Maya Angelou and the Spingarn Medal

The American Women Quarter Program, a successor to the 50 State Quarters (1999-2008) and America the Beautiful (2010-2021) coin programs, is a four-year series (2022-2025) celebrating the accomplishments and contributions of important American women. The five honorees for 2022 are Maya Angelou, Dr. Sally Ride, Wilma Mankiller, Nina Otero-Warren, and Anna May Wong. Release of the Angelou quarter was forecast for February 7, 2022; however, this product is currently backordered by the U.S. Mint (images courtesy of U.S. Mint).

Angelou's previous numismatic connections include the National Medal of Arts (presented by President Clinton in 2000) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (conferred by President Obama in 2010). Following Angelou's passing in 2014, two efforts to posthumously award a Congressional gold medal (HR 247, 114th and HR303, 116th) failed to pass in Congress.

Earlier, the NAACP awarded the Spingarn medal to Angelou in 1994. This is the highest honor conferred by the NAACP and recognizes outstanding achievements by African Americans. The NAACP first awarded this medal on February 12, 1915, to Ernest E. Just, the head of physiology at Howard Medical School. The choice of Lincoln's birthday was almost certainly deliberate and indicates a veneration of the 16th president. Since then, the NAACP has awarded this medal annually, with only a few gaps. The Spingarn medal was the brainchild of J. E. Spingarn, a professor at Columbia University. A June 7, 1913 clip from the Denver Star quoted Spingarn:

Within numismatics, the Spingarn medal was first catalogued by National Numismatic Collection Curator T. L. Comparette in the 1914 American Journal of Numismatics, who wrote:

Comparette attributed the dies to the engraver H(enning) Ryden, with medals struck by the Whitehead and Hoag Company in Newark, NJ.

Since its first issue in 1915, a number of examples have appeared on the secondary market. The most significant is that of Sammy Davis, Jr., sold by his estate through Heritage Auctions in 2006. This piece appeared in their October 7 sale of that year, lot 24021, and realized $657.25, a shockingly low figure that no doubt would be substantially higher in today's market (images courtesy of Heritage Auctions).

A small number of unawarded pieces have appeared in the numismatic marketplace. The auction firm of Johnson and Jensen sold an example in their Auction #11 (August 17, 1981, lot 277). This piece was described as was unwarded, and realized $95. This same example appears to be offered again, in their Auction #15-16 (March 28, 1982, lot 1309), where it realized $71.50. The piece was unlooped, unlike the Davis example illustrated here.

Joe Levine offered a different example Auction #70 of the Presidential Coin & Antique sale (December 1, 2001, lot 711) that realized $219. This piece exhibited a simple loop and was described as gilt bronze. Another example reported to us, and held privately, traded at $2,500.

The American Numismatic Society holds a bronze example, their catalog no. 1964.140.2. This example is bronze, not gilt, unmounted without a loop, and not edge marked. The online catalog of the National Numismatic Collection does not indicate an example in that collection, but it seems likely it would be among their uncatalogued material, since the Curator Thomas L. Comparette wrote up the medal in the 1914 American Journal of Numismatics. However, Comparette's 1914 catalog of the National Numismatic Collection does not include the Spingarn medal.

The earliest examples were likely gold. An early brochure (https://credo.library.umass.edu/cgi-bin/pdf.cgi?id=scua:mums312-b022-i223), c. 1922, and almost certainly published by the NAACP, describes the piece as gold. Harry Waterson notes that many organizations that issued gold medals used the 1933 ban on private of ownership of gold as a rationale for switching to other formats (in this case, gilt bronze).

The author acknowledges Harry Waterson and Jesse Kraft, who furnished source material for this article.