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Black Baseball Stars Honored By Stamps

Thurgood Marshall Jr at memorial stamp issue.
photo by dan verbeck
Thurgood Marshall Jr at memorial stamp issue.

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kcur/local-kcur-913083.mp3

Kansas City, MO – The U.S. Postal Service has taken wraps off two commemorative stamps honoring baseball leagues that led the way toward racial integration. The stamp issue came at the Kansas City Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

Thurgood Marshall Jr. of the Postal board of Governors noted how Jackie Robinson's 1947 breaking of the color line led to integration of sports and society and politics.

Marshall paid honor to star players Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson and James "Cool Papa" Bell, and to his father, the late Supreme Court Justice. Marshall said his father was " a huge sports fan and a regular quoter of Satchel Paige, among others. He would have been so tickled. And to have a descendant of Satchel Paige here, and Josh Gibson was very special. And to have former players here, so poignant."
Looking on was Mamie "peanut" Johnson, one of the first female players in the Negro Leagues. The stamps pay tribute to the all-black professional teams that operated from 1920 through about 1960.

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