Announced by the USPS on October 24, 2022.
The 46th stamp in the Black Heritage series honors Ernest J. Gaines (1933-2019). Best known for such novels as “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” [paperback on Amazon] [Kindle edition], [DVD] and “A Lesson Before Dying,” Gaines drew from his childhood as the son of sharecroppers on a Louisiana plantation to explore the untold stories of rural African Americans, adding a vital voice to American literature. The stamp features an oil painting of Gaines, based on a 2001 photograph. Mike Ryan designed the stamp with art by Robert Peterson. Greg Breeding served as art director.
Click here to see Gaines’ books on Amazon
New information will appear below the line, with the most recent at the top.
Updated March 7th:
The Scott catalogue number for this issue is 5753.
Updated January 23rd:
You can see the University of Louisiana version of the USPS day-of-issuance press release here.
Updated December 28th:
Here are the first-day postmarks for this issue:
The Digital Color Postmark for this issue measures 2.72″ x 1.19″
The pictorial postmark measures 2.72″ x 1.27″
Updated December 15th from the Postal Bulletin:
On January 23, 2023, in Lafayette, LA, the United States Postal Service® will issue the Ernest J. Gaines stamp (Forever® priced at the First-Class Mail® rate) in one design, in a pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA) pane of 20 stamps (Item 482900). This stamp will go on sale nationwide January 23, 2023, and must not be sold or canceled before the first-day-of-issue.
The 46th stamp in the Black Heritage series honors author Ernest J. Gaines (1933–2019). Best known for such novels as The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and A Lesson Before Dying, Gaines drew from his childhood as the son of sharecroppers on a Louisiana plantation to explore the untold stories of rural African Americans. The stamp features an oil painting of Gaines based on a 2001 photograph by Raoul Benavides. Mike Ryan designed the stamp with art by Robert Peterson. Greg Breeding served as art director.
Automatic distribution
Item 482900
How to Order the First-Day-of-Issue Postmark:
Customers have 120 days to obtain the first-day-of-issue postmark by mail. They may purchase new stamps at their local Post Office™ or at The Postal Store® website at store.usps.com/store/home. They must affix the stamps to envelopes of their choice, address the envelopes (to themselves or others), and place them in a larger envelope addressed to:
FDOI – Ernest J. Gaines Stamp
USPS Stamp Fulfillment Services
8300 NE Underground Drive, Suite 300
Kansas City, MO 64144-9900
After applying the first-day-of-issue postmark, the Postal Service will return the envelopes through the mail. There is no charge for the postmark up to a quantity of 50. There is a 5-cent charge for each additional postmark over 50. All orders must be postmarked by May 23, 2023.
Technical Specifications:
Issue: Ernest J. Gaines Stamp
Item Number: 482900
Denomination &
Type of Issue: First-Class Mail Forever
Format: Pane of 20 (1 design)
Series: Black Heritage
Issue Date & City: January 23, 2023, Lafayette, LA, 70501
Art Director: Greg Breeding, Charlottesville, VA
Designer: Mike Ryan, Charlottesville, VA
Artist: Robert Peterson, Lawton, OK
Modeler: Sandra Lane / Michelle Finn
Manufacturing Process: Offset, Microprint
Printer: Banknote Corporation of America
Press Type: Alprinta 74
Stamps per Pane: 20
Print Quantity: 35,000,000 stamps
Paper Type: Phosphor, Block Tag
Adhesive Type: Pressure-sensitive
Colors: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black, Pantone 3597
Stamp Orientation: Vertical
Image Area (w x h): 0.84 x 1.42 in / 21.336 x 36.068 mm
Overall Size (w x h): 0.98 x 1.56 in / 24.892 x 39.624 mm
Full Pane Size (w x h): 6.00 x 8.50 in / 152.40 x 215.90 mm
Press Sheets Size (w x h): 18.0 x 25.75 in./ 457.20 x 654.05 mm
Plate Size: 180 stamps per revolution
Plate Number: “B” followed by four (4) single digits in two corners
Marginal Markings:
Front: Header: “Black Heritage, Celebrating Ernest J. Gaines, 46th in a series” • Plate number in bottom 2 corners
Back: ©2022 USPS • USPS logo • Two barcodes (482900) • Plate position diagram (9) • Promotional text
Updated December 14th:
[ceremony details] [click on any of the pictures for larger versions]
U.S. Postal Service to Issue Ernest J. Gaines Black Heritage Stamp
What: The 46th stamp in the Black Heritage series honors Ernest J. Gaines (1933-2019). Best known for novels “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and “A Lesson Before Dying,” Gaines drew from his childhood as the son of sharecroppers on a Louisiana plantation to explore the untold stories of rural African Americans.
The first-day-of-issue event for the Ernest J Gaines Black Heritage stamp is free and open to the public. News of the stamp is being shared with the hashtags #BlackHeritageStamps and #ErnestGainesStamp.
Who: The Honorable Donald Lee Moak, Governor, USPS Board of Governors
When: Monday, Jan. 23, 2023, at 11 a.m. CST
Where: University of Louisiana at Lafayette
620 McKinley Street
Lafayette, LA 70503
RSVP: For additional information about the ceremony location and parking on campus, dedication ceremony attendees are encouraged to RSVP at www.usps.com/ernestgainesbh
Background: Adding a vital African American voice to American literature, Ernest J. Gaines brought worldwide attention to generations of men and women who asserted their own dignity in the face of racial oppression and violence.
Gaines was born on Riverlake Plantation in the town of Oscar just outside New Roads, LA, where his family had lived in the former slave quarters for five generations. He moved to California in 1948, but for decades afterward, his fiction reflected a deep and unbreakable connection to the rural Louisiana of his youth.
