Angelou, Maya

Maya Angelou

Born April 4, 1928

St. Louis, Missouri

Poet, author, actress, director

Decades before she rose to great acclaim in the arts, Maya Angelou was breaking down barriers and laying the groundwork for her life's mission of helping others. As a teenager during World War II (1939–45), she became the first black American streetcar conductor in San Francisco, California. She also witnessed firsthand the removal of thousands of Japanese American citizens from San Francisco by the War Relocation Authority (WRA). These citizens were forced to leave their homes and evacuate to camps spread throughout the United States. The tragic scene made a lasting impression on Angelou, who worked to better the lives of others the rest of her life.

Angelou became a noted author, poet, teacher, and historian. The first black American woman director in Hollywood, Angelou wrote, produced, directed, and acted in productions for stage, film, and television. She worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) and actively participated in the movement for civil rights in America and in South Africa during the 1950s. On January 20, 1993, Angelou read her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" for the inauguration of President Bill Clinton (1946–; served 1993–2001) in Washington, D.C. She held a lifetime appointment as Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, into the twenty-first century.

Growing up during the Great Depression

Marguerite Annie Johnson (later known as Maya Angelou) was born on April 4, 1928, to Vivian Baxter and Bailey Johnson of St. Louis, Missouri. Her brother, Bailey Johnson Jr., was born the previous year. The family moved west to Long Beach, California, soon after Marguerite's birth. When their parents divorced in 1931, the two youngsters, Marguerite and Bailey, were sent alone on a long train ride eastward to live with their paternal grandmother, Annie Johnson Henderson, in Stamps, Arkansas. The children called her Momma, and she would take care of them off and on throughout their lives.

When Marguerite turned seven years old, she and Bailey reunited with their mother, who was now living in St. Louis. A year later, Marguerite suffered an assault at the hands of one of her mother's boyfriends. The trauma left the little girl without a voice. The children were returned to Momma in Stamps, where Marguerite remained mute for five years, speaking only to her trusted brother Bailey. A local family friend, Bertha Flowers, recognized that Marguerite, despite her muteness, had a literary gift and introduced her to literature. She read to her, showed her the books in her own library, and invited the child to borrow them under one condition: Marguerite must read them out loud. Because she loved to read and loved the personal attention from Mrs. Flowers, Marguerite slowly began to speak again.

In 1940 Marguerite graduated at the top of her eighth grade class from the racially segregated Lafayette County Training School. She said good-bye to her beloved grandmother as she and Bailey left Arkansas to move back into their mother's home, this time in San Francisco, California. At age thirteen Marguerite excelled in her classes at George Washington High School in the city. She won a scholarship for evening classes at the California Labor School, where she studied drama and dance. It was here that she dreamed of becoming a professional dancer.

World War II

Just as the children were settling into their new lives in California, World War II was threatening America. Their mother and her new husband had purchased a fourteen-room home on Post Street in the Fillmore District of San Francisco and had turned it into a boardinghouse. The lodgers who came to stay at the house were a diverse and interesting group that provided a sharp contrast to the quiet life Marguerite had known in rural Arkansas.

The Fillmore area had previously been the center of San Francisco's large population of Japanese immigrants and their descendants. With the outbreak of World War II, thousands of Japanese Americans were interned in prison camps by the federal government, which considered them a security risk now that Japan had become a declared enemy of the United States. Many Asian American families were forced to sell or leave their homes and businesses and go to live in crowded camps because of their ancestral background. Marguerite was witness to a form of racism different from what she had seen in the South. Few people spoke out against the internment but the experience made an impact on Marguerite's life.

In a short time, black Americans replaced the Japanese American population of Fillmore. Many blacks were lured to the city from rural areas by the ready availability of jobs in various industries rejuvenated by the war, such as shipping and munitions manufacturing. For black Americans in urban areas, the war meant a period of relative prosperity. The Fillmore district in San Francisco was a bustling center of activity.

When Marguerite was fifteen years old, she decided to get a job. Many jobs that were usually performed by men were now opened to women because of the war. She noticed women working as streetcar conductors and decided she wanted to be one. At the time, however, blacks were not allowed to work on streetcars. For a month Marguerite arrived every morning at the company office until she was allowed to fill out an application for the job. She added four years to her true age on the application and the company finally hired her. She became the first black American conductor of cable cars on the streets of San Francisco.

