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Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou Forever Stamp is unveiled

Jocelyn McClurg
USA TODAY
The May Angelou Forever Stamp.

Here's a look at the pretty Forever Stamp for Maya Angelou, the late poet and best-selling author.

The U.S. Postal Service announced last month that it would honor Angelou, and today unveiled the stamp.

Angelou, best known for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, her searing memoir about life in the Jim Crow South, died May 28, 2014, at age 86.

The First-Day-of-Issue stamp dedication ceremony will be April 7 at the Warner Theater in Washington, D.C. It's free and open to the public, but seating is limited.

The stamps can be pre-ordered for delivery shortly after April 7, the Postal Service said.

The stamp uses Ross Rossin's 2013 portrait of Angelou, which is in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery's collection where it will be on display through Nov. 1.

And it features this quote from her: "A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."

"Maya Angelou inspired our nation through a life of advocacy and through her many contributions to the written and spoken word," Postmaster General Megan Brennan said in a statement. "Her wide-ranging achievements as a playwright, poet, memoirist, educator, and advocate for justice and equality enhanced our culture."

Her many achievements include delivering a poem at President Clinton's first inauguration in 1993. In 2010, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama, the country's highest civilian honor.

Her friends in the civil rights movement included Malcolm X and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

On March 31, Random House will publish Angelou's The Complete Poetry. And on April 7, Tavis Smiley's book My Journey with Maya, about his friendship with the late author, will arrive from Little, Brown.

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