Tough Beginnings: 1928 to the 1940S Finding Her
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The Life of Maya Angelou Tough beginnings: Searching for her place: The 1950s and 1960s ngelou struggled to raise her son on her 1928 to the 1940s own. She held a succession of jobs, including dancing in a nightclub, waitressing, cooking aya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie A in restaurants, scraping paint off cars and, briefly, Johnson in St. Louis on April 4, 1928, but prostitution. She was rejected from joining the Mmoved to Long Beach, Calif., shortly after. Women’s Army Corps because the California Labor After her parents split up when she was 3, she and School was on the House Un-American Activities her brother, Bailey, were sent to live with their Committee’s list of grandmother in Stamps, Ark. It was Bailey who communist sympa- gave her the nickname Maya. thizers. She flirted In Stamps, Angelou was exposed to poverty, seg- with drug usage, regation and racism, but also the deep faith found until a friend forced in the black community. her to watch him After four years, Angelou and her brother went shoot up heroin, to live with their mother, who had moved back which galvanized to St. Louis. Her mother’s boyfriend lived with her to reject drugs. them, and he raped Angelou when she was 7. He In the early 1950s, was tried and convicted, but was found mur- she married Tosh dered within a few days. Because she had testi- Angelos, a Greek fied against him, she believed that her voice had American sailor. caused his death, and she remained mostly mute They divorced after three years, but she would take for five years. Angelou didn’t begin to talk again a version of his last name as her professional name. until a family friend in Stamps, where she and She got a gig singing and dancing at a San Francisco Bailey returned to live, shared literature with her nightclub, where she shared billing with future co- and told her that words had more power when median Phyllis Diller. She toured 22 countries in the MAYAANGELOU.COM spoken aloud. mid-1950s with a production of “Porgy and Bess” Angelou met with Malcolm X in Ghana in 1964. Angelou read voraciously and began writing and put out an album, “Miss Calypso.” and writer, before returning to the United States in her own poems. She and Bailey went to live with Angelou moved to New York in the late 1950s, 1964. She was supposed to help Malcolm X build his their mother again in San Francisco. Angelou won joined the Harlem Writers Guild and the civil-rights Organization of Afro-American Unity, but he was a scholarship to study dance and drama at the movement, and appeared in an award-winning off- assassinated first. She then lectured at UCLA and California Labor School, but dropped out at 14 to Broadway play, “The Blacks.” She moved with activ- wrote and directed “Black, Blues, Black,” a 10-part, become the city’s first black female cable car con- ist Vusumzi Make to Egypt, where she was an editor 1968 TV series on black culture. She also worked on ductor. She gave birth to a son, Guy, a few weeks of an English-language newsweekly. After they split Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign; he after graduating high school. up, she moved to Ghana and worked as a teacher was assassinated on her 40th birthday. Finding her literary voice: The 1970s and 1980s ncouraged by her friend James Baldwin, a playwright and novel- Eist, Angelou began work on the first installment of her autobiogra- phy, telling her story from childhood through her son’s birth. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” was published in 1969 and was nominated for the Na- tional Book Award. It gained national attention and was a New York Times bestseller for two years. The book drew the notice of black students at Wake Forest University, who invited Angelou to speak during Black Awareness Week in 1973. Though hesitant because of the racism she had experienced growing up in the South, she needed the speaking fees, she said, so she “wrapped her courage around her purse” and came to Winston-Salem. She would return to Wake Forest sev- AP PHOTO Angelou received the 13th annual Matrix Award from the New York Chapter of Women in eral times over the next several years, Communications in 1983. Also at the ceremony were editor Jane Bryant Quinn (from left), and the university gave her an honorary Sen. Edward Kennedy and syndicated columnist Mary McGrory. doctorate in 1977. Her artistic output was varied. Her script for the 1972 film “Georgia, Geor- Other writing credits included “Sister, gia” — about a black woman killed for Sister,” a 1982 TV movie, and multiple having a white lover — was the first collections of poetry. One collection, AP PHOTO by a black woman to be filmed, and it 1971’s “Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Angelou poses in 1971 with a copy of her book earned her a Pulitzer Prize nomination. Water ’fore I Diiie,” was nominated for a “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” She appeared in the landmark televi- Pulitzer Prize. position brought notoriety to the uni- sion miniseries “Roots” in 1977 and She married Welsh carpenter Paul versity, but some critics objected to her adapted “I Know Why the Caged Bird du Feu in 1973, but they divorced eight hiring, viewing her more as a celebrity Sings” into a 1979 TV movie starring years later. than an academic. Diahann Carroll and Esther Rolle. In 1982, Angelou became the Reyn- She served as the first chairperson She wrote four more autobiogra- olds Professor in American Studies at of Winston-Salem’s National Black phies in the 1970s and 1980s, including Wake Forest, a lifetime appointment, Theatre Festival in 1989, helping to lure WARNER BROTHERS PHOTO “Gather Together in My Name” and “All teaching classes on African culture and such stars as Lou Gossett Jr. and Cicely Angelou (top) with Cicely Tyson in “Roots.” God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes.” literature, poetry and Shakespeare. Her Tyson to town. National and local renown: The 1990s to 2014 JOURNAL PHOTO LEFT: Barack Obama awards Angelou the 2010 Medal of Freedom in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 15, 2011. ABOVE: Angelou blows kisses to the crowd at her public 80th AP PHOTOS birthday celebration in Corpen- Bill Clinton greets Angelou after her poetry reading at his 1993 inauguration. ing Plaza on April 19, 2008. ngelou was introduced to a wider Baptist Church and participated in Forsyth Medical Center’s Maya Angelou Woodard. She composed poetry for and audience when her reading of countless events to raise money for is- Women’s Health & Wellness Center. narrated the 2008 documentary about A her poem “On the Pulse of the sues including the arts, health care and Along with two more autobiogra- Kwanzaa, “The Black Candle,” and ap- Morning” at Bill Clinton’s 1993 presi- child welfare. phies, she published two cookbooks, peared on “Sesame Street.” dential inauguration was broadcast live Among the local institutions named each including stories from her life, and In 2011, she criticized the paraphras- around the word. The album version of for her are Winston-Salem State Uni- several children’s books. Hallmark put ing of a quote on the Martin Luther King her performing the poem won her the versity’s Maya Angelou Institute for out a line of greeting cards and other Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., say- first of her three spoken-word Grammy the Improvement of Child and Family products bearing her name and verse. ing it made him look like “an arrogant Awards. Education; The Maya Angelou Center She kept her hand in the onscreen twit.” The quote was later removed. Angelou became involved in her for Health Equity at WFU School of arts world, acting in and writing poetry She was awarded an NAACP Image adopted community of Winston-Salem Medicine; the Maya Angelou Research for John Singleton’s 1993 film “Po- Award in 1997, the National Medal of well beyond her teaching at Wake For- Center for Minority Health at Wake etic Justice” and directing “Down in Arts in 2000 and the Presidential Medal est. She was a member of Mount Zion Forest Baptist Medical Center; and the Delta,” a 1998 film starring Alfre of Freedom in 2011. Sources: Journal archives; The Associated Press; Los Angeles Times; The Washington Post; mayaangelou.com CASSANDRA SHERRILL/JOURNAL.