Alabama on Some U.S. Postage Stamps (6): Authors

This post is the sixth in a series about postage stamps with Alabama connections. Previous items were

Alabama on U.S. Postage Stamps (1): Some African-Americans

Alabama on U.S. Postage Stamps (2): More African-Americans

Alabama on U.S. Postage Stamps (3): General Topics

Alabama on Some U.S. Postage Stamps (4): More People & Topics

Alabama on Some U.S. Postage Stamps (5): Some More People & Topics

You can see literary stamps from around the world here. Wikipedia has a long list of people on U.S. stamps here. 

More information is below each stamp.

Mary Boykin Chesnut [1823-1886]

A Diary From Dixie. Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut, 1823-1886, ed. by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary. New York: D. Appleton and Company 1905

Boykin's diary includes material on her time in Montgomery during the Civil War. This stamp was issued in 1995. 

O. Henry 

[William Sydney Porter 1862-1910]

His famous short story "The Ransom of Red Chief" is set in Summit, Alabama. This stamp was issued in 2012. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940]

His Alabama bonafides are several. He trained in Montgomery during World War I, where he met that local beauty Zelda Sayre. The couple lived in the city during parts of 1931 and 1932 with Zelda working on her only novel, Save Me the Waltz and her husband writing parts of Tender is the Night. Fitzgerald also wrote several short stories set in the state or a close approximation of it. His stamp was issued in 1996.

Margaet Mitchell [1900-1949]

Mitchell was the author of a little tome entitled Gone with the Wind. In 1922 she lived in Birmingham's Southside while working at the Birmingham News. This stamp was issued in 1986.

Ayn Rand [1905-1982]

Rand was a novelist and philosopher. One of her best known works is the novel The Fountainhead, published in 1943. In the 1949 film version Gary Cooper plays architect Howard Roark, who in one scene extols the virtues of Alabama marble to his admirer, a socialite played by Patricia Neal. You can read my blog post about the film here.

I have no idea if the same scene occurs in the book. Perhaps someone who has read it can tell us in the comments. 

This stamp was issued in 1999.

Zora Neale Hurston [1891-1960]

Hurston experienced some success during her life writing novels, short stories, plays and works on folklore. Yet she died in poverty and declining health in a Florida nursing home and was buried in an unmarked grave. In the mid-1970's writer Alice Walker found the grave and wrote about her search for Hurston's final resting place. Since then Hurston's work has returned to prominence.

Hurston herself claimed a Florida birthplace, but most scholars accept it was really in Notasulga, Alabama. Some of her writing has Alabama settings and topics. In 1952 she corresponded with Alabama author William Bradford Huie about their mutual interest in a Florida murder case.

The stamp was issued in 2003.

Tennesse Williams [1911-1983]

Williams, along with Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, is considered one of the great American playwrights of the 20th century. His first full-length play, "Candles to the Sun" was produced in St. Louis in March 1937 and is set in a coal mining region of Alabama. 

His stamp was released in 1995.

John Henrik Clarke [1915-1998]

Clarke was a writer, historian and professor at universities in both the United States and west Africa. He was born in Union Springs, Alabama.

I'm not sure this stamp was ever issued. I found information about a campaign to get such a stamp, but no issue information.

Alabama on Some U.S. Postage Stamps (5): Some More People & Topics

This post completes the series on U.S. postage stamps related to Alabama.

Previous posts can be found here, here, here and here.  

More about U.S. stamps and postal history can be found here.




Andrew Jackson has been featured on numerous stamps; this one dates from 1870. You can read about his role in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend here.




Issued May 18, 1983. TVA has certainly been important in Alabama history.




Issued June 13, 2002. This stamp features a photograph taken by Walker Evans in the Floyd Burroughs' home in Hale County in the 1930's. Evans and writer James Agee documented the life of sharecroppers there in the 1941 book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. 

Issued February 1962. Facilities in Huntsville were an important part of the Mercury Space Project.

The stamps celebrating streetcar transportation included one featuring Montgomery as the location of the first electric streetcar in the U.S.

Sequoyah lived much of his life in northeastern Alabama where he developed a written version of the spoken Cherokee language. This stamp was issued on December 27, 1980.

 

An Alabama native, Black served in the U.S. Senate and for 34 years on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Alabama on Some U.S. Postage Stamps (4): More People & Topics

This post continues the series on U.S. postage stamps related to Alabama. 

The previous three posts can be found here, here and here.  

More about U.S. stamps and postal history can be found here. 







Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan were featured on this stamp, issued June 27, 1980. 







Helen Keller has also been featured on stamps around the world. Below are ones from Liberia, Spain, Nicaragua, Japan and India.  

This stamp was issued to honor the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird's publication.

Issued June 29, 1995. Semmes was both a Confederate rear admiral and brigadier general best known as captain of the CSS Alabama raider. 

