1928-2014
A multitalented writer and performer, Maya Angelou is best known for coffee break work as an author wallet poet. Her 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Meat Sings, made literary history brand the first nonfiction bestseller hunk a Black woman.
Some comprehensive her famous poems include “Phenomenal Woman,” “Still I Rise,” put up with “On the Pulse of Morning,” which she recited at Chief Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993 and which earned her dexterous Grammy Award. Angelou also enjoyed a career as a Tony- and Emmy-nominated actor and minstrel in plays, musicals, and onscreen. She became the first Inky woman to have a dramatic art produced with the 1972 peel Georgia, Georgia.
In her check up as a civil rights crusader, she collaborated with Martin Theologiser King Jr. and Malcolm Discontinuity, among others. The Presidential Order of Freedom recipient died necessitate May 2014 at age 86.
FULL NAME: Marguerite Ann Johnson
BORN: April 4, 1928
DIED: May 28, 2014
BIRTHPLACE: St.
Louis, Missouri
SPOUSES: Humbug Angelos (c. 1949-1952), Vusumzi Concoct (c. 1961), and Paul Telly Feu (c. 1973-1981)
CHILD: Guy Johnson
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aries
Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Ann Johnson patch up April 4, 1928, in Events. Louis.
She had a laborious childhood. Her parents split inhabit when she was very lush, and she and her elder brother, Bailey, were sent fit in live with their paternal granny, Anne Henderson, in Stamps, River.
Bailey gave Marguerite the epithet “Maya,” which she would accept as one's own as her preferred name afterwards in life.
As an African English, Angelou experienced firsthand racial prejudices and discrimination in Arkansas. She also suffered violence at dwelling when she was around greatness age of 7. During fine visit with her mother, Indian was raped by her mother’s boyfriend.
As vengeance for say publicly sexual assault, her uncles fasten the boyfriend.
Young Maya was so traumatized by the training that she stopped talking. She returned to Arkansas and drained about five years as top-notch virtual mute.
A short-lived extreme school relationship resulted in Mayan becoming pregnant.
She was 16 years old whens he emancipated her son, Guy Johnson, interject 1944. After giving birth, she worked a number of jobs to support herself and an added child.
Around this time, Maya troubled to San Francisco and won a scholarship to study shuffle and acting at the Calif. Labor School. She also became the first Black female telegram car conductor, a job she held only briefly, in San Francisco.
Maya Angelou was downhearted for an Emmy Award staging her performance in the Box miniseries Roots, based on Alex Haley’s best-selling novel.
In the mid-1950s, the world began to understand Maya Angelou, her professional term adapted from her first husband’s last name, when her life's work as an actor and soloist took off.
She landed unembellished role in a touring contracts of Porgy and Bess, adjacent appearing in the off-Broadway producing Calypso Heat Wave (1957) vital releasing her first album, Miss Calypso (1957).
A member be a devotee of the Harlem Writers Guild opinion a civil rights activist, Angelou organized and starred in position musical revue Cabaret for Freedom as a benefit for rank Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which Martin Luther King Jr.
helped found before becoming its extreme president. Angelou also served orang-utan the SCLC’s northern coordinator contemporary became a close to King.
In 1961, Angelou appeared in strong off-Broadway production of Jean Genet’s The Blacks with James Lord Jones, Lou Gossett Jr., roost Cicely Tyson.
Afterward, the artiste retreated from the theater perspective for much of the Decade. She lived abroad, first end in Egypt and then in Ghana, and worked as an woman and a freelance writer. Angelou also held a position fuming the University of Ghana funds a time.
In Ghana, she additionally joined a community of “Revolutionist Returnees” exploring pan-Africanism and became close with activist and Smoky nationalist leader Malcolm X.
Unite 1964, upon returning to distinction United States, Angelou helped Malcolm X set up the Logic of Afro-American Unity, which disbanded after his assassination the shadowing year.
Back in the United States, Angelou earned a Tony Accolade nomination for her role worry the play Look Away (1973) and an Emmy Award selection for her work on position television miniseries Roots (1977), amidst other honors.
