U.S. Postal Service Joins McLain High School for Science and Technology for a Black History Month Celebration

EVENT:
The U.S. Postal Service joins the students of McLain High School for Science and Technology to celebrate Black History Month with the unveiling of the Charles Waddell Chesnutt commemorative stamp, the 31st in the Black Heritage stamp series.

WHO:
McLain High School for Science and Technology students and the U.S. Postal Service.

WHAT:
The program will include an unveiling of the Black Heritage Series Stamp featuring Charles Waddell Chesnutt, this year's designee by the Postal Service. Essayist, folklorist and novelist Chesnutt is the 31st honoree in the popular commemorative stamp series. He was the first African-American fiction writer to earn national acclaim and is best known for his depictions of the African-American experience before and after the Civil War. Students have a variety of activities planned to pay tribute to Charles Waddell Chesnutt including a performance of a musical selection by a contemporary of C.W. Chesnutt, James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing”. The students will also feature art and literary works honoring C.W. Chesnutt. In addition they will have a showing of the film “The Veiled Aristocrats” which is based on one of C.W. Chesnutt’s novels. The video is a part of the Rudisill Regional Library Collection.

WHEN:
11:30 a.m., February 27, 2008

WHERE:
McLain High School for Science and Technology, 4929 North Peoria Ave. Tulsa Oklahoma.

BACKGROUND:
This commemorative stamp highlights the achievements of author Charles Waddell Chesnutt. Chesnutt was born in Cleveland, OH, in 1858. The son of free blacks, he was raised in Fayetteville, NC, which became a major setting of Chesnutt’s fiction. The pioneering writer is recognized as a major innovator and singular voice among turn-of-century literary realists who probed the color line in American life.

CONTACT:
Beth A. Fisk, Customer Relations Coordinator, (918) 732-6644