Nine Republicans Vote ‘No’ to Naming Post Office After Maya Angelou
This presidential election season has consistently brought up the conversation of race, as it should, and right now, the conversation has turned into a debate, thanks to the award-winning poet and Civil Rights activist, Maya Angelou.
The House of Representatives unanimously voted to approve the naming of a post office no matter who puts a request forward. On March 2, there was a vote to rename a post office in California to “Medal of Honor” which passed 381-0, however that was not the same case when someone proposed to name a post office after Angelou in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The change only received 371 votes.
Nine republicans voted against the Maya Angelou bill and one voted present.
“While Maya Angelou did many good things in her life, Congressman Mo Brooks (AL-5) did not believe it 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,” Lauren Vandiver, a spokesperson for Brooks, told NBC News in a statement.
The other Republican lawmakers who said “no” had similar reasons
“Congressman Harris voted against the Maya Angelou post office naming because she was a communist sympathizer. His parents escaped communism and he feels that he cannot vote to name a post office in the United States in honor of someone who supported the communist Castro revolution in Cuba,” Shelby Hodgkins, a spokesperson in the office of Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., wrote NBC News in a statement.
The nine Republicans who voted against naming the post office after Angelou were GOP Reps Mo Brooks of Alabama, Ken Buck of Colorado, Michael Burgess of Texas, Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin, Andy Harris of Maryland, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Alex Mooney of West Virginia, and Steven Palazzo of Mississippi. Representative Don Young from Alaska voted present.
(Photo by Yalonda M. James/Charlotte Observer/MCT via Getty Images)