United States Postal Service released a 'forever' stamp for poet Maya Angelou which features a quote that doesn't belong to Angelou.
- Apr 8, 2015
AceShowbiz - On Tuesday morning, April 7, the United States Postal Service held an unveiling ceremony for the new stamp honoring the late author Maya Angelou. The ceremony was attended by first lady Michelle Obama. In the stamp which features Angelou, there is a quote which is not hers. It's later revealed that the quote belongs to author Joan Walsh Anglund.
The quote which says, "A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song," in Angelou "forever" stamp is claimed to be Anglund's original quote which was written in her book entitled "A Cup of Sun" published in 1967.
"Yes, that's my quote," Anglund said Monday night from her Connecticut home. She revealed that only the pronoun and punctuation which were changed, from "he" in Anglund's original to "it" on the stamp.
Regarding to this issue, a Postal Service spokesman, Mark Saunders, confirmed he had never heard of the Anglund quote until The Washington Post informed him of it. After learning of it, he wrote an email to the post, "The Postal Service used her widely recognized quote to help build an immediate connection between her image and her 1969 nationally recognized autobiography, 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'."
He added, "Had we known about this issue beforehand, we would have used one of [Angelou's] many other works." Saunders said that Angelou cited the quote frequently in media interviews and other forums and it created a connection to her first memoir "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". "The sentence held great meaning for her and she is publicly identified with its popularity," he said.
It was not only USPS which mistakenly attributed the quote to Angelou, but also President Barack Obama. At the presentation of the 2013 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal, Obama said, "The late, great Maya Angelou once said, 'A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.' Each of the men and women that we honor today has a song -- literally, in some cases. For others, it's a talent, or a drive, or a passion that they just had to share with the world."
