6623: Native Stamp.

From The Chicago Tribune…

Richard Wright comes home again

Julia Keller, Cultural Critic

Mississippi made him, but Chicago made him a writer. It was Chicago—with its bright churn of possibilities and its darker realities—that transformed Richard Wright from a shy Southern kid into a popular and internationally acclaimed author.

Chicago broke his heart, but it gave him his mission: to illuminate the dehumanizing effects of racial prejudice in 20th Century America.

That is why, according to officials at the U.S. Postal Service, when a new stamp honoring Richard Wright (1908-1960) was commissioned, they decided that the stamp’s background simply had to be the South Side of Chicago, where Wright lived and worked during a crucial, formative decade.

And when a location was needed for the public ceremony Thursday at which the stamp will be unveiled, that was a snap: Again, it had to be Chicago.

In fact, in a touch as satisfying as the period at the end of a beautiful sentence, the event will occur at the post office of the same name at which Wright—as a brilliant and ambitious 19-year-old, fresh off the train from Memphis—was hired in 1928 to haul and sort mail. The current main post office is across the street from the building at which Wright worked; the new structure was completed in 1997.

The author of “Native Son” (1940) and “Black Boy” (1945) would go on to live in cities such as New York and Paris, but it was Chicago that turned him into the restless literary artist and fearless truth-teller he became.

“We went back and forth about what the background would be,” said Kadir Nelson, the artist who created the Wright stamp, from his studio in San Diego. “It was either going to be the South or Chicago. Chicago just made the most sense.”

Read the full story here.