On April 4, we celebrate the birthday and phenomenal life of the late American cultural icon, writer and performing artist Maya Angelou. Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. Like other writers whose work examines racism and sexism, her books have recently been censored in the U.S.
Angelou is still widely celebrated for her autobiography ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.’ Despite Angelou not speaking for five years in her youth in reaction to trauma, she later became fluent in French, Spanish, Hebrew, Italian, and Fante (a dialect of Akan native to Ghana).
Her nickname came from her only sibling, Bailey Jr., who referred to her as “Maya,” meaning “My” or “Mya Sister” during childhood.
Angelou was the first Black woman to conduct a cable car in San Francisco in 1944.
Angelou was friends with James Baldwin and had planned to help Malcolm X build the Organization of Afro-American Unity, a new civil rights organization, before his assassination.
Angelou is known as the first Black woman screenwriter in the U.S. for her screenplay Georgia, Georgia, which was made into a Swedish-American drama released in 1972.
She is fondly remembered for her powerful recitation of her poem On the Pulse of Morning in 1993 at President Bill Clinton’s presidential inauguration. That day she became only the second poet in American history to recite a poem at a presidential inauguration. In 1994, following imprisoned freedom fighter Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, after South Africa elected him President, he recited Angelou’s poem, Still I Rise during his presidential inauguration.
President Barack Obama awarded her the 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom.
