Postal Service Honors Dunbar High School Principal on Stamp
32nd Black Heritage Stamp Immortalizes Anna Julia Cooper
What:
The U.S. Postal Service will issue a new 44-cent commemorative stamp honoring Anna Julia Cooper, a Civil Rights activist and former teacher and principal of Paul Laurence Dunbar High School (previously Preparatory High School for Colored Youth and M Street High School) in the nation’s capital.
Who:
Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, (D) District of Columbia
Yverne “Pat” Moore, Postmaster, Washington, DC
Gerald Austin, Principal, Paul Laurence Dunbar High School
Delores J. Killette, Vice President and Consumer Advocate, U.S. Postal Service
Malik Shabaazz, 2009 Graduate, Paul Laurence Dunbar High School
Carla L. Peterson, Professor of English, University of Maryland
When:
Thursday, June 11, 2009
10:00 a.m.
Where:
Paul Laurence Dunbar High School
1301 New Jersey Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC
Background:
Educator, scholar, feminist, and activist Anna Julia Cooper (c.1858–1964) gave voice to the African-American community from the end of slavery to the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. Born into slavery, Cooper developed a love of learning at a young age. In 1887, three years after earning a degree in mathematics from Oberlin College, she was invited to Washington, D.C., to each at the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth (later M Street High School and today Dunbar), the nation’s largest and most prestigious public high school for African Americans at that time.
Noted for the breadth of her education, Cooper also earned a Ph.D. from the University of Paris, Sorbonne, in 1925. At the time, she was one of only four African-American women to earn a Ph.D. and the first black woman from any country to do so at the Sorbonne.
The 32nd stamp in the Black Heritage series features a portrait of Cooper by Kadir Nelson, who based his painting on an updated photograph.
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