Nellie Bly, Marguerite Higgins, Ethel L. Payne, and Ida M. Tarbell
FORT WORTH, Texas, Sept. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. Postal Service today
honored four accomplished female journalists, Nellie Bly, Marguerite Higgins,
Ethel L. Payne and Ida M. Tarbell, with the issuance of 37-cent commemorative
postage stamps.
A special ceremony marking the stamps first day of issue was held this
morning, during the National Convention of the Society of Professional
Journalists Sunshine and First Amendment Awards breakfast in Fort Worth.
The Women in Journalism stamps are available today at Fort Worth Post
Offices and will be available starting Monday at post offices across the
country.
"The Women in Journalism stamps evoke the free and creative spirit of the
United States," said Francia G. Smith, Vice President and Consumer Advocate
for the Postal Service, who dedicated the stamps. "We're sure these stamps
will be very popular with our customers and stamp collectors, as well as all
those who value the landmark accomplishments of women in our society and the
great journalists throughout history."
Joining Smith at the first day of issue ceremony were Helen Thomas,
columnist for the Hearst Newspapers; Al Cross, President, Society of
Professional Journalists (SPJ); Rena Pederson, Editor-At-Large, Dallas Morning
News; and Michael S. Flores, Fort Worth's District Manager. Honored guests
included John Vallie, Postmaster, Fort Worth.
"I am deeply honored to salute the four newspaper women journalists who
will be immortalized on the new commemorative postage stamps entitled, 'Women
in Journalism,'" said Thomas. "They were unsung heroines in their time and
displayed great courage and great integrity in uplifting the profession of
journalism. They also made great contributions to America by exposing
corruption, the inhumanity of social discrimination and the horror of war.
And they understood the need to keep the American people informed about the
great issues that affected all their lives in the 20th century."
"As the nation's oldest and broadest journalism organization, SPJ is proud
to host this event honoring the contributions of all women journalists, as
exemplified by the four stellar examples depicted on these stamps," said Al
Cross, outgoing president of SPJ and political writer and columnist for The
(Louisville) Courier-Journal. "These stamps convey the message that journalism
was one of the early career opportunities for women, and that it continues to
play an essential role in our diverse democracy."
Nellie Bly, Marguerite Higgins, Ethel L. Payne and Ida M. Tarbell made
their contributions to journalism at different times, but they were all
trailblazers in a field dominated by men. Avoiding the limitations of working
on women's or society pages, they entered the fields of investigative
journalism, war correspondence and political reporting. Through their work
they won awards and fame and opened doors for future women journalists.
Nellie Bly (1864-1922) was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran in Cochrans Mills,
Pa. In 1885, angered by a column in The Pittsburg Dispatch, she sent an
anonymous letter to the editor. Impressed with her letter, the editor ran an
ad seeking the writer's identity. After meeting Cochran, he hired her to
write an article about "a woman's place in the world." She soon became a
permanent member of the staff and began to use the pen name Nellie Bly, taken
from the popular Stephen Foster song "Nelly Bly."
In 1887 Bly moved to New York City and was hired by The World a newspaper
owned by Joseph Pulitzer. For her first assignment she feigned insanity and
gained admittance to the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwells Island (now
Roosevelt Island). Bly's account of her experience exposed the poor treatment
of patients in the asylum.
Given the task of traveling around the world in fewer than 80 days, Bly
achieved widespread fame in 1889 as she raced around the world to beat the
record set by Jules Verne's fictional character Phileas Fogg. She began her
voyage on Nov. 14, 1889, setting sail from New Jersey for England. Before her
journey ended 72 days later, Bly had traveled by train, rickshaw and burro to
achieve her goal.
Bly was one of the first female stunt reporters who participated in
dangerous or sensational activities in order to capture readers' attention.
Her success, as well as the social issues her stories highlighted, helped open
the profession to coming generations of women journalists who wanted to write
hard news rather than be relegated to light features and society columns.
Marguerite Higgins (1920-1966) covered World War II, Korea and Vietnam and
in the process advanced the cause of equal access for female war
correspondents. In 1951 she was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for
international reporting.
Eager to become a war correspondent, Higgins persuaded the management of
the New York Herald Tribune to send her to Europe in 1944. After being
stationed in London and Paris, she was reassigned to Germany in March 1945.
There she witnessed the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in April
1945 and received an Army campaign ribbon for her assistance during the SS
guards' surrender. She later covered the Nuremberg war trials and the Soviet
Union's blockade of Berlin.
In 1950 Higgins was named chief of the Tribune's Tokyo bureau. Shortly
after her arrival in Japan war broke out in Korea. One of the first reporters
on the spot, she was quickly ordered out of the country by a U.S. military
commander who argued that women did not belong at the front. An appeal was
made to General Douglas MacArthur, who reversed the orders, which was a major
breakthrough for all female war correspondents. As a result of her reporting
from Korea, Higgins won the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting,
sharing the award with five male war correspondents.
Higgins continued to cover foreign affairs throughout the rest of her
life, interviewing world leaders such as Francisco Franco, Nikita Khrushchev
and Jawaharlal Nehru. In 1955 she established and was chief of the Tribune's
Moscow bureau. In 1963 she joined Newsday and was assigned to cover Vietnam.
While on assignment in late 1965, Higgins contracted a tropical disease that
led to her death on January 3, 1966.
