January is quickly coming to a close and with that brings the beginning of Black History Month.
As the United States prepares to celebrate African American legacies, the U.S Postal Service will be releasing the newest stamp to join the Black Heritage stamp series.
This year the 37th stamp, featuring Shirley Chisholm, will be released. If you don’t know your history Chisholm was the first African American woman ever elected to Congress. After being elected to Congress, in 1972, she became the first African American to seek nomination for presidency with a major political party. She later wrote of her unsuccessful bid, “The next time a woman runs, or a black, or a Jew or anyone from a group that the country is ‘not ready’ to elect to its highest office, I believe that he or she will be taken seriously from the start… I ran because somebody had to do it first.”
Chisholm was also a member of the original BLACK ENTERPRISE Magazine Board of Advisors when the magazine was founded in 1970 by Publisher Earl G. Graves, Sr. She joined the board, along with such luminaries as late business pioneers Henry Parks, founder of Parks Sausage Co., and Freedom National Bank’s William Hudgins as well as civil rights and political leaders John Lewis and Julian Bond, to help establish the magazine as a force for African American business development and financial empowerment – planks that could be prominently found on her legislative agenda.
The stamp will be released at an official ceremony to take place at Brooklyn Borough Hall on January 31, 2014 at 11 A.M. The stamp design shows a painting by Robert Shetterly of Chisholm against a blue background. The portrait is one of a series of paintings by the artist titled “Americans Who Tell the Truth.”