USPS is dedicating the Shirley Chisholm Forever stamp Jan. 31 at Brooklyn Borough Hall in Brooklyn, NY.

The stamp is the 37th in the Black Heritage series.

As a new USPS video on the one-time presidential candidate relates, Chisholm was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1968. She was the first black woman elected to Congress and became an outspoken politician who helped shatter barriers of race and gender during the 1960s and 1970s.

Chisholm joins an elite group of the nation’s leading African-American educators, entertainers, civil rights activists, politicians, scholars, athletes and business pioneers featured in the Black Heritage stamp series.

Other honorees featured on Black Heritage series stamps include, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Dr. Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson, Madam C.J. Walker, Ella Fitzgerald, Marian Anderson, Barbara Jordan, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Mary McLeod Bethune, John Johnson and Althea Gibson.

The Shirley Chisholm Black Heritage Forever Stamp will be available Jan. 31 at Post Offices nationwide, online at usps.com/stamps, at the Postal Store on eBay at ebay.com/stamps and by calling 800-STAMP 24 (800-782-6724).

Description

“Unbought and Unbossed.” That was the slogan of maverick politician Shirley Chisholm, who shattered barriers, spoke her mind, stood up for the disadvantaged, and in 1968 became the first black woman ever elected to Congress.

The Shirley Chisholm Stamp is the 37th stamp in the Black Heritage series features a painting of Chisholm by artist Robert Shetterly. The compelling portrait is taken from a series of paintings titled “Americans Who Tell the Truth.” Art director Ethel Kessler designed the stamp.

After her election to Congress, Chisholm scored another historic first in 1972 when she declared her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President. She later wrote of her unsuccessful bid, “The next time a woman runs, or a black, or a Jew or anyone from a group that the country is ‘not ready’ to elect to its highest office, I believe that he or she will be taken seriously from the start…I ran because somebody had to do it first.”

The Shirley Chisholm stamps are being issued as Forever” stamps in self-adhesive sheets of 20. Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail” one-ounce rate.