STAMPS, Ark. (AP) - Not even a year after her death, a beloved writer from this small Southwest Arkansas town has been honored with her own U.S. Postal Service stamp.
This stamp will be good forever, too, just as her writing is likely to endure for generation after countless generation because of its startling honesty and emotional power.
The roots of this author’s love for writing rest right here in Stamps. It’s where she literally found her voice again after experiencing deep trauma in her life and where she discovered writers like Shakespeare, the Texarkana Gazette (https://bit.ly/1NmeHZg ) reports.
Maya Angelou, influential and groundbreaking author of the autobiographical “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” and other books of poetry and autobiography, was celebrated in Stamps and Washington, D.C., with the unveiling last week of the Maya Angelou Forever Stamp.
A hyper-realistic image of Angelou’s face and her warm, knowing smile adorn this stamp, along with the quote: “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” The image is from Ross Rossin’s Angelou oil portrait that hangs in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery collection.
“I always wanted to paint Maya as she was a voice that inspired millions_not just as an individual, but as a legendary poet and a civil rights icon who transcended generations,” Rossin said in a statement about his portrait of Angelou. “I was compelled by the challenge to portray her forgiving smile and her aura of unconditional love and understanding that comes across when having a conversation with her.”
Postmaster General Megan Brennan, Oprah Winfrey, poet Nikki Giovanni, former ambassador and politician Andrew Young and Angelou’s grandson, Colin Johnson, had been expected to attend the Washington, D.C., dedication ceremony Tuesday.
Here in Arkansas, people like Janis F. Kearney of the Celebrate Maya Project and David Bright, Stamps mayor, welcome the news that a daughter of Stamps will be honored his way. The stamp should be ready for delivery soon, in fact.
Kearney, who, along with Bright, organized a celebration of Angelou this past fall, says she’s proud of this recognition for Angelou, a woman from Stamps getting her stamp.
“I think it means kind of what we were saying before, that she is an icon for many things, not just literary,” Kearney said. Angelou was commitment to peace and empowerment for all people. The recognition indicates Angelou’s popularity across the nation and worldwide.
Mayor Bright actually worked for many years as a rural carrier for the U.S. Postal Service and sold commemorative stamps, so he knows what a big honor this is. Typically, he says, a person is deceased for a longer period of time before this happens.
“People are just really proud that somebody who spent her childhood here is going to get a Forever Stamp,” Bright said.
In Stamps, the honor was celebrated Wednesday at Lafayette County High School starting at 10 a.m. in an event organized by the local Post Office. Angelou’s poetry will be recited, along with the poetry written by a young woman who won a poetry contest at the Celebrating Maya Angelou event held in October.
To Bright, Angelou’s legacy and Stamps go together, making this honor good exposure for the town. “Any conversation about Maya Angelou will include two words: Stamps, Ark.,” the mayor said. And any conversation about Stamps will include two words: Maya Angelou.
The park at Lake June was dedicated to Angelou last year, and the mayor said the city will apply for a grant to perform improvements at the park. He hopes to generate interest in the school young Angelou (then known as Marguerite Johnson) attended.
That Lafayette County Training School still stands, though in disrepair. It was a Rosenwald School, the mayor points out. It’s also on the National Register of Historic Places. In this part of Stamps, there’s that school, the pond she visited and the neighborhood where Angelou lived with her grandmother and uncle, all still there to serve as a living link to Angelou.
Bright sees this area as a potential way to celebrate the Stamps connection to Angelou, similarly to how the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home, an Arkansas State University Heritage Site, honors Cash.
“What I would like to do is improve the park and get funding to improve that school,” the mayor said. In that way, Stamps could be a point of interest for people interested in Angelou, writing and culture. The stamp will help him shine a light on what he’d like to see happen, he believes.
With Angelou known internationally, she has a special story, “the story that people can come from humble beginnings and do great things if you just put your mind to it,” he said. And people are beginning to take pride in her legacy being tied to Stamps, he says.
Kearney says perceptions have changed about Angelou’s connection to Stamps. She believes the celebration event last year made a difference.
“I think awareness has increased a great deal,” Kearney said, noting people have told her they knew Angelou but their perceptions have shifted about what she’s meant in Arkansas.
Angelou, after all, discussed the racism she encountered in Stamps in such works as “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” It wasn’t flattering. But it’s also the place where her love for literature sparked. It’s where a teacher, Mrs. Flowers, introduced her to Shakespeare. It’s where she received love from her family.
Kearney says while nobody wants their town portrayed negatively, writers tell the truth, something we must face.
“I definitely think the awareness and appreciation for her has increased in this state,” said Kearney, a writer herself, noting there are stories about young Maya going to that Lake June pond to sit down and write.
“It was the beginning for her,” Kearney said about what kindled Angelou’s awakening as a writer. And she says Angelou talked about Arkansas in positive ways even if some was negative. She believes writing about it was, to Angelou, cathartic to some extent.
“That’s how she got it out of her system, by writing it in a book,” Kearney said.
The Angelou legacy includes a sensitivity to what was happening in Arkansas and the South, Kearney said, explaining that Angelou and her writing played an important role in the Civil Rights struggle. Blacks appreciated the truth-telling she had in her work.
“I think the timing of her memoir was very important because that it was right around the time of the Civil Rights struggle,” Kearney said.
Whatever happens negatively in childhood can be turned around and become a positive later, she said. Angelou is another example of a strong woman from Arkansas.
March was national Women’s History Month.
“I just think people should think about the fact that Arkansas has been the foundation for some amazing women,” Kearney said.
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Information from: Texarkana Gazette, https://www.texarkanagazette.com
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