By Matiara Huff
Marguerite Annie Johnson was born April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. When she was young, her parents split up so she and her older brother went to live with their father’s mother in Stamps, Arkansas. While living there Angelou experience racism and discrimination first hand, and learned to deal with it. Then, while on a trip to visit her mother, Angelou was raped by her mother’s boyfriend, who was later killed out of vengeance by her uncle. This experience traumatized her so much that she became mute for several years after. Later, Angelou moved to San Francisco, California for school, and became the first black female cable car conductor. When she was sixteen, she had her son and began working a number of jobs to support him.
In the mid-1950’s Angelou starred in the touring production of Calypso Heat Wave, and released the album Miss Calypso. Then she organized and starred in Cabaret for Freedom, as a member of the Harlem writer’s guild and a civil rights activist. Throughout most of the 60’s she lived abroad in Egypt, then Ghana working as a free-lance editor. In 1969 she published the memoirs of her childhood called I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings which made literary history because she was the first African-American nonfiction writer to become a best-seller. She continued to break records when she was the first African- American women to have a screen play produced with Georgia.
Throughout her career, Maya Angelou has opened doors for the African-American community and the eyes of many ignorant people. Because of this we will forever be in debt to her. The influence she created will continue to live through all of us so that she will never die. Rest In Power.