Stamp of Approval: Postal Service Honors RBG and Novelist Morrison

Stories You May Like

Decades Ago, Avid Photographer Captured Campus Life on Film

What’s Tiny, Bookish, and Made of Bricks? Lego Olin Library!

Public Speaking Tips from a Communication Prof

The late justice and the celebrated author—already namesakes of North Campus residence halls—will be featured on postage in 2023

This story has been condensed from an article in the Cornell Chronicle.

By Blaine Friedlander

Two Cornell icons woven indelibly into the fabric of American history—author Toni Morrison, MA ’55, and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’54—will each be commemorated in 2023 with a postage stamp.

Morrison, who passed away in 2019, was selected for her “artfully crafted novels that explored the diverse voices and multifaceted experiences of African Americans,” according to the postal service.

She won a Pulitzer Prize for Beloved; in 1993, she became the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

stamps depicting Toni Morrison and Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Stories You May Like

Decades Ago, Avid Photographer Captured Campus Life on Film

What’s Tiny, Bookish, and Made of Bricks? Lego Olin Library!

Ginsburg, who died in 2020, will be honored for her career as a “passionate proponent of equal justice.”

A government major in Arts and Sciences, she earned a law degree from Columbia and became an activist lawyer fighting gender discrimination, winning five of six cases before the Supreme Court.

She was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1980 and to the nation’s highest court in 1993.

At least two other Cornellians—both Nobel laureates—have also appeared on U.S. postage stamps.

Barbara McClintock 1923, PhD ’27, was featured in an American Scientists series in 2005; novelist Pearl Buck, MA ’25, was in the Great Americans stamp series in 1983.

Images provided.

Published October 28, 2022


Leave a Comment

Once your comment is approved, your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Other stories You may like