Typed envelope addressed to Mr. James Pickens Walker Sr., March 1951
Book 3, Page 22 ·1951
Transcription
A pale envelope with typewritten address.
Postmark, upper right:
Jacksonville, Fla. — Mar 20 — 8:30 PM — 1951
Cancellation slogan beside the postmark:
FIGHT INFANTILE PARALYSIS — JOIN MARCH OF DIMES
3-cent purple Thomas Jefferson stamp.
Address, typewritten centered on the face:
Mr. James Pickens Walker, Sr.,
3698 Hedrick Street,
Jacksonville, Fla.
AI Notes
A pale envelope franked with a 3-cent purple Thomas Jefferson stamp and a Jacksonville, Fla. postmark dated MAR 20 8:30 PM 1951. The cancellation slogan reads ‘FIGHT INFANTILE PARALYSIS — JOIN MARCH OF DIMES.’ Address is typewritten in dark ink. The visible faint reversed text behind the address is show-through of the enclosed Baptism certificate on page 23 (legible fragments: ‘TO SPONSORS’, etc.) — not a marginal annotation on the envelope itself. Note: the addressee is ‘Mr. James Pickens Walker, Sr.’ — the earlier envelope on page 19 (Dec 1950) was addressed to ‘Mr. J. Pickens Walker’ without a suffix and likely went to the younger James Pickens Walker (Jr.), who was confirmed in November 1950.
The envelope’s contents (a Baptism certificate dated 1950) appear on page 23.
The cancellation slogan dates this piece of mail to the height of the U.S. polio epidemic. The March of Dimes (formally the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, founded 1938 by FDR) ran its annual January fundraising drive through the early 1950s; the epidemic peaked nationally in 1952 with nearly 58,000 cases. Jonas Salk’s inactivated polio vaccine, developed with March of Dimes funding, would be licensed in April 1955.