(ThyBlackMan.com) Maya Angelou wrote seven autobiographies, five collections of essays, hundred of poems, plays, and screenplays for film and television. Because of all of her writings, her thousands of public speaking engagements and interviews, Maya Angelou was probably the most quotable person in history. With all of this material from which to extrapolate a suitable quote to accompany her image on a “forever” stamp, it would take a certain type of reverse ingenuity to come up with a quote that didn’t really belong to her.
But it happened. There, next to Maya Angelou’s beautiful, smiling image are the words, “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” Dr. Angelou didn’t say that, Joan Walsh Anglund, an 89-year old children’s book writer penned the often-quoted phrase in her children’s book, titled “A Cup of Sun,” written in 1967.
Did something happen during the dedication ceremony? When the lights went out and Oprah had to perform a version of Phenomenal Woman without mic or lights, did the lights also go out on Maya Angelou, our “Light Bearer?”
Did someone become overwhelmed by the millions of quotes that came from the heart and mind of this woman of wisdom, and so, perhaps decided to make their job easier by attributing the words of someone else to Dr. Angelou.
What is appalling, alarming and beyond comprehension is the fact that this mis-quote will appear on the stamp forever. Isn’t that the whole purpose of the “forever” stamp? No matter how much the price of a stamp changes, this stamp will continue to show up throughout the country, throughout the world, with the wrong words attributed to a woman whose words were so much a part of her life.
Dr. Angelou was a world traveler. Now this stamp, which is supposed to be a homage to her life, will travel the world with the words of Joan Walsh Anglund as a reminder of what? Certainly it is no small thing. When the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial was erected with the wrong inscription etched in stone, Dr. Angelou would not rest until that mistake was made right. Now, I have a hard time believing that Dr. Angelou’s soul will rest until somehow this awful thing is made right.
Staff Writer; Emma Young