After serving in the Army for two years and graduating from college, Gaines received a prestigious fellowship in 1958 to study creative writing at Stanford University. He published his first novel, “Catherine Carmier,” in 1964, but he achieved true fame, widespread acclaim, and a Pulitzer Prize nomination in 1971 with “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” a novel chronicling the recollections of its 110-year-old African American protagonist, whose life spans slavery to the civil rights era.
In 1981, Gaines took a position teaching creative writing at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (then known as the University of Southwestern Louisiana) and soon became its writer-in-residence. In 1983, he published the novel “A Gathering of Old Men,” about a group of African American men who assert their humanity and pride in the face of long-standing prejudice and violence.
In 1993, Gaines published his most critically and popularly acclaimed novel, “A Lesson Before Dying,” about a college-educated African American teacher who provides education and inspiration to a young farmhand awaiting execution for murder. Over the course of their difficult visits in prison, they form a bond that shows both the need to resist those who would deny them their dignity and self-respect. In addition to earning the National Book Critics Circle Award, “A Lesson Before Dying” resulted in Gaines receiving a prestigious MacArthur Foundation “genius grant.”
In 2013, Gaines accepted the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama, calling it the greatest honor he had ever received. Today the Baton Rouge Area Foundation continues to endow an annual Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, which recognizes African American fiction writers who are just beginning to rise to national prominence.
Mike Ryan designed the stamp with art by Robert Peterson. Greg Breeding served as art director.
The Ernest J. Gaines Black Heritage stamp is being issued as a Forever stamp. It will always be equal in valued to the current First-Class Mail 1-ounce price.
Updated November 30th:
This stamp will be issued Monday, January 23 in Lafayette, LA, about 40 miles southwest of his birthplace of Oscar, LA.
Who are these obscure people?
Where is Jesse Owens?
Where is Josephine Baker
Where is Pearl Baily?
Why Josephine Baker (1906-1975)? She is on the Princess Tam-Tam stamp of “Vintage Black Cinema,” Sc. 4338, btw.
Why Jesse Owens? He has been on several U.S. stamps already: Sc. 2496 (1980), 3185j Celebrate the Century 1930s?
Why Pearl Bailey (1918-1990)? She has not yet been on a U.S. stamp.
Josephine Baker & Jesse Owens deserve better than a passing stamp after what they went through.
Pearl Baily represented our country as a U.S. Diplomat.
I would agree on Josephine Baker, since that stamp doesn’t mention her by name. Jesse Owens in Black Heritage won’t be a bad thing, considering that the graphics are now better in comparison to the ’90s. However, there are many more people that should be commemorated. I’m still awaiting long overdue Jack Johnson stamp (the boxer) as well as John Hope Franklin, William Wells Brown and Maynard Jackson to name a few.
What’s so obscure about them? I never heard of anyone but Jesse Owens.
You must be YOUNG never hearing of Josephine Baker and Pearl Bailey.
I remember themn.
During the 1980s I saw Pearl Baily perform her very last performance
with Billy Daniels on New York’s Broadway. They performed for another 1.5 hours after the show finished. Then Pearl went on to perform her Ambassadorial duties.
Both were fabulous performers!
I was born before WW II started,kinda young to know who Josephine Baker was at that time. The more I read about her the more I like her.
She was heroic!
I guess USPS couldn’t afford to send their officials to Hawai’i for a FDoI ceremony in January, so they’ll send them to LA instead… I think there is an AMTRAK station in Lafayette, or maybe a Greyhound terminal…
From Post Bull 15 DEC: USPS# 4829, DCP, PIC, and ANY city Cancels. WILL BE ON AUTOMATIC DISTRIBUTION. ( The Only one this year so far. )
from Linns scott 5753
https://www.linns.com/insights/2023-u.s.-stamp-program
AMTRAK Lafayette https://www.amtrak.com/stations/lft
Yes, AMTRAK Lafayette about a mile from the FDoI Ceremony.
First of all, yes, I am young (like 35 years of age). Second, I wasn’t born in USA so I didn’t knew of existence of Pearl Bailey or Josephine Baker. Third, because I am white, we don’t know much about African American heroes. Let me be clear, in Russia we don’t know anyone other than Martin Luther King Jr (we call him Martin Luther King, but you know whom I am referring to), and Jesse Owens. I also know of Cameroonian-Russian singer Piere Narciss (I bet you don’t know who he is).😀 In US schools I learned about CJ Walker, Harriet Tubman, etc.
Yes, despite my enthusiasm with Black Heritage series, I know only 1% of those individuals. To be honest, not only Black Heritage, other series that I collect also have individuals that I never heard of. For example, in Music Icons series, I knew of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Ray Charles, Johnny Cash and John Lennon.
In fact, only 20% of individuals on US stamps I know of.
Looks similar to the panes that have been issued for the last few stamps in this series, but I agree. I’d love for USPS to invest in more visually-interesting commemorative panes for stamps like this, since they clearly hope many of us will collect new issues that way.
The Railroad Stations pane is much more interesting. It’s on the page for that issue and let me see if I can show it here at a reasonable size:
Well, this is not Legends of Hollywood where a portrait of an actor was shown on the left side of the pane.
What! No stamp for Fred and Ginger? Are you kidding me? Talk about American/Hollywood Legends…..
No one posted any bigoted comments about Mr. Gaines.
When everyone commented on the John Lewis stamp, the comments, which were not anything close to racial or bigoted, were pulled from their site.
John Lewis was probably one of the worst politicians of our time. The fact that he was with a great man, Martin Luther King, does not make him great. That stamp should never have been issued!
What’s next, Marian Berry, or Jesse Jackson?
I don’t understand (or don’t want to understand) why this comment is here in the Gaines discussion.