Issued July 25, 1977, in honor of the storied coach's career

Alabama on U.S. Postage Stamps (3): General Topics

In two previous posts here and here I've discussed numerous U.S. postage stamps related to African-Americans associated with Alabama. Below are some examples of stamps related to specific events in state history or the state generally. In future posts I'll cover additional people and topics. 

More about U.S. stamps and postal history can be found here. 





This stamp was issued on July  30, 2014 to commemorate the Civil War Battle of Mobile Bay. 



This stamp was released on April 2, 2002. All 50 states were featured in similar stamps, designed to look like tourist postcards from the 1930's and 1940's.




Issued August 2, 1969 to celebrate the state's sesquicentennial, this stamp features a camellia and a yellow-shafted flicker.  




Issued April 14, 1982




Issued on February 23, 1976, as part of a sheet featuring flags of all 50 states




Issued June 14, 2008 as part of the "Flags of Our Nation" series

Alabama on U.S. Postage Stamps (2): More African-Americans

Recently I posted the first item in this series about stamps related to Alabama. That one featured some of Alabama's great African-Americans; others are below. Subsequent posts will be devoted to other topics and people. 

More about U.S. stamps and postal history can be found here. 




The "Queen of the Blues" was born in Tuscaloosa in 1924 and died in 1963. She was one of the most popular black female singers of the 1950's. Washington has been inducted into both the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Issued June 16, 1993




Cole, who died in 1965, was a popular figure in American music during the 1940's and 1950's. Born in Montgomery, this jazz composer, pianist and singer entered the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1985 and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. He was the first African-American in the United States to host his own network television show that ran on NBC in 1956 and 1957. 

Issued September 1, 1994





Known as the "Brown Bomber," Joe Louis is considered one of the greatest heavyweights to ever enter the ring. In the 1930's he and another of the state's great athletes, Jesse Owens, demonstrated to Hitler that the "Aryan race" was not invincible. 

Issued June 22, 1993




Paige was a dominating pitcher in the Negro baseball leagues and late in his career pitched in the Major Leagues. He appeared in more than 2500 games, including three scoreless innings against the Boston Red Sox when he was 59. 

Issued July 6, 2000


.

Hurston is a writer known for such works as the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. In addition to writing fiction, Hurston was a journalist, folklorist and playwright. 


Issued January 24, 2003




Anderson was the Chief Flight Instructor for the famed Tuskegee Airmen in World War II. 

Issued March 14, 2013



You can learn more about the Boycott here and Rosa Parks here. 



Issued February 4, 2013





You can find out the fascinating story of the Gee's Bend quilters here. 

Issued August 24, 2006

Alabama on U.S. Postage Stamps (1): Some African-Americans

Alabama people and themes have been featured on numerous U.S. postage stamps over the years, and I want to explore some of them in a few posts. Other nations have also honored Alabamians in this way.

My father Amos J. Wright, Jr., was a stamp collector in the 1960's and gave my brother Richard and I an appreciation of the hobby. I still collect them, although they simply end up in a shoe box. We still have my dad's stamp albums, as well as several boxes of stamps that never made it into albums. He pretty much dropped the hobby when his interest turned to Alabama archaeology. 

The stamps below feature African-Americans connected with our state in some way. I've added comments on some of them.

The U.S. Postal Service recently featured "Stamps Reflect History of Tuskegee University" on its blog.

This stamp featuring Booker T. Washington was issued on April 7, 1940, and was the first U.S. stamp to honor an African-American.

Another stamp was issued in 1956 to honor the centennial of Washington's birth. 


African-American author Ralph Ellison is best known for his 1952 novel Invisible Man. Ellison, who attended Tuskegee Institute, died in 1994. He arrived at Tuskegee on a music scholarship but left to study the visual arts in New York City. He eventually detoured into writing. This stamp was issued on February 14, 2014.





This George Washington Carver stamp was issued on February 3, 1998. I recently described "That Time Mom Saw George Washington Carver in Camp Hill" on this blog.





Florence, Alabama native William "W.C." Handy had a long career as songwriter and arranger and is known as the Father of the Blues. He died in 1958 and this stamp was issued in 1969.




Although Tanner never visited Alabama as far as I know, I wanted to include him because his sister Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson has an important connection to the state. Henry Ossawa Tanner was the first African-American artist to achieve fame internationally. He moved to Paris in 1891 and remained there until his death in 1937. As I wrote in another post, his sister was "The First Certified, Practicing Female Physician in Alabama." She practiced at Tuskegee Institute for several years after finishing medical school in Philadelphia in the spring of 1891. Their father was Benjamin T. Tanner, a prominent minister in Pittsburgh. This stamp was issued in 1973

Jesse Owens is one of many legendary athletes born in Alabama.  This stamp was issued on September 10, 1998.




The United Arab Emirates featured Owens on a stamp in 1973.