Post It! A New Civil Rights Stamp Collection

Take a look as The Root's editor-in-chief Henry Louis Gates Jr. profiles a selection of black trailblazers featured on a series of new stamps by the U.S. Postal Service. Click on each name for a more detailed biography.

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  Women of Action

  Ella Baker (1903-1986) organized northern support for the Montgomery bus boycott, and in 1957 became acting director of Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

  Ruby Hurley (1909-1980) aided in all of the major school desegregation cases of the 1950's and 1960's. She also took part in the investigation of the murder of Emmett Till.

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  Leading Men

  J.R. Clifford (1848-1933), Union Army veteran and West Virginia’s first African American attorney, was a founding member of the Niagara movement, a forerunner to the NAACP.

  Joel Spingarn (1875-1939), a literary critic and Columbia University professor, was among the leading figures in the NAACP during its first three decades.

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  Firsthand Accounts

  Medgar Evers (1925-1963), a World War II veteran turned civil rights leader who returned home from Normandy with a determination to secure his rights as a citizen.

  Fannie Lou Hamer (1917 –1977) had been jailed and beaten by the police for her civil rights activities. She offered a dramatic account of the methods used to deny blacks the ballot that was televised across the nation.

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  Mary, Mary

  Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) was a writer and lecturer, who became a leading voice for racial justice and women’s rights in the United States and abroad.

  Mary White Ovington (1865-1951) was a founder of the NAACP and a leading figure in the association for nearly four decades. Ovington was responsible for enlisting W.E.B Du Bois in the venture of the NAACP.

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  Social Engineers

  Charles Hamilton Houston (1895-1950) is often referred to as the architect of the civil rights movement. As dean of Howard Law School, he transformed the school into a laboratory for civil rights law.

  Walter White (1893-1955) could easily pass for white, and used this to his advantage in his daring undercover investigations and exposes of lynchings.

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  'The Call' for Change

  Oswald Garrison Villard drafted “The Call” that led to the founding meeting of the NAACP. Villard provided financial support essential to launching the NAACP as a permanent organization.

  Daisy Bates (1914-1999) won national attention for her leading role in the 1957 desegregation of Little Rock’s Central High School, one of the pivotal moments in the modern Civil Rights Movement.