A 13-cent U.S. postage stamp honoring Clara Maass was unveiled August 18, 1976, in Belleville, NJ; she was the first nurse so honored.
On August 18, 1976, the United States Postal Service unveiled a 13-cent commemorative postage stamp honoring Clara Maass in a ceremony held in Belleville, New Jersey, home to the hospital that bore her name. The unveiling coincided with the centennial of her birth and reflected renewed national attention to her story amid the American Bicentennial's broader celebration of historical figures.
Contemporary press coverage, including reporting in The New York Times, identified Maass as the first nurse to be honored with her own U.S. postage stamp, a genuinely barrier-breaking recognition within the nursing profession and within the Postal Service's history of commemorative issues, which had historically favored political leaders, military figures, and other public figures over nurses.
The stamp depicted Maass and commemorated her sacrifice in the yellow fever experiments of 1901, bringing her story to a national audience nearly seventy-five years after her death. It served both as a tribute to her individual courage and as a broader recognition of the nursing profession's often under-acknowledged contributions to American medical history and public health.
This event cemented Maass's place in the national historical consciousness, complementing her earlier international recognition via the 1951 Cuban stamp, and paved the way for her formal induction into the American Nurses Association Hall of Fame later that same year.