Downey will speak about her hugely popular and highly acclaimed book — just issued in paperback — at the National Postal Museum on Thursday, May 27. The NPM is an incredibly apt venue, and I dearly wish I could be there. However, I (and you!) can listen live, no jive.
Frances Perkins was the first woman appointed to a presidential cabinet. Franklin D. Roosevelt asked her to be his Secretary of Labor in 1933, at the beginning of his first term. She tendered her resignation shortly after Roosevelt’s death in 1945. The image above shows the top margin of an actual sheet of stamps in the collection of the National Postal Museum, signed in 1934 by President Roosevelt, Vice President Garner, the entire cabinet and Postmaster General James A. Farley. You can see the full sheet, a numbered plate proof, a single stamp and read whose signature is whose right here.
I’ve become a Frances Perkins enthusiast over the past year and recently sent my fine philatelic friend Erin Blasco at the NPM the envelope above with theme postage. In stamp collecting parlance, stamps on a theme are called topicals, and next month I’ll be posting (not a pun) about the American Topical Association and the pleasures of membership therein.
“Rediscovering Frances Perkins” will be broadcast live online Thursday, May 27, at 4 p.m. EDT. You’ll also be able to listen later via the same link. You can read or listen to Maureen Corrigan‘s splendid review of The Woman Behind the New Deal to whet your appetite. And you can see a close-up of the Frances Perkins postage stamp here.
