Medgar Evers Stamp

Mississippi Civil Rights Mississippi civil rights figures Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer will be featured on U.S. postage stamps early in 2009.

by The Associated Press

Published: Thu, October 23, 2008 - 3:16 pm CST

WASHINGTON (AP) - Mississippi civil rights figures Medgar Evers
and Fannie Lou Hamer will be featured on U.S. postage stamps early
in 2009.
The U.S. Postal Service also will mark the 200th anniversary of
writer Edgar Allen Poe with a 42-cent stamp.
Other new postage announced included commemorative stamps
marking Alaska and Oregon statehood, lunar new year - the year of
the Ox - and a postal card marking the bicentennial of Miami
University of Ohio.
Evers was an NAACP official in Mississippi until his
assassination in 1963.
Hamer fought for black voting rights in Mississippi. She died in
1977.
Evers and Hamer are part of a set of stamps honoring a dozen
civil rights leaders, which will go on sale Feb. 12 with ceremonies
in New York.

Others are:
- Mary Church Terrell, 1863-1954, advocate for racial justice
and women's rights in America and abroad.
- Mary White Ovington, 1865-1951, journalist and social worker,
a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People.
- J.R. Clifford, 1848-1933, the first black attorney licensed in
West Virginia; attacked racial discrimination in education.
- Joel Elias Spingarn, 1875-1939, endowed the Spingarn Medal,
awarded annually since 1915, to highlight black achievement.
- Oswald Garrison Villard, 1872-1949, one of the founders of the
NAACP and wrote the "Call" leading to its formation.
- Daisy Gatson Bates, 1914-1999, mentored nine black students
who enrolled at all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Ark.,
in 1957.
- Charles Hamilton Houston, 1895-1950, lawyer and educator and a
main architect of the civil rights movement.
- Walter White, 1893-1955, a leader of the NAACP who made daring
undercover investigations.
- Ella Baker, 1903-1986, a skillful organizer who encouraged
women and young people to assume positions of leadership in the
civil rights movement.
- Ruby Hurley, 1909-1980, NAACP officials who did difficult,
dangerous work in the South.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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