Black Heritage: Bessie Coleman stamp
Contributed by Florian Hardwig
on Jan 27th, 2017. Artwork published in
April 1995
.
Bessie Coleman, the world’s first licensed female African American pilot, was born today [26 January] in 1892.
This stamp is part of the Black Heritage Stamp Series. Initiated in 1978, the USPS continues to issue a stamp featuring a notable Black American every February in conjunction with Black History Month and at other times during the year.
The typeface is a condensed Lithos, designed by Carol Twombly in 1989. Together with Neuland, Lithos has “come to signify Africans and African-Americans, regardless of how a designer uses them, and regardless of the purpose for which their creators originally intended them”, as Rob Giampietro writes in his essay “New Black Face: Neuland and Lithos as Stereotypography” from 2004.
