In honor of Black History Month, the Affirmative Action Office in Human Resources will sponsor an event on Thursday, Feb. 15 in Killian Hall from noon-1pm.
A new US Postal Service stamp honoring Roy Wilkins, former leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1955-77, will be unveiled by Marcia A. Cannon, postmaster of Cambridge. It will be one of five unveilings of the stamp by the US Postal Service in greater Boston during the month of February, a time for education about, and celebration of, the African-American experience in the United States.
The artwork for the Wilkins stamp, the 24th in the Postal Service's Black Heritage Series, is a black-and-white photograph of Wilkins taken in the 1940s by Morgan and Marvin Smith.
Also at the February 15 event, Valerie Foxx, a human resources specialist from the Boston post office, will perform a vignette about Jane Pittman, a fictional black woman whose long life included slavery and participation in the civil rights movement a century later. The portrayal is taken from The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines. A televised version of the novel featured Cicely Tyson as Miss Pittman.
There will also be an exhibit comprising collages of posters, newspaper articles and books depicting aspects of African-American history, assembled by Leona Martin of the Affirmative Action Office. The exhibit will be shown only during the one-hour event.
For more information, call x8-8467.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on February 7, 2001.
