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Dina Rickman
Apr 08, 2015
![There's something wrong with this Maya Angelou stamp](https://www.indy100.com/media-library/image.jpg?id=28101028&width=1245&height=700&quality=85&coordinates=0%2C79%2C0%2C79)
This is the US postal service's stamp paying tribute to the late, legendary writer Maya Angelou.
Just one problem: while Angelou wrote the memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she did not write the quotation on the stamp.
The Washington Post reports the quote is actually from a 1967 book by children's author Joan Walsh Anglund. Anglund, now 89, told the newspaper "a bird doesn't sing because it has an answer; it sings because it has a song" was by her, with one small change: the pronoun "he" has been replaced by "it" on the stamp.
The quote has been widely attributed to Angelou - including by Barack Obama at the National Medal of Arts and National Humanities ceremony last year.
A spokesperson for the Postal Service told the Washington Post: "Had we known about this issue beforehand, we would have used one of [Angelou’s] many other works."
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