Every once in a while, I find myself reflecting on what I wrote in a #stampoftheday post and wondering if I went down the wrong path or, at least, missed an interesting opportunity.
Yesterday’, when I wrote about a stamp issued in 1967 to honor the 25th anniversary of Voice of America (VOA), was one of those days. So today, I’m going to revisit two things I touched on but didn’t flesh out. In doing so, I also will introduce today’s #stampoftheday, a 5-cent stamp, issued in 1963 marking the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.
While writing yesterday, I was struck by the fact that VOA’s first broadcast, made on February 1, 1942 started “We bring you ‘Voices of America’.” But, I noted, the name of the institution the broadcast spawned was the “Voice of America,” a name coined by Robert Sherwood, a playwright and sometime speechwriter for President Franklin Roosevelt.
Since Sherwood was a skilled writer, I assume this was a conscious choice. But, I wondered, what if had been called “Voices of America.” This, I think, would have more accurately reflected the fact that while we (hopefully) share some common values, our strength comes from our diversity not our similarities. And at our best, we find ways to embrace our diversity and our differences. But at our worst we fear diversity and demonize those who disagree with us. (See “Coup, attempted in Washington DC on January 6”)
Walt Whitman understood this when he wrote “I Hear America Singing,” which starts, “I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear.” Whitman goes on to list people doing a variety of jobs – mechanics, carpenters, masons, boatmen, deckhands, shoemakers, hatters, wood-cutters, mothers, wives, girls who are sewing or washing – “each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else.”
The power of celebrating our diversity and differences is underscored by the second not-fully-fleshed out aspect of yesterday’s post: the story of Georg Olden, who designed the VOA stamp. Born George Elliott Olden in Birmingham, Alabama in 1920, Olden left college in 1942 and took a job as a graphic designer at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), predecessor of today’s CIA. He designed posters that promoted conservation and rationing and he published cartoons in The New Yorker, Esquire, and National CIO News, a leading labor union journal. During this time he removed the last letter from his first name, supposedly as a way of getting magazine editors to notice him.
In 1945, Colonel Lawrence Lowman, who had headed OSS’ Communications Division, became vice president of CBS’ new television division. He hired the 24-year old Olden, to oversee graphic design because, he said, Olden “had a full grasp of the whole range of commercial-art techniques.” In 1945, Olden was also selected to be the official graphic designed the Urban League’s logo.
At CBS, Olden initially was a one-man operation, working on six programs a week. But by the time he left in 1960 he headed a staff of 14 working on 60 different shows. He brought a contemporary style to a variety of un-contemporary programs. The opening of “Gunsmoke,” for example feature the word “Gunsmoke” displayed diagonally across the screen with a bullet hole blasted through the “o.” He brought this sensibility to a host of other shows, including “I Love Lucy”, “The Ed Sullivan Show”, “Lassie”, and “Face the Nation.” He also supervised the production of the vote tallying board for the first televised Presidential election in 1952.
In 1960, he left CBS to take a senior position at BBDO, one of the nation’s largest and best-known advertising agencies. In 1963, he joined an elite department within McCann-Erickson, another well-known agency. In 1962 he also designed the iconic statue given to winners of the Clio award, established in 1959 for high achievement in advertising. By 1970, Olden had won this award seven times. (Olden also designed the Urban League’s “equal-sign” logo.)
In 1963, the U.S. Post Office Department commissioned him to design a stamp commemorating the Emancipation Proclamation’s 100th anniversary. This made Olden the first Black man (or woman) to design a postage stamp, He produced a stark image of a broken chain in black on a blue background, a rendering that President John F. Kennedy said was “a reminder of the extraordinary actions in the past as well as the business of the future.”
Olden’s successes continued until 1970 when McCann Erickson, laid him off. “The ostensible reason was economic-a recession,” wrote Julie Lasky in an article about Olden. “But Olden, who seems not to have experienced a day’s unemployment…was devastated by what he clearly saw as betrayal.” Olden challenged the firing as racial discrimination in a case filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
But in 1972, the commission ruled against him. Working with William Kunstler, the famed defense lawyer, Olden initiated a class-action lawsuit against McCann Erickson on behalf of himself and other blacks who were allegedly victims of discrimination. In 1972, Olden, who was estranged from his second wife, also moved to Los Angeles with his 28-year old German-born girlfriend. In late January 1975, just before the case was supposed to go to trail, his girlfriend shot and killed Georg, acting, she claimed in self-defense. She pleaded not guilty and was acquitted of the charge in May 1975.
Olden, who was the subject of intense media coverage in the 1950s, seems to have disappeared by the time he was killed. But he reemerged in the past two decades, a shift highlighted in 2007, when the American Institute of Graphic Artists honored Olden with its prestigious medal, which is given for exceptional achievement in the field of graphic design.
Before he died, Olson submitted a short biographical statement to Who’s Who. “As the first black American to achieve an executive position with a major corporation, my goal was the same as that of Jackie Robinson in baseball,” wrote Olden, who added he wanted “to achieve maximum respect and recognition by my peers, the industry and the public, thereby hopefully expanding acceptance of, and opportunities for, future black Americans in business.”
He was, in short, one of the “Voices from America.”
Be safe, stay well, sing what belongs to you and none else, work for justice, and fight for peace.