Maya Angelou
Who Was Maya Angelou?
Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. She died on May 28, 2014, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, at the age of 86.
She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, and several collections of poetry over a writing career that spanned more than five decades. She received more than 50 honorary degrees and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, awarded to her by President Barack Obama in 2011.
She is best known for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, published in 1969 — the first volume of her autobiographical series, nominated for a National Book Award, and one of the most widely read memoirs in American literary history.
Early Life: St. Louis, Stamps, and Five Years of Silence
From St. Louis to Stamps, Arkansas
When Angelou was three years old, her parents divorced, sending both Maya and her brother Bailey to live with their paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Their grandmother, Annie Henderson, ran a general store there. Life in the small, segregated town was bleak. Angelou later wrote that “high spots in Stamps were usually negative: droughts, floods, lynchings and deaths.”
Her older brother Bailey gave Marguerite the nickname “Maya.” She carried it for the rest of her life.
Trauma in St. Louis
Four years after moving to Stamps, when Angelou was seven and her brother eight, their father returned to Stamps without warning and sent them back to their mother’s care in St. Louis. At the age of eight, while living with her mother, Angelou was sexually abused and raped by her mother’s boyfriend, a man named Freeman.
Freeman was found guilty and served only one day in jail for his crime. Several days after he was discharged, Freeman was found dead — presumably murdered by Angelou’s uncles.
Being so young, she believed that her words had the power to kill Freeman and was traumatized. She refused to speak for almost five years.
According to Marcia Ann Gillespie and her colleagues, who wrote a biography about Angelou, it was during this period of silence when Angelou developed her extraordinary memory, her love for books and literature, and her ability to listen and observe.
Mrs. Bertha Flowers and the Return to Language
While living with her grandmother in Stamps, Angelou was introduced to literary greats such as Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe by Mrs. Bertha Flowers, who encouraged the child to speak again by talking about the literature.
Inspired to read by this schoolteacher who gave her “lessons in living,” Angelou began to heal and transcend the trauma of rape, in part by immersing herself in the works of William Shakespeare and Paul Laurence Dunbar, among others.
San Francisco: First African-American Streetcar Conductor
At the age of fourteen, Angelou moved to Oakland, California, with her mother and attended the California Labor School for dance and drama. Before graduating, she received a job as the first African-American streetcar conductor in San Francisco.
She considered it her dream job. Her mother encouraged her to pursue it, warning her she would need to arrive early and work harder than others.
At the age of sixteen, Angelou became pregnant and gave birth to her son, Clyde Bailey Johnson, nicknamed Guy. In 1945, Angelou graduated from Mission High School in San Francisco.
Education and Academic Background
California Labor School and Early Training
Angelou studied drama and dance at the California Labor School in San Francisco. She pursued further performance training independently, working as a dancer and singer in nightclubs across California.
Wake Forest University
She lived in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she was a professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University — a post she held for more than 30 years, serving as Reynolds Professor of American Studies.
Career: Performer, Activist, Memoirist
Early Performance Career (1951–1957)
For the next several years, Angelou worked as a cook, a cocktail waitress, a dancer, a dishwasher, a barmaid, a madam, and a prostitute. After a brief trip back to Stamps, Angelou returned to live with her mother in California.
In 1952, she married Tosh Angelos, an ex-sailor of Greek origin. According to Mary Jane Lupton in Maya Angelou: A Critical Companion, “Maya…was married and divorced in one short, unhappy interval.”
During this time, Angelou’s dancing career took an upward turn, and she began to use the stage name of Maya Angelou.
Angelou’s first album, Miss Calypso, produced in 1957, was made possible due to the popularity of her nightclub act.
In 1954–55, she toured Europe and Africa in a State Department–sponsored production of the opera Porgy and Bess.
The Harlem Writers Guild and Martin Luther King Jr. (1958–1961)
In 1958, she moved to New York, where she joined the Harlem Writers Guild, acted in the historic Off-Broadway production of Jean Genet’s The Blacks, and wrote and performed Cabaret for Freedom.
