Postal service honors Rosa Parks with new stamp
BY MIKE HOUSEHOLDER Associated Press
Tuesday, February 05, 2013
2/05/13 at 6:28 AM
Hundreds of people gathered Monday to celebrate the late Rosa Parks on what would have been her 100th birthday by unveiling a postage stamp in her honor.
Parks, who died in 2005, became one of the enduring figures of the civil rights movement when she refused to give up her seat in the black section at the back of the Montgomery, Ala., bus to a white man after the whites-only section filled up. Her defiance and the ensuing black boycott of the city bus system helped the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. rise to national prominence.
"This is being done in sight of the bus where future generations can sit in a seat where Rosa Parks sat and refused to budge and in a seat where the world was changed," U.S. Sen. Carl Levin said before he and U.S. Rep. John Conyers, a fellow Democrat, pulled the curtain to reveal the Rosa Parks Forever Stamp, which bears her 1950s likeness.
The stamp ceremony was part of events at The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, where the bus is on display, and earlier in Detroit.
The Parks stamp is the second in a set of civil rights stamps being issued this year by the U.S. Postal Service.
USPS launched the series Jan. 1 with the Emancipation Proclamation Forever Stamp, which was issued at The National Archives in Washington. In August, the series will culminate with the dedication of a stamp recognizing the 50th anniversary of the historic March on Washington.
The value of a Forever Stamp is the domestic First-Class Mail letter price in effect on the day of use. They always are sold at the same price as a regular First-Class Mail stamp.
Forever Stamps currently are being sold for 46 cents.
Original Print Headline: New stamp honors Rosa Parks
Associated Images:
Detroit Councilwoman JoAnn Watson (left); Lloyd Wesley Jr., Detroit postmaster; Elaine Eason Steele, co-founder of the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development; and Sen. Carl Levin applaud at the unveiling of the Rosa Parks 100th birthday commemorative postage stamp at the Museum of African American History in Detroit on Monday. DAVID COATES / The Detroit News / AP
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