Late veteran journalist Gwen Ifill now graces the U.S. Post Office 43rd stamp in the Black Heritage Forever Stamp series. Ifill, who died in 2016 at the age of 61 after battling cancer, will be memorialized on a new U.S. Postal Service Forever stamp. She is the 43rd stamp in the Black Heritage series.
Ifill spent her career opening doors for other Black journalists.
Ifill started out writing for newspapers at a time when it was rare to have a Black woman in the newsroom — the late 1970s,” NPR reported.
“I came to work one day and found that someone had left at my workspace a little note that said [expletive] go home,” Ifill recalled of her time as a college intern at the Boston Herald in the Makers documentary.
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Ifill later worked for the Baltimore Evening Sun, The New York Times, and The Washington Post before entering broadcast journalism.
“In 1999, Ifill became the first Black woman to host a nationally televised U.S. public affairs program as the anchor of Washington Week in Review on PBS. In 2013, she joined Judy Woodruff as part of the first all-women team to anchor a national nightly news hour as co-host of PBS Newshour,” The Hill reported.
In 2004, she became the first African-American woman to moderate a vice-presidential debate.
Each year, the postal service receives about 40,000 suggestions for commemorative stamps. Only a few get made into stamps. Ifill’s Black Heritage stamp, which is being released today, January 30, 2020, joins the likes of ones featuring Booker T. Washington, Thurgood Marshall, and Ella Fitzgerald.
