USPS issues Black Heritage stamp of playwright August Wilson

The U.S. Postal Service announced Thursday the 44th stamp in the Black Heritage series will honor playwright August Wilson, “who brought fresh perspectives and previously unheard voices to the American stage.”

The USPS’ Black Heritage stamp series, began in 1940 with Booker T. Washington.

The stamp features an oil painting of Wilson based on a 2005 photograph. Behind him is a picket fence, alluding to one of his best-known plays, “Fences,” which became a motion picture in 2016.

“Wilson earned the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for two of his plays,” USPS wrote announcing the stamp, “making him one of only a handful of American playwrights to receive the prize more than once.”

Wilson’s first Pulitzer was for “Fences,” which was written in 1985 and debuted on Broadway in 1987. The second was for ‘The Piano Lesson,” written in 1987.

“It’s still kind of like that ‘pinch me’ moment,” his daughter, Sakina Ansari said during a Facebook Live event announcing the stamp. “But now I get a piece of mail and I look and, that’s my dad there. I know he’s always with me, but now it’ll be those unexpected reminders that he may be physically gone, but he’s still here.”

“I very much appreciate the stamp you created for August. ... There’s a light that is shining from within him,” his wife of 11 years, Constanza Romero, said.

Wilson is hailed as a trailblazer for helping to bring nonmusical Black drama to the American theater. “Each new staging of his plays is an opportunity to witness his explorations of the ways that history and tradition burden African Americans while also giving them sustenance in their daily lives,” USPS wrote.

The Wilson stamp is being issued as a Forever stamp and will always be equal to the current 1-ounce price of first-class mail.