“Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.”
By the time Dr. Maya Angelou’s words were published in her first book, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” the writer, poet, singer, dancer, filmmaker, actor and activist had already put her whole heart into quite a lot in her 42 years of life.
In 1928, she was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, where she was soon dubbed Maya by her brother Bailey Jr. Three years later, after their parents’ divorce, the two moved in with their paternal grandmother and uncle in Stamps, Arkansas.
Stamps boasted a population of roughly 2,700 people and one grocery store, which Angelou’s grandmother owned, and where the family also lived. She spent many formative years deep in the pre-civil rights era South, watching cross-cultural interactions in the store and literally crossing the railroad tracks every day on her way home in the black part of town.
“The truth is you never can leave home. You take it with you everywhere you go,” Angelou told Bill Moyers, the host of a film called Creativity that took her back to Stamps in 1982. “It’s under your skin, it moves the tongue. It colors the thinking, impedes upon the logic.”
There were ghosts in Stamps for Angelou as well as the tribulations of pervasive racism, Angelou was deeply traumatized at the age of seven, and after a brief stint living with her mother in St. Louis, it came to light that she had been sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend. He was tried, convicted and released, but was later found dead. Convinced his blood was on her hands, Angelou didn’t speak for years.
“I was terribly hurt in this town and vastly loved,” she told Moyers in Creativity. She later added, “When I reach for the pen to write, I have to scrape it across those scars to sharpen that point.”
It was in Stamps that she found her voice again. It was there that music and poetry helped her “descend from the pit.” And when she left Arkansas for good at the age of 13, she had formed the bedrock of a spirit bound for humble prominence.
With her mother and brother in San Francisco, where she became the city’s first female African-American cable car conductor at the age of 15, Angelou finished high school and studied drama, music and dance at the California Labor School.
1928: Maya Angelou born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis
1931: Moves to live with family in Stamps
1943: Becomes San Francisco’s first female, African-American cable car conductor while studying music, acting and dance
1944: Angelou gives birth to a son
1940s-1960s: Travels the world in pursuit of her performing arts and writing careers and joins the U.S. civil rights movement
1969: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou’s most recognized work, is published
1993: Reads “On the Pulse of the Morning” at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration, becoming the first woman and first African-American to read an inaugural poem
2014: Dies at age 86 on May 28 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina
She gave birth to her son, Claude, who later changed his name to Guy, in 1944, and was briefly married to Tosh Angelos, whose surname she used to create her stage name at the Purple Onion nightclub: Maya Angelou. It stuck, and eventually she made it legal.
Angelou ferociously pursued a life in the arts. As a six-foot triple threat, she toured the world thanks to her role in the opera Porgy and Bess, studied modern dance in New York City, was in an off-Broadway production of Jean Genet’s The Blacks, produced and starred in Cabaret for Freedom benefitting the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, appeared in the film Calypso Heat Wave and released an album titled Miss Calypso.
And all the while, Angelou honed her writing skills.
Angelou’s timeline quickly came to include a who’s who of civil rights leaders, prominent politicians and creative forces. She befriended Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and moved to Cairo, Egypt, with South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make, where she joined anti-apartheid activism and met Nelson Mandela.
Angelou would later write these words in a tribute to Mandela when he died in 2013: “Yes, Mandela’s day is done, yet we, his inheritors, will open the gates wider for reconciliation, and we will respond generously to the cries of blacks and whites, Asians, Hispanics, the poor who live piteously on the floor of our planet. He has offered us understanding. We will not withhold forgiveness even from those who do not ask.”
In Ghana, Angelou worked in newspapers, magazines, radio and as an assistant administrator at the University of Ghana’s School of Music and Drama. But when she returned to the U.S., Angelou joined the civil rights movement with fervor, believing it would take effort from all parts of society because it would affect all parts of society.
“It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites,” she said in an interview with the Academy of Achievement. “Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air; we all have it or none of us has it. That is the truth of it.”
The assassinations of King and Malcolm X weighed heavily on Angelou, and with encouragement from novelist and close friend James Baldwin, she began to write about her earliest experiences, a memoir that became I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Her groundbreaking autobiography received international praise and set a record for the longest run — two years — on the New York Times’ paperback nonfiction bestseller list. However, it was also somewhat ill-received at the time. Angelou’s openness about her sexual abuse was highly taboo in 1970, resulting in the banning of her books at many schools.
Today, Caged Bird has been translated into 10 languages, is still her most-recognized work, and, according to Angelou’s website, is now a course adoption at college campuses around the world. She also co-wrote the screenplay for the film version that aired on CBS in 1979.
Angelou threw herself into her writing. From the age of 42 until her death in 2014 at the age of 86, she authored 36 books, 30 of which were bestsellers. Memoirs, essays, collections of poetry, cookbooks and plays all bear her byline.
On Jan. 20, 1993, the world watched as Angelou recited “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton, becoming the first woman and the first African-American to do so.
“Here on the pulse of this new day,” she read, “you may have the grace to look up and out and into your sister’s eyes, into your brother’s face, your country, and say simply, very simply, with hope, ‘Good morning.’ “
Angelou received more than 50 honorary doctorate degrees and the Literarian Award from the National Book Foundation. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama and the National Medal of Arts by President Clinton.
She was appointed to presidential committees by both President Gerald Ford and President Jimmy Carter, performed her poetry at the Million Man March and the 50th anniversary of the United Nations. She took home three Grammys for her spoken word albums, a Pulitzer Prize nomination for Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Diiie, a Tony nomination for her role in “Look Away” and an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of Kunta Kinte’s grandmother in Roots.
Angelou was an ardent lover of humankind. She endured many hardships, experienced many cultures and held many careers, but over the years, with each reimagining of herself, she took a firm step toward truth.
In the poem “Human Family,” she wrote, “I note the obvious differences between each sort and type, but we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.
“We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.
“We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”
Discover more about the Arkansas Women’s Hall of Fame Class of 2017.
Sign up for Daily E-news