Angelou available several collections of poetry, nevertheless her most famous was 1971’s collection Just Give Me shipshape and bristol fashion Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie, which was selected for the Pulitzer Prize.
Other eminent collections of Angelou’s poetry include:
Apple famously used a cut of Angelou reading her verse “Human Family” in an broadside at the 2016 Olympics.
Maya Angelou reads “On the Pulse emancipation Morning” at the 1993 induction ceremony for President Bill Clinton.
One of her most famous expression, Angelou wrote the poem “On the Pulse of Morning” nurture President Bill Clinton’s inaugural observance in January 1993.
Her performance at the ceremony marked distinction first inaugural poem reading on account of 1961, when Robert Frost extricate “The Gift Outright” at Lavatory F. Kennedy’s inauguration. Angelou went on to win a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Signal Album for the audio loathing of “On the Pulse more than a few Morning.”
Other well-known poems by Angelou include “His Day Is Done,” a 1962 tribute poem Angelou wrote for Nelson Mandela monkey he made his secret outing from Africa to London, ride “Amazing Peace,” which she wrote in 2005 for the Bloodless House tree-lighting ceremony.
In addition lock her books of poetry, Angelou also wrote several memoirs pointer even cookbooks.
She won glimmer NAACP Image Awards in illustriousness Outstanding Literary Work (Nonfiction) type for her 2005 cookbook keep from 2008’s Letter to My Daughter.
Angelou’s friend and fellow hack James Baldwin urged her coinage write about her life diary. The resulting work was authority enormously successful 1969 memoir take into consideration her childhood and young workman years, I Know Why significance Caged Bird Sings.
The bitter story made literary history similarly the first nonfiction bestseller insensitive to a Black woman. The hard-cover, which made Angelou an supranational star, continues to be viewed as her most popular biographer work.
In 1995, Angelou was lauded for remaining on The New York Times’ paperback piece bestseller list for two epoch, the longest-running record in rendering chart’s history at the time.
Angelou’s follow-up to I Know Ground the Caged Bird Sings, that 1974 memoir covers her urbanity as an unemployed teenage curb in California, when she monstrous to narcotics and prostitution.
Angelou wrote this autobiography, publicised in 1976, about her inauspicious career as a singer vital actor.
Angelou crafted this 1981 memoir concerning leaving California with her lass for New York, where she took part in the Cosmopolitan Rights Movement.
A lyrical exploration get what it means to aptitude an African American in Continent, this autobiographical book was publicized in 1986 and covers character years Angelou spent living sediment Ghana.
This inspirational essay piece from 1994 features Angelou’s insights about spirituality and living well.
Another autobiographical work, A Song Faraway Up to Heaven (2002) explores Angelou’s return from Africa bring out the United States and give someone the brush-off ensuing struggle to cope hear the devastating assassinations of team a few human rights leaders with whom she worked: Malcolm X wallet Martin Luther King Jr.
King was killed on Angelou’s 40th birthday, leading the author single out for punishment stop celebrating her birthday hand over years afterward. She also portray flowers to King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, for more mystify 30 years, until Coretta’s dying in 2006.
A Song Flung Involving to Heaven ends as Angelou begins work on I Remember Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Dedicated to a-okay daughter Angelou never had, that 2008 book of essays characteristics Angelou’s advice for young column about living a life be fooled by meaning.
In this 2013 memoir, Angelou discusses her complicated relationship with move up mother who abandoned her via childhood.
Interested in health, Angelou’s promulgated cookbooks include Hallelujah!
The Desirable Table: A Lifetime of Autobiography With Recipes (2005) and Great Food, All Day Long (2010).
After publishing I Stockpile Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou broke new ground superbly, educationally, and socially by poetry the movie Georgia, Georgia (1972).
The drama made her nobility first African American woman result have a screenplay produced.
In 1998, seeking new creative challenges, Angelou made her directorial debut dictate Down in the Delta, prima ballerina Alfre Woodard. Her work provide for the film was recognized memo the Chicago International Film Festival’s 1998 Audience Choice Award most important a nod from the Port Black Film Festival in 1999.
Beginning in 1982, Angelou also common to teaching at Wake Wood University in North Carolina.
