About This Stamp
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 U.S. Postal Service is proud to honor the life of this extraordinary American activist who became an iconic figure in the civil rights movement.
The stamp art, a gouache painting on illustration board, is an original portrait of Parks emphasizing her quiet strength.
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 (1966), 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.
The stamp honoring Rosa Parks is one of three stamps in the civil rights set celebrating freedom, courage, and equality being issued in 2013. It is being issued as a Forever® stamp. Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail® one-ounce rate.
Rosa Parks’s name and image used under license with the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
Derry Noyes
For more than 40 years Derry Noyes has designed and provided art direction for close to 800 United States postage stamps and stamp products. She holds a bachelor of arts degree from Hampshire College and a master of fine arts degree from Yale University.
Noyes worked as a graphics designer at Beveridge and Associates, a Washington, D.C., firm, until 1979 when she established her own design firm, Derry Noyes Graphics. Her clients have included museums, corporations, foundations, and architectural and educational institutions. Her work has been honored by American Illustration, the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, Communication Arts, Critique magazine, Graphis, Creativity International, and the Society of Illustrators.
Before becoming an art director for the U.S. Postal Service, she served as a member of the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee from 1981 to 1983.
Noyes is a resident of Washington, D.C.
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.