Maya Angelou: Poetry is Music Written for the Human Voice

Considered one of the greatest writers in the United States, Maya Angelou was the first African-American to work on the streetcars of San Francisco (Market Street Railway Company). She was the first African-American woman to recite her poetry at a U.S. presidential inauguration, the first African-American woman to make the non-fiction bestseller’s list, the first African-American woman to have an original screenplay produced for the movie Georgia, Georgia in 1972.

She was born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri to Viviane Baxter Johnson, a card dealer, and Bailey Johnson, a hotel doorman. She and her older brother, Bailey Jr. were raised by their grandmother Momma Henderson in Stamps, Arkansas following their parents' divorce.

Momma Annie, as she was called, worked until early morning frying ham and boiling chickens. She made meat pies, offered cold lemonade and selling homemade meals to workers at the local lumber mill. For breakfast on Sundays, Momma Annie would make eggs, fried potatoes and onions, yellow corn, fried fish, and biscuits covered with butter. Dinner might include buttered biscuits, fried corn cakes, pork sausage, green beans and homegrown fruit.

Stamps was a segregated town with the black residents living in an area called the "Quarters," and whites in a separate section divided by a set of railroad tracks and Red River. It was a town where black patients had to find black doctors and black dentists but none were to be found.

At eight-years-old, she was raped by her mother's boyfriend, Mr. Freeman. She eventually testified in his trial, and he was sentenced to one year and one day in jail. His attorney as able to have him released that same day, hours later he was murdered. Fearing that her voice led to outcome, Maya Angelou stopped speaking to anyone except Bailey.

In 1945, Angelou graduated from Mission High School and gave birth to her son, Clyde Bailey (Guy) Johnson. She became a madam at 18, renting a house to two prostitutes and even later worked as a prostitute herself.

In the 1950s, following her marriage to Tosh Angelos, a music lover and sailor of Greek origin whom she’d met at the Melrose Record Shop, she changed her last name to Angelou.

She helped Malcolm X with the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU), participated in the Harlem Writers' Guild and helped organize the Cultural Association of Women of African Heritage, was appointed National Ambassador for the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF).

A gourmet cook, Maya Angelou collected more than 100 cookbooks, loved foods such as "lamb curry with side dishes of fresh pineapple, tomatoes, papaya, and mangos." Her favorite authors included James Weldon Johnson ("Lift Every Voice and Sing") Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Shakespeare. Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities was one of her favorite books.

In 1962, after leaving her second husband Vusumzi Make, a freedom fighter from South Africa, Maya and her son moved to West Africa (Accra). There she worked as an administrative assistant at the School of Music and Drama at the University of Ghana's Institute of African Studies.

Returning to California at 38, she wrote and narrated a 10-part KQED educational television series called "Blacks, Blues, Black" which highlighted African traditions still current in American life at the age of 40. Her first autobiography, “I know Why the Caged Bird Sings" was published in 1970. "The theme shows that people can survive with courage and dignity—even in hostile environments."

Life will give you experiences, and these experiences may not always be pleasant, but nobody promised you a rose garden. But more than likely if you do dare, what you get are marvelous return.

Like this post? Stop by and read "Frances E.W. Harper: First African American Woman to Publish a Short Story." Frances Watkins was an African American lecturer, poet, abolitionist, suffragist, and reformer. Born September 24, 1825 in Baltimore, Maryland, she emphasized that Black women faced the double burden of racism and sexism, therefore the fight for women’s suffrage must include suffrage for African American.

Works cited:

• Kite, L. Patricia. Maya Angelou. Lerner Publications, 1999
• Harper, Judith E. Journey to Freedom: Maya Angelou. The Child's World, 1999.