Revolutionary Vintage Postage Stamps

Holding a vintage postage stamp in my hands, I can’t help but feel a sense of nostalgia—not just for the past, but for an alternate America that never existed. An America where the Black Panther Party wasn’t vilified but celebrated. Where instead of Elvis, whitewashed patriotism, and sanitized “heroes” on our stamps, we had the faces of Huey Newton, Fred Hampton, Assata Shakur—Black Panthers who fed children, defended their communities, and demanded justice.

Imagine slipping a letter into a mailbox, and on the upper-right corner, there’s a stamp featuring the Free Breakfast for Children Program. A tiny rectangle of adhesive history, reminding the world that before the government decided feeding hungry kids in school was a good idea, the Panthers had already been doing it. Imagine a first-class stamp adorned with the image of a Panther-run health clinic, a symbol of how they brought medical care to the forgotten, long before America even considered universal healthcare a debate worth having.

But this is America—where the Panthers were smeared, hunted, assassinated. Where COINTELPRO labeled them a threat for daring to empower Black people, while men like J. Edgar Hoover got federal buildings named after them. The very idea of a Black Panther stamp would send certain folks into a tailspin. They’d claim it “glorifies violence” while conveniently ignoring the armed self-defense of the Minutemen or the countless U.S. leaders responsible for wars and oppression. The Panthers’ crime wasn’t violence—it was the audacity to demand power, to demand that America live up to its own ideals.

Stamps are tiny history lessons. They immortalize what a nation chooses to remember, what it values. And the absence of the Black Panther Party from that canon says everything. America will honor Black struggle, but only if it’s sanitized. A Martin Luther King Jr. who speaks only of dreams, not radical economic justice. A Harriet Tubman who stays frozen on a $20 bill that never seems to get printed. Never the Panthers, never the ones who made the state uncomfortable, never the ones who refused to ask politely.

So I look at this vintage stamp and wonder—what if America had been different? What if the Panthers weren’t crushed but embraced, if their impact was recognized instead of erased? Maybe, in that alternate timeline, I’d be holding a Black Panther stamp right now. Maybe in that America, justice wouldn’t feel like such a distant dream.

But in this reality, I hold nothing but the weight of what could have been.

CEO with a Fro’