ABSTRACT
In 2009, the greater public was introduced to Anna Julia Cooper (1858?– 1964) on a commemorative U.S. Postal Service stamp for the Black Heritage Series. She is honored for her achievements as an educator, feminist, scholar, and activist. For a black Southern woman, her accomplishments are remarkable for a life that began in slavery and witnessed the modern Civil Rights Movement. The portrait-a middle-aged image of her in profi le with a white stiff-necked, Victorian blouse, wispy gray strains of hair shadowed in black and neatly pinned-up in a bun as she faces the bright dawn of a new era-however, belie her 105 years experience of being a black woman in America. The prideful expression gives way to a perfect brow slightly grimaced; she appears staid, priggish, and conventional. Respect is what she earned. The stamp is merited in a year when the “Quest for Citizenship in the Americas” is the National Black History theme to celebrate the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Centennial.
