78c Alice Paul stamp

The Postal Service issued a 78-cent Alice Paul definitive stamp on August 18, 1995 in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. The stamp, designed by Chris Calle of Ridgefield, Connecticut, features Alice Paul, an American woman suffrage leader who introduced the first equal rights amendment campaign.

While doing graduate work in England, Paul joined the British suffragettes around 1908, participating in militant actions and receiving three jail sentences. After returning to the United States, she advocated the use of militant tactics to publicize the need for a federal woman suffrage amendment to the US Constitution. As chairman of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (founded in 1913), later the National Woman's Party, Paul ordered marches, White House protests, and rallies. After the suffrage amendment was ratified in 1920, she urged the enactment of a federal equal rights amendment to the US Constitution. She wrote the "Lucretia Mott" amendment in 1923.

In 1938, Paul organized the World Party for Equal Rights for Women, known as the World Women's Party. She also successfully lobbied for references to sex equality in the preamble to the United Nations charter and in the 1964 US Civil Rights Act.

The Alice Paul stamp, issued as part of the Great American Series, went on sale nationwide on August 19. The stamp was engraved through the intaglio process by the Banknote Corporation of America, Inc.

Reference: Postal Bulletin (July 6, 1995)

Scott Catalogue USA: 2943
mint

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Museum ID: 1996.2066.100