The United States Postal Service has issued the 44th Black Heritage Stamp that honors August Wilson.
Wilson is hailed for being a trailblazer in the theater industry and bringing African American drama to American theater.
Wilson wrote the play, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom." According to the National Endowment for The Humanities, "in 1982, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom was accepted for a workshop production by the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center's National Playwrights Conference in Waterford, Connecticut, and, in 1984, the play opened at Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut."
It was adapted into a film and released on Netflix last month.
Wilson's play, "Fences was written in 1983. It went on to win a Pulitzer Prize, a Tony Award, and more after it opened on Broadway in 1987.
The Greenspace.org said, "Wilson explores a century’s worth of African-American struggle and triumph in his plays, beginning with the complex narrative of freedom at the turn of the century (Gem of the Ocean) and ending with the assimilation and sense of alienation of the 1990s (Radio Golf)."
In all, he wrote 10 plays that showed the breadth of the African American experience. He often credited the "blues great Bessie Smith’s 'Nobody in Town Can Bake a Sweet Jelly Roll Like Mine' as among the most influential songs in his work," the article said.
The iconic playwright died in 2005.