Archive
Cultural Record Keepers, Volume 42, number 1
The National Archives' Fiftieth Anniversary Commemorative Stamp
National Archives, ©1984 United States Postal Service. All Rights Reserved. Used with permission.
A simple postage stamp commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the National Archives of the United States of America played a significant role in the long and ultimately successful campaign to return the National Archives agency to independent status within the Executive Department. It had lost that status thirty-five years earlier as a result of confusion over the role of an archives in government.
Designed by Michael David Brown of the post office department and issued in 1984, the stamp utilizes two historical and cultural icons to capture the administrative and cultural missions of the archival service of government. Central on the stamp are profiles of presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Their images suggest the National Archives' dual roles as both the “keeper of the nation's memory” ― maintaining records as an administrative service to government officials and citizens alike ― and a cultural agency facilitating study and understanding of the American experience.
During the 1940s, the National Archives emerged as a leader in archival innovation, developing new methodologies for professional practices and especially the concepts and practices of records management for handling the glut of records created in prosecution of the Second World War. After the war, the Commission on the Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, charged with streamlining the federal government, recommended sweeping the National Archives into a General Services Administration agency created to provide the service and supply function of the government.
Placement of the National Archives in GSA cut off the Archivist's access to the White House and Congress. As the years passed, the role of the National Archives as a cultural institution diminished as GSA administrators emphasized the records management function.
Upon his retirement in 1965 Archivist Wayne Grover recommended to President Lyndon Johnson that the Archives be removed from the GSA. President Richard Nixon's falsification of tax documents relating to a donation of his papers to the National Archives, and his efforts to withhold his papers from the Archives altogether, reignited the movement for independence in the mid-1970s. When Robert M. Warner was appointed Archivist in 1980, he devoted his tenure to securing independence for the National Archives.
Exploring new avenues for advancing the cause of independence, in 1982 Warner approached the Postmaster General, proposing the issuance of a commemorative stamp in honor of the National Archives' upcoming fiftieth anniversary. When the stamp was issued in 1984, Warner forwarded first day covers to every member of Congress with a letter emphasizing the importance of the National Archives as an independent agency. On 19 October 1984, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the bill creating the National Archives and Records Administration, in effect reestablishing the National Archives as an independent agency of the executive branch.
— Sarah Quigley, School of Information, University of Texas at Austin
