M AYA A NGELOU

F ACTS ABOUT M AYA A NGELOU Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis, Missouri on April 4 th She was raised in St. Louis, Missouri and Stamps, Arkansas. Angelou experienced the brutality of racial discrimination in Stamps. Angelou’s love for arts won her a scholarship to San Francisco’s Labor School. She gave birth to her first son, Guy, a few weeks after high school graduation. She supported her son by working as a waitress and cook.

P ICTURES

FACTS Angelou toured Europe with Porgy and Bess a production of the opera in She studied modern dance with Martha Graham and danced with Alvin Ailey on television shows. In 1957, Angelou recorded her first album, Calypso Lady. She moved to New York in 1958, where she joined the Harlem Writers Guild. She acted in the historic Off-Broadway production of Jean Genet’s The Blacks and wrote and performed Cabaret for Freedom.

Dr. Angelou moved to Cairo, Egypt where she served as editor of the English language weekly The Arab Observer in The next year, she moved to Ghana where she taught at the University of Ghana School of Drama and Music. She worked as feature editor for The African Review and wrote for The Ghanaian Times. Dr. Angelou read and studied voraciously, mastering French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, and West African language Fanti. While in Ghana she met with Malcolm X and, in 1964, returned to America to help him build his new Organization of African American Unity. Shortly after her arrival in U.S., Malcolm X was assassinated, and the organization dissolved.

Soon after X’s assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked Dr. Angelou to serve as Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King’s assassination, falling on her birthday in 1968, left her devastated. With the guidance of her friend, the novelist James Baldwin, she began work on the book that would become I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Published in 1970, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was published to international acclaim and enormous popular success. The list of her published verse, non-fiction, and fiction now includes more than 30 bestselling titles.

A trailblazer in film and television, Dr. Angelou wrote the screenplay and composed the score for the 1972 film Georgia, Georgia. Her script, the first by an African American woman ever to be filmed, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She continues to appear on TV shows and in films including the landmark television adaptation of Alex Haley’s Roots (1977) and John Singleton’s Poetic Justice (1993). In 1996, she directed her first feature film, Down in the Delta

A trailblazer in film and television, Dr. Angelou wrote the screenplay and composed the score for the 1972 film Georgia, Georgia. Her script, the first by an African American woman ever to be filmed, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She continues to appear on TV shows and in films including the landmark television adaptation of Alex Haley’s Roots (1977) and John Singleton’s Poetic Justice (1993). In 1996, she directed her first feature film, Down in the Delta. In 2008, she composed poetry for and narrated the award-winning documentary The Black Candle, directed by M.K. Asante.

F ACTS A BOUT A NGELOU ’ S C HILDHOOD She was born in St. Louis Missouri. Her real name was Marguerite Annie Johnson, she was given the name Maya Angelou in her early twenties. Her mother, Vivian Johnson, was a nurse and realtor. Her father, Bailey Johnson, was a naval dietician. Her brother, Bailey, senses negative influences of racism.

M AYA ’ S Y OUTH In 1936 Maya’s parents divorced and Maya moved to live with her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Stamps was racially divided and Maya experienced being a black girl in the racist society. Her grandmother managed to instill pride and religiousness in Maya. In 1936, Maya and her brother were sent back to Saint Louis to their mother.