After hearing King speak at a church in Harlem in early 1960, Angelou resolved to help the SCLC raise funds by staging a revue, “Cabaret for Freedom.” The revue was a rousing success, with well-known Black celebrities Sidney Poitier and Ossie Davis participating.
Martin Luther King Jr., a leader in the SCLC, recruited Angelou as its northern coordinator in 1960. She held the role for six months before resigning in January 1961.
Cairo, Ghana, and Malcolm X (1961–1964)
In 1960, Angelou left New York and moved to Cairo, Egypt, with civil rights activist Vusumzi Make, where she worked as the editor of The Arab Observer.
In 1963, she and her son left Egypt for Ghana, where she met Malcolm X. In Ghana, she also taught at the University of Ghana and performed on the radio and at the Ghana National Theater.
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 she arrived in the United States, Malcolm X was assassinated, and the organization dissolved.
Soon after X’s assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asked Angelou to serve as Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King’s assassination, falling on her birthday on April 4, 1968, left her devastated.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
It was during this time that novelist James Baldwin encouraged Angelou to write, and she began work on her groundbreaking memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Recalling her childhood experiences growing up in Arkansas to becoming a mother at 16, Angelou published I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1969. It became an instant bestseller and stayed on the New York Times paperback bestseller list for the next two years. Nominated for a National Book Award in 1970, it is considered her most famous work.
The book launched a seven-volume autobiographical series. The six volumes that followed were:
| Year | Title |
|---|---|
| 1974 | Gather Together in My Name |
| 1976 | Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas |
| 1981 | The Heart of a Woman |
| 1986 | All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes |
| 2002 | A Song Flung Up to Heaven |
| 2013 | Mom & Me & Mom |
Clinton Inauguration and Grammy Wins (1993)
In 1993, Angelou recited her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” for President Bill Clinton’s inauguration. She became the first Black poet and first female poet to participate in a recitation for a U.S. president’s inauguration. The only inaugural poet who came before her was Robert Frost, who recited “The Gift Outright” during President John F. Kennedy’s ceremony in 1961.
The performance won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album. Angelou also received Best Spoken Word Album Grammy Awards for Phenomenal Woman in 1995 and A Song Flung Up to Heaven in 2002.
Presidential Medal of Freedom (2011)
Angelou received the National Medal of Arts in 2000, and in 2011 President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a ceremony in the White House.
Legacy: Books, Stamps, and Hospitals
Angelou published over 30 titles across her career. She received more than 50 honorary degrees.
More than thirty health care and medical facilities have been named after Angelou.
In May 2021, it was announced that Angelou would be one of the first women to be commemorated with a new series of quarters from the U.S. Mint.
The documentary Maya Angelou and Still I Rise, released in 2016, depicts her life through interviews with Angelou and her contemporaries.
Personal Life
Marriages
Angelou married three times. She married Tosh Angelos in 1951; the marriage ended in 1954. In late 1960, Angelou met Vusumzi Make, a South African freedom fighter. The couple married in 1961 and moved to Cairo with her son in 1962, but the marriage dissolved soon after. She later married Paul du Feu in 1974; that marriage ended in 1983.
Son: Guy Johnson
Her son, born Clyde Bailey Johnson in 1945 and later known as Guy Johnson, remained a central figure throughout her memoirs and her life.
Seven Autobiographies at a Glance
| Year | Title | Subject Period |
|---|---|---|
| 1969 | I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Childhood to age 17 |
| 1974 | Gather Together in My Name | 1944–1948 |
| 1976 | Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas | 1949–1955 |
| 1981 | The Heart of a Woman | 1957–1962 |
| 1986 | All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes | 1962–1965 |
| 2002 | A Song Flung Up to Heaven | Late 1960s |
| 2013 | Mom & Me & Mom | Relationship with her mother |
