Listen Live
Fantastic Voyage Generic Graphics Updated Nov 2023
Black America Web Featured Video
CLOSE

Author, poet and civil rights activist Dr. Maya Angelou died Wednesday at the age of 86. As one of the literary world’s most influential figures, Angelou’s legacy has been enriched by a life replete with terrible struggles overcome by amazing triumphs.

Angelou was born Marguerite Ann Johnson on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Mo. Her older brother gave her the nickname Maya, which stuck with her throughout her life. When her parents split up, Maya and her brother were sent to live in Arkansas with a grandparent.

When reunited in St. Loius with their mother, Angelou was assaulted by her mother’s boyfriend when she was just eight years old. The man was charged but only jailed for a day, and was later found dead. This series of events traumatized Angelou but also led to her creative awakening.

The siblings were sent back to Arkansas, which like much of the Deep South, embraced Jim Crow laws. Still, Angelou was introduced there to the literature and theater that became the hallmarks of her career. After moving to California to live with her mother again, Angelou won a dance scholarship to San Francisco’s California Labor School.

She dropped out of the program, however, instead making history by becoming the first African-American female to operate one of San Francisco’s cable cars. She returned to high school, graduated and then gave birth to her only child, Guy Johnson. After a series of odd jobs, Angelou eventually found her footing as a dancer alongside Alvin Ailey. Their stage act never took off, but she continued in the field.

In 1951, she married Tosh Angelos, working in the Bay Area as a calypso act after their 1954 divorce. During this time, she took on the stage name Maya Angelou. Angelou discovered civil rights activism in the late 1950s, after moving to New York and joining the Harlem Writers Guild.

In 1960, a meeting with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. inspired her to support the Southern Leadership Christian Conference (SCLC). In 1961, she acted onstage in a production of Jean Genet’s The Blacks with James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson, among others. That same year, she met South African activist Vusumzi Make and moved with her son and Make to Egypt.

After her relationship with Make ended, she and her son moved to Accra, Ghana. She lived there until 1965, working in media. While there, she met Malcolm X and helped him form the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

Angelou published the first of her seven autobiographies, “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” in 1969. It remains her most celebrated work and came at a time when the Civil Rights Movement was still reeling over the assassinations of Malcolm X, King and the turbulence of the times.

In 1972, Angelou made history once more by becoming the first Black woman to have a screenplay adapted to film in the Swedish-backed Georgia, Georgia” production and in 1998, she directed the movie “Down In The Delta,” starring Alfre Woodward.

In 1981, Angelou began a lifetime professorship at Wake Forest University where she taught a variety of subjects. Angelou was unafraid to talk about the ugliness of racism and injustice in her poetry, which made her unique among popular poets of her era. Over the course of her autobiographies, Angelou bared her soul and didn’t gloss over any of the details of her life. Her tremendous legacy will continue well into the future.

Like BlackAmericaWeb.com on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

(Photo: York College ISLGP)

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Celebrities React To Dr. Maya Angelou’s Death Via Social Media
0 photos