Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 in an upstairs bedroom of 501 Auburn Avenue, in Atlanta, Georgia.  He grew up two blocks west of Ebenezer Baptist Church.  After preaching elsewhere he returned in 1960, as co-pastor with his father.  At the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Dr. King delivered his famous "I have a dream" speech.  At this moment he historically distinguished himself as the undisputed leader of the civil rights movement.  On April 4 1968, while in Memphis, Tennessee, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed.

sent by O'Neal in 2013 with a Rosa Parks stamp!

USA stamp 2013
Rosa Parks, Forever a first class Rate

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The U.S. Postal Service 2013 Rosa Parks (Forever) stamp honors the life of this extraordinary American activist who became an iconic figure in the civil rights movement. In 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks courageously refused to give up her seat on a municipal bus to a white man, defying the discriminatory laws of the time.

The stamp art, a gouache painting on illustration board, is a portrait of Parks emphasizing her quiet strength. A 1950s photograph served as the basis for the stamp portrait.

The response to Parks's arrest was a boycott of the Montgomery bus system that lasted for more than a year and became an international cause célèbre. In 1956, in a related case, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that segregating Montgomery buses was unconstitutional.

Soon after the boycott ended, Parks moved to Detroit, Michigan. She joined the 1963 march on Washington and returned to Alabama in 1965 to join the march from Selma to Montgomery. The many honors Parks received in her lifetime include the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1996), the Spingarn Medal (1979), and the Congressional Gold Medal (1999). Upon her death in 2005, she became the first woman and second African American to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, DC.

Artist Thomas Blackshear II created an original painting for the stamp, which was designed by art director Derry Noyes.

Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail one-ounce rate.

Made in the USA.

Issue Date: February 4, 2013