Mystery Man, Rights Leaders To Grace Mail

Every year at meetings weary, experts ponder fame and theory, over many a quaint and curious request for honor on a stamp.

Who should they pick for honored postage: arts or science, famed youth or great age?

The answer's here. The coming year will feature a man of mystery.

Writer Edgar Allan Poe will be featured on a U.S. postage stamp early in 2009, the U.S. Postal Service said Thursday.

The 42-cent stamp will mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of poet and mystery writer Poe and will be issued Jan. 16 in Richmond, Va.

The Poe stamp is one of several issues for early 2009 announced by the post office.

Other new postage announced included commemorative stamps marking Alaska and Oregon statehood, lunar new year - the year of the ox - and a postal card marking the bicentennial of Miami University of Ohio.

Also announced was a set of stamps honoring a dozen civil rights leaders, which will go on sale Feb. 12 with ceremonies in New York. Included in that set are:

Mary Church Terrell: Advocate for racial justice and women's rights in America and abroad.

Mary White Ovington: Journalist and social worker, a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

J. R. Clifford: First black lawyer licensed in West Virginia; attacked racial discrimination in education.

Joel Elias Spingarn: Endowed the Spingarn Medal, awarded annually since 1915, to highlight black achievement.

Oswald Garrison Villard: One of the founders of the NAACP and wrote the "Call" leading to its formation.

Daisy Gatson Bates: Mentored nine black students who enrolled at all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957.

Charles Hamilton Houston: Lawyer, educator and a main architect of the civil rights movement.

Walter White: Leader of the NAACP who made daring undercover investigations.

Medgar Evers: NAACP official in Mississippi until his assassination in 1963.

Fannie Lou Hamer: Mississippi sharecropper who fought for black voting rights.

Ella Baker: Skillful organizer who encouraged women and young people to assume positions of leadership in the civil rights movement.

Ruby Hurley: NAACP official who did difficult, dangerous work in the South.