Susan B. Anthony died in 1906, fourteen years before the 19th Amendment passed. This stamp was issued August 26, 1936 - the exact date the amendment was certified in 1920, sixteen years earlier. She never saw the vote she spent fifty years fighting for.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

• Catalog Number: Scott #784

• Denomination: 3 cents (3¢)

• Date of Issue: August 26, 1936

• Printing Method: Rotary Press, Engraved (Intaglio)

• Perforation: 11 × 10½

• Color: Violet

• Subject: Portrait of Susan B. Anthony, 16th anniversary of the 19th Amendment

CONDITION ANALYSIS (Seller-Assessed)

• Status: Used

• Grading: Fine

• Postmark: Black wavy-line machine cancellation across the central design, confirming postal use.

• Obverse: Portrait and principal inscriptions remain identifiable.

• Reverse: No original gum present, as expected for a used stamp. Paper shows normal signs of aging with no significant thins or tears visible.

• Centering / Margins: Fine. Slightly off-center to the right and top. 

• Perforations: Perforations intact on all four sides. Some minor shagginess typical of manual separation from a sheet.

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HISTORY

Susan B. Anthony devoted more than fifty years to the women's suffrage movement, beginning in the 1850s and continuing until her death in 1906. She was arrested in 1872 for voting illegally in a presidential election, tried, convicted, and fined $100; a fine she refused to pay. She testified before Congress annually for years. She co-founded the National Woman Suffrage Association, edited a suffrage newspaper called The Revolution, and built the organizational infrastructure that would eventually succeed long after she was gone.

The 19th Amendment was certified on August 26, 1920, fourteen years after Anthony's death. The Post Office Department issued Scott #784 on August 26, 1936 — the exact 16th anniversary of that certification — a date match as deliberate as any in the series. The 3¢ denomination served the domestic first-class rate, making this one of the most widely circulated commemoratives of the mid-1930s.

The violet color gave the stamp a visual distinction within the commemorative issues of the period and has held up well across nine decades.

STEVEN SAYS

She was arrested for voting in 1872 and died before the amendment passed. The Post Office issued this stamp on the exact anniversary of the day it was certified. August 26 both times. Fifty years of work she didn't live to see finished.