Award-winning journalist Ethel L. Payne (1911-1991), known as the first
lady of the black press, combined advocacy with journalism as she reported on
the civil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1972 she became the
first female African-American commentator employed by a national network.
Born in Chicago, Ill., Payne began her journalism career rather
unexpectedly while working as a hostess at an Army Special Services club in
Japan, a position she had taken in 1948. She allowed a visiting reporter from
the "Chicago Defender" to read her journal, which detailed her own experiences
as well as those of African-American soldiers. Impressed, the reporter took
the journal back to Chicago and soon Payne's observations were being used by
the Defender, an African-American newspaper with a national readership, as the
basis for front-page stories.
In the early 1950s, Payne moved back to Chicago to work full-time for the
Defender. After working there for two years she took over the paper's one-
person bureau in Washington, D.C. During Payne's career, she covered several
key events in the civil rights movement, including the Montgomery bus boycott
and desegregation at the University of Alabama in 1956, as well as the 1963
March on Washington.
Payne earned a reputation as an aggressive journalist who asked tough
questions. She once asked President Eisenhower when he planned to ban
segregation in interstate travel. The President's angry response that he
refused to support special interests made headlines and helped push civil
rights issues to the forefront of national debate.
The work of Ida M. Tarbell (1857-1944) has stood the test of time. In 1999
New York University's journalism department ranked her "History of the
Standard Oil Company" fifth on its list of the top 100 works of 20th-century
American journalism. On Oct. 7, 2000, she was posthumously inducted into the
National Women's Hall of Fame.
Tarbell was born in Erie County, Pa. After graduating from Allegheny
College in 1880 (the only woman in her class), Tarbell moved to Ohio and
taught school for two years. In 1882 she moved back to Pennsylvania and a
year later took a position with The Chautauquan, a monthly magazine.
In 1891 Tarbell moved to Paris and supported herself by contributing
articles to American newspapers and magazines. In 1894 she returned to the
United States to work for McClure's Magazine. Her most famous project was an
exhaustive investigation of the Standard Oil Company and the methods that John
D. Rockefeller, Sr., had used to consolidate his hold on the oil industry.
Tarbell's detailed series of articles published from 1902 to 1904 helped bring
about legal actions that resulted in the breakup of Standard Oil several years
later.
Later in her career, Tarbell traveled as a lecturer and wrote freelance
articles, including a report on the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and an
interview with Benito Mussolini in the mid-1920s.
For each of these stamps, designer Fred Otnes of West Redding, Conn.,
created a collage featuring a black-and-white photograph combined with
memorabilia such as publication nameplates and story headlines. The four
designs are repeated five times each on the 20-stamp pane.
The collage on the Nellie Bly stamp features a circa 1890 black-and-white
photograph of Bly. To the left of the photograph is a portion of the
nameplate of The World from the Jan. 20, 1890, edition of the paper.
The collage on the Marguerite Higgins stamp features a 1950 black-and-
white photograph of Higgins taken by Life photographer Carl Mydans. The
picture appeared in Higgins' 1951 book "War in Korea" and was captioned "Miss
Higgins after landing at Suwon." The word "Korea" taken from the map on the
inside of the back cover of "War in Korea," appears to the right of the
photograph. To the left is the New York Herald Tribune nameplate from the
Sept. 17, 1950, edition of the paper.
The collage on the Ethel L. Payne stamp features a black-and white
photograph of Payne. To the left of the photograph is the nameplate of the
Chicago Defender from the April 3, 1954, edition. To the right of Payne's
photograph is a headline for her article about the Alabama bus boycott that
was published in the Feb. 18, 1956, edition of the Chicago Defender.
The collage on the Ida M. Tarbell stamp features a black-and-white
photograph of Tarbell. To the right of the photograph is a portion of the
headline "The History of the Standard Oil Company," as well as a portion of
the McClure's Magazine header, both from page 3 of the magazine's November
1902 issue.
Sixty-one million Women in Journalism self-adhesive 37-cent stamps have
been printed.
To see the Women in Journalism stamps, visit the Postal Service Web site
at http://www.usps.com and locate the online version of this press release by
clicking on "News and Events" then "Philatelic News."
Current U.S. stamps, as well as a free comprehensive catalog, are
available toll free by calling 1 800 STAMP-24. In addition, a selection of
stamps and other philatelic items are available in the Postal Store at
http://www.usps.com.
Since 1775, the U.S. Postal Service has connected friends, families,
neighbors and businesses by mail. It is an independent federal agency that
visits 137 million homes and businesses every day and is the only service
provider to deliver to every address in the nation. The Postal Service
receives no taxpayer dollars for routine operations, but derives its operating
revenues solely from the sale of postage, products and services. With annual
revenues of more than $65 billion, it is the world's leading provider of mail
and delivery services, offering some of the most affordable postage rates in
the world. The Postal Service delivers more than 46 percent of the world's
mail volume -- some 207 billion letters, advertisements, periodicals and
packages a year -- and serves 7 million customers each day at its 40,000
retail locations nationwide.
SOURCE U.S. Postal Service
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Related links:
http://www.usps.com
CONTACT:
McKinney Boyd, +1-214-819-8740, or Frances
Frazier, +1-202-268-2898, both of U.S. Postal Service
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