Stamped with Success

RE: “Civil Rights Heroes Commemorated” news article, Feb. 23

To the editors:

I am writing to thank and commend The Harvard Crimson for its coverage of the historic stamp issuance ceremony we held to honor Harvard Law School graduate and civil rights legend Charles Hamilton Houston, Jr., here in Cambridge, Saturday, February 21, 2009. While the Crimson’s article accurately conveyed the content and spirit of the event, it overlooked the exceptionally important work of my friend and colleague, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who served on the United States Postal Service Committee responsible for selecting individuals to be honored by the issuance of stamps. He played a key role in seeing that Charles Hamilton Houston was among the civil rights pioneers honored. He worked doggedly on this for years, and the fruit of his labors could not have come at a more fitting time for this nation generally and its African American community particularly.

To honor 12 civil-rights pioneers the same year marking the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, the 100th anniversary of the founding the NAACP, the 80th anniversary of the reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the inauguration of President, and Harvard Law School graduate, Barack Obama is a worthy tribute. We ought to commend Professor Gates for his extraordinary efforts to honor these giants in this way, and I hope this letter brings him some measure of the thanks he rightly deserves.


Charles J. Ogletree, Jr.
Cambridge, Mass.
March 4, 2009


Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. is the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law and the Founding and Executive Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice.