Educator in Stamps, Arkansas · Maya Angelou’s childhood mentor
In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) Angelou introduces her as Mrs. Bertha Flowers, “the aristocrat of Black Stamps” — the well-to-do neighbour who invited a mute eight-year-old to her cool, shaded house, fed her tea cookies, read A Tale of Two Cities aloud to her and sent her home with poems to memorize and recite. Flowers’ teaching was that words are incomplete on the page: it takes the human voice to give them their deeper meaning. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas documents the Stamps educator who mentored the young Angelou — reading and discussing classical literature with her, and credited by Angelou with helping her reclaim her voice — under the name Beulah Lee Sampson Flowers (1883–1965).