Dr.+Maya+Angelou

 Born Marguerite Johnson on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. Angelou spent her difficult formative years moving back and forth between her mother's and grandmother's. At age eight, she was raped by her mother's boyfriend, who was subsequently killed by her uncles. The event caused the young girl to go mute for nearly six years, and her teens and early twenties were spent as a dancer, filled with isolation and experimentation.

As a teenager, Dr. Angelou’s love for the arts won her a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco’s Labor School. At 14, she dropped out to become San Francisco’s first African-American female cable car conductor. She later finished high school, giving birth to her son, Guy, a few weeks after graduation. As a young single mother, she supported her son by working as a waitress and cook, however her passion for music, dance, performance, and and poetry would soon take center stage.

In 1952, she married a Greek sailor named Tosh Angelos. When she began her career as a nightclub singer, she took the professional name Maya Angelou, combining her childhood nickname with a form of her husband's name. Although the marriage did not last, her performing career flourished. She toured Europe with a production of the opera // Porgy and Bess // in 1954 and 1955. She studied modern dance with Martha Graham, danced with Alvin Ailey on television variety shows and recorded her first record album, // Calypso Lady // (1957).



She had composed song lyrics and poems for many years, and by the end of the 1950s was increasingly interested in developing her skills as a writer. She moved to New York, where she joined the Harlem Writers Guild and took her place among the growing number of young black writers and artists associated with the Civil Rights Movement. In New York, she fell in love with the South African civil rights activist Vusumzi Make and in 1960, the couple moved, with Angelou's son, to Cairo, Egypt. In Cairo, Angelou served as editor of the English language weekly The Arab Observer. Angelou and Guy later moved to Ghana, where she joined a thriving group of African American expatriates. She served as an instructor and assistant administrator at the University of Ghana's School of Music and Drama, worked as feature editor for The African Review and wrote for The Ghanaian Times and the Ghanaian Broadcasting Company. Maya Angelou's five-volume autobiography commenced with //I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings// in 1970. The memoirs chronicle different eras of her life and were met with critical and popular success. Later books include //All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes// (1986) and //My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken and Me// (1994). She has published several volumes of verse, including //And Still I Rise// (1987) and //Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou// (1995). Her volume of poetry, //Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Die// (1971), was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. In 1981 she was appointed to a lifetime position as the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University.

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Maya Angelou 1993 Bill Clinton Inauguration 