About This Stamp
With this 20th stamp in the Literary Arts series, the U.S. Postal Service honors James Baldwin, one of the foremost American writers of the 20th century. Artist Thomas Blackshear II based his portrait on a black-and-white photograph of Baldwin taken around 1960, probably in New York. The stamp background is evocative of Baldwin’s semi-autobiographical novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, set in Harlem.
Art Director
Phil Jordan
Phil Jordan grew up in New Bern, North Carolina, and attended East Carolina University. After Army service in Alaska, he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in visual communications. He worked in advertising and in design at a trade association before joining Beveridge and Associates, Inc., where he provided art direction for corporate, institutional, and government design projects. A partner in the firm, he left after 18 years to establish his own design firm where he managed projects for USAir, NASA, McGraw-Hill, IBM, and Smithsonian Books, among others. He was Design Director of Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine for 15 years. His work appeared in numerous exhibitions and publications such as Graphis and Communications Arts. A past president of the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, he was an art director for the U.S. Postal Service from 1991 to 2014. A resident of Falls Church, Virginia, he is a retired glider pilot and a member of the Skyline Soaring Club.
Stamp Artist
Thomas Blackshear II
Thomas Blackshear II was born in Texas and grew up in Georgia. He pursued his interest in art—“Drawing was all I ever wanted to do,” he says—throughout high school. After graduating from the American Academy of Art in Chicago in 1977, he went to work for Hallmark Cards, where he met and served as an apprentice to illustrator Mark English. In 1980, Blackshear became head illustrator for Godbold/Richter Studios. He began his freelance career in 1982.
Known for his dramatic lighting and sensitivity to mood, Blackshear has produced illustrations for stamps, posters, collectors’ plates, magazines, greeting cards, calendars, books, and advertising. His clients have included Anheuser-Busch, Disney Pictures, Coca-Cola, Jim Henson Studios, Lee Jeans, George Lucas Studios, Milton Bradley, Seven-Up, and Universal Studios.
In 2006, Blackshear’s art was exhibited in Rome in a show sponsored by the Vatican. Known for his best-selling designs for figurines in the Thomas Blackshear’s Ebony Visions collection, he also created the artwork for the “Master Place” collection for DaySpring Cards.
Blackshear’s numerous stamp designs for the U.S. Postal Service® include five stamps in the Black Heritage series, most recently the Dorothy Height stamp (2017). In addition, his artwork has been featured on more than a dozen stamps commemorating Classic Films (1990), Jazz: Legends of American Music series (1995), Classic Movie Monsters (1997), James Baldwin (2004), Mother Teresa (2010), Rosa Parks (2013), and Chief Standing Bear (2023).
Twenty-eight of his depictions of famous Black Americans are featured in the 1992 Black Heritage series commemorative book entitled I Have A Dream. Blackshear has received many awards for his art including a gold medal from the Society of Illustrators. This freelance artist, teacher, and lecturer currently lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado.