Maya Angelou : "Mrs. Flowers"

Maya Angelou was born today, April 4, in 1928. This excerpt is from her bestselling autobiography "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings."

For nearly a year, I sopped around the house, the Store, the school, and the church, like an old biscuit, dirty and inedible. Then I met, or rather got to know, the lady who threw me my first lifeline.

Mrs. Bertha Flowers was the aristocrat of Black Stamps. She had the grace of control to appear warm in the coldest weather, and on the Arkansas summer day…