A spirited debate unfolded on Capitol Hill last week over the renaming of a post office honoring award-winning poet and author Maya Angelou.
When the U.S. House of Representatives isn’t tasked with pressing matters, lawmakers spend their days naming post offices. NBC News reported that these votes are typically a “mundane affair,” and that the legislature will “unanimously vote to approve the naming of a post office no matter what member puts the request forward.”
Maya Angelou was best known for her book “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” and authored more than 30 books during her lifetime. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for AWRT)Yet, this wasn’t the case when a bill was brought forth to rename a postal office in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, after the “Still I Rise” author. The measure ultimately would pass with 371 votes, but not without opposition from a handful of Republicans who criticized Angelou’s legacy as a “communist sympathizer.”
Among the nine dissenting voices were Reps. Mo Brooks of Alabama; Andy Harris of Maryland, Steven Palazzo of Mississippi and Michael Burgess of Texas, among others, according to the outlet.
Lauren Vandiver, a spokeswoman for Brooks’ office, argued: “While Maya Angelou did many good things in her life, Congressman Mo Brooks (AL-5) did not believe it was appropriate to name an American Post Office after a communist sympathizer and thereby honor a person who openly opposed America’s interest by supporting Fidel Castro and his regime of civil rights suppression, torture and murder of freedom-loving Cubans.”
A spokesperson for Rep. Harris said he’d rejected the renaming for similar reasons, telling NBC News that Harris’ own parents had escaped communism and therefore could not vote in favor of naming a U.S. post office for “someone who supported the communist Castro revolution in Cuba.”
Angelou was a revered Civil Rights activist, and threw her support behind Democrats including former President Barack Obama, who awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. The celebrated poet also was a vocal supporter of Cuban dictator Castro — despite his deep-rooted rivalry with American leaders.
She once wrote: “Of course, Castro never had called himself white, so he was O.K. from the git. Anyhow, America hated Russians, and as black people often said, ‘Wasn’t no Communist country that put my grandpappa in slavery. Wasn’t no Communist lynched my poppa or raped my mamma.’ ”
Angelou passed away in 2014 at the age of 86.
Republicans’ rejection of the post office proposal drew a rebuke from Democrats, including New York Rep. Steve Israel who said he was appalled by the vote.
“Naming post offices is one of the most benign and bipartisan duties we perform in the House of Representatives, and there is rarely any opposition,” the congressman said in a statement obtained by Al.com. “That’s why I was shocked today as nine Republicans voted against naming a post office after Maya Angelou, indisputably one of our country’s greatest poets, authors and civil rights activists.”
Israel continued: “The fact that these nine Members would cast a no vote shows a blatant disrespect and only adds to the damaging actions they’ve taken this year to reverse progress from long and hard fought civil rights battles.”
Online critics were equally dismayed.
“Shameful! The GOP has lost its soul,” one Twitter user wrote.
“Dr. Maya Angelou is a national treasure,” someone else agreed. “Unless you are in the @GOP. Shame on them.”
One critic said the rejection was just “one of the many reasons I could never be a republican. (It’s a long list.)”
Another argued that “they’d have NO problem naming a post office after the current president. Or Mammy. Or Buckwheat. Or Robert E. Lee. We all know why. She’s the wrong color.”
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