Civil rights leader and U.S. Rep. John Lewis, who passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2020, will be honored next year with a United States Postal Service stamp.
USPS announced this week that Lewis’ stamp would be included along with six other stamps to an existing roster of stamp releases expected in 2023. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, novelist Toni Morrison and Chief Standing Bear will also appear on stamps in the new year.
“Devoted to equality and justice for all Americans, Lewis spent more than 30 years in Congress steadfastly defending and building on key civil rights gains that he had helped achieve in the 1960s,” said the USPS. “Even in the face of hatred and violence, as well as some 45 arrests, Lewis remained resolute in his commitment to what he liked to call ‘good trouble.’”
Lewis, the son of Alabama share croppers, was born in 1940. Before he turned 21, Lewis had already taken on a central role in the American civil rights movement. As a college student he participated in sit-in protests to desegregate lunch counters in Nashville in the spring of 1960 and he was a founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) national civil rights organization.
“In 1961 he endured brutal physical beatings and a lengthy arrest as one of 13 participants in the first Freedom Rides, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to desegregate interstate commercial busing in the South,” said the U.S. House of Representatives History and Art Archives.
In 1963 Lewis helped plan the March on Washington and in 1965 Alabama state troopers in the town of Selma attacked Lewis and other demonstrators with clubs and tear gas during a march for voting rights.
“Images of the assault were broadcast around the country and directly contributed to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” the archives said.
Lewis’ first political seat was on the City Council in Atlanta, Ga. He was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1986 and was re-elected 16 times. By 2019, Lewis was the third-longest-serving Black member of Congress. Before his death, he voiced support for protests held in the wake of Black man George Floyd’s death at the hands of a white police officer.
Lewis’ stamp is expected to feature a photograph of the congressman taken by Marco Grob on assignment for the Aug. 26, 2013, issue of Time magazine.
“The selvage showcases a photograph of Lewis taken by Steve Schapiro in 1963 outside a workshop about nonviolent protest in [Clarksdale, Miss.] Derry Noyes served as art director for this project,” said the USPS.
More 2023 stamps are still set to be revealed and all artwork is subject to change.
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