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court. His 24-year tenure was marked by his commitment to defending constitutional rights and affirmative action and by his strong opposition to the death penalty. Thurgood Marshall died on January 24, 1993, at the age of 85. On November 30, 1993, he was awarded a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom-our country’s highest civilian honor.

The Fight For Civil Rights

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of a Baptist preacher. In 1931, Malcolm’s father was killed, probably murdered because of his political and social activism. For Malcolm, this started a spiral into a life of crime that ended with his being sentenced to prison for burglary. While in prison, Malcolm became a militant activist and a follower of the Nation of Islam, a black nationalist religious movement based on traditional Islamic teachings and Marcus Garvey’s principles of black nationalism. After his release from prison, Malcolm became a powerful spokesman for the movement, one who was both popular yet polarizing. But in 1964 he split from the movement and started the Organization of Afro-American Unity, and after a trip to Mecca, he took the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz and came to believe that the world’s people could live in fellowship.

"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."- Malcolm X

Civil Rights Pioneers Issue

Throughout Mary Church Terrell's (1863-1954) long life as a writer, activist, and lecturer, she was a powerful advocate for racial justice and women’s rights in America and abroad. The portrait of Mary Church Terrell used for the stamp honoring her is from the collection of the Library of Congress.

Mary White Ovington (1865-1951), a journalist and social worker, believed passionately in racial equality and was a founder of the NAACP. The photograph of Mary White Ovington used on the stamp honoring her was taken between 1930 and 1940. It is part of the NAACP archival collection at the Library of Congress.

Civil Rights Pioneers Issue

Oswald Garrison Villard (1872-1949) was one of the founders of the NAACP and wrote “The Call” leading to its formation. His undated portrait used on the stamp honoring him comes from the records of the NAACP at the Library of Congress.

Daisy Gatson Bates (1914-1999) 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. The 1957 photograph of Bates is from the New York World-Telegram & Sun Newspaper photographic collection at the Library of Congress.

Civil Rights Pioneers Issue

J.R. Clifford (1848-1933) 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. The image of J.R. Clifford is a detail from an undated photograph from the University of Massachusetts Library Special Collections.

Because coverage of blacks in the media tended to be negative, Joel Elias Spingarn (1875-1939) endowed the prestigious Spingarn Medal, awarded annually since 1915, to highlight black achievement. The portrait of Joel Elias Spingarn is dated in the 1920s and comes from the records of NAACP at the Library of Congress.

Civil Rights Pioneers Issue

Ella Baker's (1903-1986) lifetime of activism made her a skillful organizer. She encouraged women and young people to assume positions of leadership in the civil rights movement. The portrait of Ella Baker is dated between 1943 and 1946 and is from NAACP records at the Library of Congress.

As a courageous and capable official with the NAACP, Ruby Hurley (1909-1980) did difficult, dangerous work in the South. Hurley’s image is from a 1963 newspaper photo.