We should never forget that it takes a team to execute our best ideas and produce effective change. Furthermore, to portray accomplished African-Americans in an accurate and creative light we need the artists.

Barbara Higgins Bond is an artist and designs some of the artwork in the stamps we share on this page. The first African-American female to illustrate a United States postage stamp, she has created outstanding designs for three Black Heritage issues: Jan E. Matzeliger, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Percy Lavon Julian.

Higgins Bond earned her bachelor of fine arts from Memphis College of Art. A versatile artist whose work has attracted national attention, Higgins Bond (as she’s known professionally) has been an illustrator and commercial artist for close to 40 years. Her images have appeared in children’s books and on magazine and book covers, posters, album covers, and collectors’ plated created for such prominent clients as Anheuser-Busch, McGraw-Hill, Essence magazine, the Franklin Mint, The Bradford Exchange, NBC, Hennessy Cognac, Frito-Lay, and Columbia House. She also is an adjunct professor of illustration at the Nossi College of Art in Nashville, where she lives. The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Du Sable Museum of African-American History have exhibited her work.