Struggling to survive

In 1945 World War II ended and the country was celebrating victory over Germany and Japan. Marguerite received her diploma from Mission High School and several months later gave birth to her son Clyde (Guy) Bailey Johnson. At the age of seventeen she now had a child of her own to raise. She worked a variety of jobs in order to support her son, and even tried to join the army in the late 1940s to receive some vocational training, but she was turned down. Marguerite finally ended up in sales in a record store, where she was able to indulge her love of music. It was there that she met Tosh Angelos, a Greek American soldier who shared her interest in jazz music and adored Guy. Marguerite and Angelos were married in 1952.

Marguerite had studied dance for years. She decided to put her natural talent and years of training to the test by trying to make a living in the entertainment industry. She soon found work in nightclubs and began using the name Rita Johnson until her act brought her to the attention of the owners of the Purple Onion, San Francisco's most popular club at the time. The owners hired her to work for them but decided that she needed a more theatrical name and set about helping her choose one. They settled on Maya, which was her brother Bailey's nickname for her, and the name that her family called her. Her married name Angelos was turned into Angelou and she debuted at the Purple Onion as Maya Angelou in 1953.

Talent scouts saw Angelou perform, and she was chosen to be a member of the all-black cast for the musical Porgy and Bess, which was touring Europe and Africa. Angelou stayed with the tour from 1954 to 1955 but missed her son too much and returned to the United States to be with him. Maya and Tosh Angelos divorced in 1954, and Angelou continued making a living as a nightclub singer.

The civil rights movement

In 1959 Maya Angelou took Guy and settled in Brooklyn, New York, where she worked to establish herself as a nightclub singer and actress. She knew she wanted to write so she joined the Harlem Writers' Guild, a group of excellent black American writers. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was leading the civil rights movement seeking racial justice in America at the time. Angelou heard him speak and decided to help raise awareness about the civil rights struggle. She and another performer wrote, produced, and appeared in the revue Cabaret for Freedom in order to raise money for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) that King led.

While working as northern coordinator of the SCLC Angelou met and fell in love with South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make. She and Guy moved with Make to Cairo, Egypt, where Angelou worked as a journalist. In 1963 Angelou took Guy and moved to Accra, Ghana, in West Africa. She continued working as a journalist until returning to the United States in 1965.

A Best-Selling Author and Poet

Maya Angelou published many books of verse and stories of her amazing life including her home front experiences as a San Francisco streetcar conductor. In addition to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), she published other autobiographies, including Gather Together in My Name (1974), The Heart of a Woman (1981), and All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986). Following her highly acclaimed first book of poetry titled Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie in 1971 came many other books of verse and meditation, including Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well (1975), Wouldn't Take Nothing For My Journey Now (1993), Life Doesn't Frighten Me (1993), Even the Stars Look Lonesome (1997), and A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002). Random House publishers released The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou in 1994. In 1999 Maya Angelou received the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature.

National recognition

In the late 1960s Angelou focused her energies on her writing. The first installment of her autobiography, titled I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, was published in 1969. In the book, Angelou describes the hardship of her early years during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the home front war years of the early 1940s. Both humorous and touching, she realistically related the human condition as seen through the eyes of a young black girl from the South. The book became an immediate best-seller and was nominated for a National Book Award.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Angelou wrote and published four more volumes of her autobiography and several books of poetry. In 1972 she was nominated for a Pulitzer prize for her first published book of verse, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971). She was the first black American woman to attain membership in the Directors Guild, and became the first to have a screenplay produced in Hollywood when she wrote the script for Georgia, Georgia (1971). Angelou adapted her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, for television in 1970 and was later nominated for an Emmy award for her acting performance in the television miniseries Roots (1977). She was also nominated for a Tony award for her Broadway debut in Look Away (1975).

In 1981 Angelou became a literature professor at Wake Forest University in North Carolina and continued writing. She received numerous honorary degrees and worked as a literacy activist with the goal of helping to eliminate illiteracy. Traveling extensively, Angelou gave readings and spoke to audiences about her writing and about the lessons she learned throughout her life. In 1996 Angelou was appointed as a national ambassador for the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), an appointment she held into the twenty-first century.

For More Information

Books

Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Random House, 1969.

Hansen, Joyce. Women of Hope: African Americans Who Made a Difference. New York: Scholastic Press, 1998.

King, Sarah E. Maya Angelou: Greeting the Morning. Brookfield, CT: Millbrook Press, 1994.

Shapiro, Miles. Maya Angelou: Author. Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House Publishers, 2000.

Web sites

"Maya Angelou." The Academy of American Poets. http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=88 (accessed on July 18, 2004).

"Maya Angelou: Greatness Through Literature." Women's International Center. http://www.wic.org/bio/mangelou.htm (accessed on July 18, 2004).