About This Stamp
The daughter of a Pullman car waiter, Patricia Roberts Harris was born in Mattoon, Illinois on May 31, 1924. She graduated summa cum laude from Howard University in 1945 and earned a law degree (graduating first in her class) from George Washington University National Law Center in 1960.
Patricia Roberts Harris was the first African-American woman to serve as a U.S. ambassador. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson named her ambassador to Luxembourg. She was appointed dean of Howard University School of Law in 1969, the first woman to serve in this position.
Harris was also the first African-American woman to serve as a member of a presidential Cabinet. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter appointed her Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; two years later, he appointed Harris to her second Cabinet post, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare.
Throughout her multifaceted career, Patricia Roberts Harris gave special attention to the needs of the disadvantaged, and she distinguished herself as an advocate of fairness and equity for all Americans. She died of cancer in Washington, D.C., on March 23, 1985.
The Patricia Roberts Harris stamp is the 23rd issuance in the Black Heritage series. The stamp art is a black-and-white reprint of a color photograph taken of Patricia Roberts Harris during her term as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The photograph was taken in the late 1970s by David Valdez, then a staff photographer at HUD.
Art Director
Howard E. Paine
A member of the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee before being named an art director in 1981, Howard E. Paine supervised the design of more than 400 U.S. postage stamps. After three decades as an art director for the U.S. Postal Service, he retired in 2011.
For more than 30 years Paine was an art director for the National Geographic Society, where he redesigned National Geographic magazine, developed the children’s magazine, National Geographic World, and designed Explorers Hall. A popular lecturer, he has spoken at Yale University and New York University, among others, and presented programs for the National Park Service and the Smithsonian Institution. A judge for numerous art shows and design competitions, Paine also taught magazine design at The George Washington University.
Paine had been a stamp collector since childhood. In 2000, he designed the catalog for Pushing The Envelope: The Art of the Postage Stamp, an exhibit of original stamp art at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
Howard Paine died on September 13, 2014.