Maya Angelou was an American award-winning author, poet, and civil rights activist. She is best known for her acclaimed memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and her numerous poetry and essay collections.
Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. She was briefly raised in St. Louis until her parents divorced and sent her and her brother to live with her grandmother, Annie Henderson, in Stamps, Arkansas. Through Henderson, Angelou absorbed unshakable faith and values. Her grandmother taught her Christian principals, love and respect while exhibiting examples of independence and courage. She was an entrepreneur at a time when blacks owned very little. Henderson began her business selling hot meals to workers before eventually building the Johnson Grocery store which served both white and black customers. The store doubled as the family home, with the living quarters behind the store. Due to her hand work, the fact that the store sold basic commodities and her wise and honest investments, Henderson prospered through the Great Depression and World War II.
Stamps, Arkansas was a prime example of the American south and its practice of brutality and racial discrimination and Angelou experienced this growing up. At the age of 8, Angelou was visiting her mother when she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. He was convicted but only served one day in prison and four days later, he was murdered. Possibly by Angelou’s Uncle. Angelou was so traumatised by the event that she became mute for five years, believing that her voice had sentenced the man to death by speaking his name. During her silence, she developed an extraordinary memory, love of books and literature and an ability to listen and observe the world around her. One of her teachers, Mrs. Bertha Flowers helped her to speak again as well as introducing her to authors like Frances Harper, Anne Spencer, and Jessie Fauset.
At the age of 14, Angelou and her mother moved to Oakland, California to live with their mother. Angelou won a scholarship to study dance and acting at the California Labor School. She dropped out of school and briefly became the first female black cable car conductor in San Francisco. Angelou then returned to school and graduated a few weeks before the birth of her son at the age of 17. Angelou supported her son by working as a waitress and cook and in 1952, she briefly married Anastasios Angelopulos, a Greek sailor from whom she took her professional name—a blend of her childhood nickname, “Maya,” and a shortened version of his surname, “Angelou”.
Angelou studied modern dance with Martha Graham, where she met dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey and Ruth Beckford. Angelou and Ailey then danced under the name ‘Al and Rita’ with Ailey on television variety shows and at fraternal black organizations throughout San Francisco. In the mid-1950’s, Angelou’s performing career began to take off after she landed a role in a touring production of Porgy and Bess. While touring, she began to learn the language of every country she visited and in a few years, became proficient in several languages. She then went on to appear in the off-Broadway production Calypso Heat Wave, in which she sang and performed her own compositions. Angelou also released her first album, Miss Calypso.
In 1959, Angelou met novelist John Oliver Killens and moved to New York to concentrate on her writing. She became a member of the Harlem Writers Guild and a civil rights activist. In 1960, after meeting Martin Luther King, Jr, Angelou and Killens organised the musical revue Cabaret for Freedom, which she starred in. The benefit was for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, for which she also served as the SCLC’s northern coordinator. She also began her pro-Castro and anti-apartheid activism during this time.
In 1961, Angelou performed in the historic off-Broadway production of Jean Genet’s The Blacks with James Earl Jones, Lou Gossett Jr. and Cicely Tyson. That same year, she met South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make and together with her son, they moved to Cairo. Angelou worked as an associate editor at the weekly English-language newspaper TheArab Observer for a year, when she moved to Accra, Ghana. Angelou taught at the University of Ghana’s School of Music and Drama. She also worked as a freelance writer, performed for Ghana’s National Theatre and was active in the African-American expatriate community.
Angelou met Malcolm X in Accra, and in 1965, returned to the United States to help him build a new civil rights organisation, the Organisation of Afro-American Unity. He was assassinated shortly afterwards. Angelou then spent periods of time on her singing career, followed by a return to her writing. in 1968, on her birthday, her close friend Martin Luther King, Jr was assassinated. She did not celebrate her birthday for many years after wards, choosing instead to sent flowers to King’s widow and fellow civil rights activist in her own right, Coretta Scott King.
In 1969, after being encouraged by her friend and fellow writer James Baldwin to write about her experiences she published her memoir entitled I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The book made literary history as the first nonfiction best-seller by an African-American woman and made Angelou an international star. The book was banned in many schools at the time due to her honest on the subject of having been sexually abused. The book later became a part of college courses around the world.
Angelou continued to break new ground, artistically, educationally and socially. In 1972, she wrote the drama Georgia, Georgia, becoming the first African-American woman to have her screenplay produced. A year later, she received a Tony Award nomination for her role in the play Look Away. She was also nominated for an Emmy Award for her work on the television miniseries Roots (1977).
In 1981, Angelou accepted the lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was the Professor of American Studies there for more than 25 years and considered herself a teacher and a writer from that point onwards. Angelou continued her literary work, including several autobiographies including God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986) and A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002). She also published several collections of poetry, including Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘Fore I Die (1971), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem “On the Pulse of Morning,” at the inaugural ceremony for President Bill Clinton. It was the first the first inaugural recitation since 1961 and was broadcast live internationally. Angelou won a Grammy Award for best spoken word album for the audio version of the poem.
In addition to this, Angelou has written a number of inspirational works including the essay collection Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1994) to her advice for young women in Letter to My Daughter (2008). She has also published cookbooks, including Hallelujah! The Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories With Recipes (2005). Both Letter to My Daughter and her 2005 cookbook won NAACP Image Awards in the outstanding literary work (nonfiction) category.
Angelou continued to work in Civil Rights, and has been widely recognised as an international ambassador for good will crossing lines of race and culture. She has also served on two presidential committees and in 200 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Arts. She has also received the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honour in 2010. She has also received over fifty honorary degrees from colleges and universities from all over the world. Angelou died in 2014 at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.