1948 3c Joel Chandler Harris

U.S. #980
1948 3¢ Joel Chandler Harris Issue
Issue Date: December 9, 1948
City: Eatonton, Georgia
Quantity: 57,492,610
Printed By: Bureau of Engraving and Printing
Printing Method: Rotary Press
Perforations:  10 ½ x 11
Color: Bright red violet

U.S. #980 features Joel Chandler Harris, a journalist and writer who became famous for his "Uncle Remus" stories. Strongly considered for inclusion in the 1940 "Famous Americans" series, Chandlers stamp had a similar design to the "American Authors" set within that series.

Joel Chandler Harris was born in 1848 in Eatonton, Georgia. At age 14, he went to work as a printer's apprentice at a plantation newspaper called The Countryman, where he first heard African American folktales told by the enslaved men and women on the property. After the Civil War, he built a career as a journalist, eventually landing at the Atlanta Constitution in 1876, where he would work for the next 24 years as an associate editor and editorial writer.

It was at the Constitution that Harris created his most famous work. Filling in for a dialect columnist, he developed the character of Uncle Remus, a storyteller who shared the Brer Rabbit folktales Harris had heard as a young man. His first collection, Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings, was published in 1880 and sold 10,000 copies within four months. Harris went on to write 185 of the tales in total, and the stories were eventually translated into more than 40 languages. In his lifetime he was celebrated as one of America's most beloved writers, earning the admiration of both Mark Twain and President Theodore Roosevelt.