Considering how significantly the use of regular mail service has decreased in the last years, it’s hard to imagine that a square-inch stamp once inspired hostility. But it did. Many stamps have stirred strong emotions — from patriotic passions to anger over political correctness.
The history of the postage stamp goes back to 1800s. Before then people used ink and hand-stamps made from cork or wood to prove the mail or package has been paid for.
In 1837, Rowland Hill, an English teacher and social reformer, who campaigned for postal reforms, suggested that senders start using a postage stamp costing a penny per half an ounce. It took three years of debates until the stamp was made official.
Despite an ailing postal service, stamps are not obsolete. That small piece of paper is a piece of history representing how the mail systems have changed over the years. Many people are so fascinated with stamps, they have become collectors (President Franklin D. Roosevelt was one).
Even non-collectors are often interested in learning about a stamp’s history. An example is the popular roadside attraction in Boys Town, Nebraska, known as the world’s largest ball of stamps. It’s a sphere containing more than 4.6 million canceled stamps, and it measures 32 inches in diameter and weighs over 600 pounds.
Methodology
To identify 20 of the most controversial stamps in U.S. history, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed dozens of announcements about stamps released by the United States Postal Service (USPS) and news articles about their significance written in publications such as The New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, as well as smaller, local news outlets.
1. Alcoholism stamp
> Year issued: 1981
> Value: 18 cents
The stamp was designed to heighten awareness of alcoholism, a disease that was still considered by many to be a moral rather than a medical problem. The stamp came out at a time when public opinion was shifting and there were 9 million recovering alcoholics. The problem was that recipients of packages bearing the stamp might have taken it personally and thought that the sender felt he or she was struggling with excessive drinking.
2. Frida Kahlo stamp
> Year issued: 2001
> Value: 34 cents
Frida Kahlo, the first Hispanic woman to be honored with a stamp, is regarded as one of the most influential female artists of the 20th century. She preferred self-portraits, one of which was used as the image for the stamp. The problem was that she was a fan of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union’s dictator until his death in 1953; hence, she was tainted by her Communist sympathies.
3. Susan B. Anthony stamp
> Year issued: 1936
> Value: 3 cents
The stamp was meant to honor the 19th amendment, which granted women the right to vote. Susan B. Anthony was a pioneer of the movement for women’s suffrage and equal rights. The problem was that some people thought she was shown smoking, and, just like in the case of FDR years later, they thought it inappropriate. There was no cigarette, however, just a badly positioned cross-hatched line in the background.
4. Whistler’s Mother stamp
> Year issued: 1934
> Value: 3 cents
The stamp was issued to celebrate Mother’s Day and all mothers in the country. The Post Office chose for the image a famous painting by James A. Whistler called “Portrait of My Mother.” The problem was that the final stamp had little to do with the painting. The woman in the stamp is looking at flowers, while the real mother is staring at an empty space. Other artists did not like the change. They thought it was an unfair representation of its meaning. The real painting and its simplicity had become a symbol of the Great Depression; the mother was seen as bravely handling the problems of her life.
5. The Simpsons stamp
> Year issued: 2009
> Value: 44 cents
The Simpsons is the longest-running animated show and primetime scripted series in American history. It was even back in 2009, when it had been running for two decades already. The family around which the satirical program is centered often offends parents because they feel it glorifies bad role models for kids. Plus, many people thought a stamp should celebrate something more worthy than an animated show. The Post Office printed nearly 700 million stamps too many, which it later destroyed, losing $1.2 million in printing costs.
6. Richard M. Nixon stamp
> Year issued: 1995
> Value: 32 cents
Richard Nixon resigned from the office of the presidency in disgrace, but that didn’t disqualify him from having his own stamp (as is the custom with former presidents). So many people did not like him being honored with a stamp that at least several post offices could not even sell them.
7. Dinosaur stamps
> Year issued: 1989
> Value: 25 cents
Who would have thought that creatures that have been extinct for 65 million years would cause a furor in 1989? It really was a technicality that showed the Postal Service did not do its research, and paleontologists were upset. One of the four dinosaur species depicted on the stamp was the brontosaurus, or thunder lizard. That name had been discarded in 1974, and apatosaurus, or deceptive lizard, has been used since then.
8. Elvis Presley stamp
> Year issued: 1993
> Value: 29 cents
While the first Elvis Presley stamp will go down in history as the best-selling stamp ever, selling more than 500 million copies, the initial reaction when it was first proposed, which was a decade after he died in 1977, was not unanimously positive. Many critics were against the “King” being celebrated in such a way because of his drug abuse.
9. Jackson Pollock stamp
> Year issued: 1999
> Value: 33 cents
This is another example of a stamp that sparked a debate over smoking, but this time because the cigarette was edited out. The image of Jackson Pollock, arguably the most famous member of the abstract expressionism movement, was a very well-known photograph of him painting using his drip technique which appeared in Life magazine in 1949. Critics said the stamp was trying to rewrite and sanitize history.
10. Mother Teresa stamp
> Year issued: 2010
> Value: 44 cents
The stamp was issued in honor of the life and work of Mother Teresa, who was praised all over the world for her sacrifice and dedication to the “poorest of the poor.” But some people interpreted the purpose of the stamp differently. They focused on the fact that she was a Catholic nun, and, according to USPS rules, stamps or stationery items cannot honor religious figures.
11. Eid Greetings stamp
> Year issued: 2001
> Value: 37 cents
The stamp honoring the Eid Muslim holiday season was first issued in 2001 during the George W. Bush administration, just 10 days before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was reissued in various designs in subsequent years. But in 2010 critics wrongly claimed that President Obama had directed the Postal Service to commemorate the Islamic holidays, causing a lot of controversy.
12. Pony Express stamp
> Year issued: 1940
> Value: 3 cents
The stamp was issued to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the famous Pony Express mail service. It depicted a rider leaving a relay station with a parcel. The problem was that the horse’s mouth was open, which, according to horse breeders and vets, was not possible if the horse was running. Furthermore, the rider didn’t even look as if he was carrying any mail.