Sojourner Truth and Mary McLeod Bethune
First Day Covers

On International Women's Day 1987, the Santa Rosa, CA Post Office, in honor of the first National Women's History Month and the recently issued Black American Stamps Series, issued two this First Day Covers featuring Mary McLeod Bethune and Sojourner Truth.  

 Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955)
Educator, Presidential Advisor
In 1904, Bethune opened a school for black girls in Daytona Beach that became Bethune-Cookman College in 1929. She was its president until 1942. In 1935, she founded the National Council of Negro Women and was its president until 1949. From 1936 to 1944, Bethune served as advisor to President Roosevelt on minority affairs. She was vice-president of NAACP from 1940 to 1955. In 1945, she attended the organizing conference of the United Nations.

  Sojourner Truth (1797-1883)
Abolitionist, Suffragist
Sojourner Truth was freed when New York abolished slavery in 1828. She successfully sued for freedom for a son who had been sold illegally. Already a forceful speaker for abolition, she attended a Women’s Rights Convention in 1850 and became a strong voice for women’s rights and suffrage with her famous speech in Ohio in 1852, "Ain’t I a Woman?" After the Civil War, she tried to get Congress to provide land in the West for newly freed blacks.