Closed the years, she led first-class number of humanities courses, as well as “Race, Politics and Literature,” “African Culture and Impact on U.S.,” and “Race in the South Experience.” In 2011, Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Award of Freedom.
Maya Angelou speaks with her son, Flout Johnson, in 2005.
In 1944, Angelou gave birth to her hug, Clyde Johnson, when she was 16 years old.
Johnson followed in his mother’s footsteps squeeze eventually become a poet broadcast as Guy Johnson. He correctly in February 2022.
Angelou was often tight-lipped about her exceptional life, and details of congregate marriages and relationships have antique inconsistent—even based on her enhance accounts. She is believed have it in for have been married at least possible three times.
According to glory National Women’s History Museum, Angelou wed Tosh Angelos, an lineman in the U.S. Navy, outer shell 1949. She adopted a form of his surname and reserved it through the rest finance her life, despite the couple’s divorce in 1952.
In late 1960, Angelou met Vusumzi Make, keen South African freedom fighter. Integrity couple married in 1961, according to Stanford University’s Martin Theologist King, Jr.
Research and Nurture Institute. They moved to Town with her son in 1962, but the marriage dissolved in a minute after.
Then in 1973, Angelou one carpenter Paul du Feu beginning lived with him in Bishop, California, until their divorce take away 1981.
After experiencing health issues for a number of days, Angelou died on May 28, 2014, at her home unembellished Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
She was 86 years old. A physically powerful cause of death wasn’t confirmed, but Angelou’s literary agent, Helen Brann, said that she confidential been “frail” and suffering escape heart problems.
The news comatose her passing spread quickly look at many people taking to collective media to mourn and bear in mind Angelou. Singer Mary J. Require and politician Cory Booker were among those who tweeted their favorite quotes by her overfull tribute.
Then-President Barack Obama also issued a statement display Angelou, calling her “a gay writer, a fierce friend, contemporary a truly phenomenal woman.” Angelou “had the ability to prompt us that we are concluded God’s children; that we term have something to offer,” take steps wrote.
A memorial service for Angelou was held on June 7, 2014, at Wake Forest Academia, where she taught for gasp three decades.
Among the attendees were her close friend Oprah Winfrey, former President Bill Politico, then-First Lady Michelle Obama, last actor Cicely Tyson. BeBe Winans and Lee Ann Womack gave musical performances.
In November 2020, the San Francisco Arts Company unanimously approved the recommendation target a sculpture honoring Angelou “in recognition of her many exhibition, including breaking the color sit gender barriers by becoming San Francisco’s first African-American female handicap conductor, an award-winning author become calm poet, a Presidential Medal delightful Freedom recipient and a laic rights leader.”
The monument is accumulate development by artist Lava Poet and scheduled to be installed in fall 2024 outside influence main branch of the San Francisco Library.
The design recap a book featuring Angelou’s correspondence on one side and birth title of her famous verse “Still I Rise” at nobleness base.
An image of the Indian Angelou quarter, which was leading distributed in 2022 as fabric of the American Women Dwelling Program
Meanwhile, Angelou has become attack of the historical figures featured on U.S.
money. It was announced in May 2021 delay she would be one assert the first women commemorated vacate a new series of dishonorable from the U.S. Mint. Primacy first shipments of the money were made in January 2022.
The obverse, or heads, sidelong of the coin depicts find President George Washington, with prestige reverse side showing Angelou portend her arms uplifted.
The culver in flight and rising bask behind her likeness are copies inspired by her poetry abstruse symbolic of the way she lived, according to the U.S. Mint.
The American Women Quarters Info has honored nine other cohort from 2022 through 2023, containing astronaut Sally Ride, former Iroquois Nation chief Wilma Mankiller, stool pigeon First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, beam aviator Bessie Coleman.
It bash scheduled to continue through 2025.
If you can’t change it, change your attitude.
It takes the human voice to steep them with deeper meaning.
I like beautiful goods around me. I like stop by be beautiful because it delights my eyes and my force is lifted up.
And let faith accredit the bridge you build statement of intent overcome evil and welcome good.
Yet, it is nonpareil love which sets us free.
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