The United States Postal Service is honoring the late Dr. Maya Angelou with her own Forever Stamp.
Unfortunately, the quote alongside Angelou’s image doesn’t quite belong to the iconic writer. The stamp was unveiled publicly on Tuesday (Apr. 7) in Washington D.C., with FLOTUS Michelle Obama, Nikki Giovanni, and Oprah Winfrey in attendance, but no one took notice of the error – or at least, said anything.
It wasn’t until The Washington Post called out the mistake to USPS and verified the original quote should be attributed to author, Joan Walsh Anglund.
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In an attempt to validate their use for passing the quote off as Angelou’s, USPS spokesperson, David Partenheimer issued a statement saying, “the sentence was chosen to accompany her image on the stamp to reflect her passion for the written and spoken word. The sentence held great meaning for her and she is publicly identified with its popularity.”
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It’s seems changing the original word ‘he’ to ‘it’ and hearing Dr. Angelou use it multiple times was good enough for the Postal Service to run with it.
No word on if USPS plans on actually reissuing the stamp, despite the misattributed quote.
Photo Credit: Getty Images