Maya Angelou
Maya is a poet, memoirist, novelist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. She was born on April 4th, 1928. Her birth place is in St. Louis, Missouri. She was raised in St. Louis as well as Stamps, Arkansas. In stamps Maya experienced racism but she also knew the values of the traditional African-American family, community, and culture .She had great faith as well. When Maya was a teenager she won 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 and gave birth to her first child, Guy, a few weeks after graduation. She worked as a waiter and cook so she could support him. In 1954 and 1955, Maya toured Europe with a production of the opera Porgy and Bess. She studied dance and danced on variety TV shows. In 1957 she recorded her first album, Calypso Lady. In 1958, she moved to New York. She joined the Harlem Writers Guild, acted in the historic Off-Broadway production, and wrote and performed Cabaret for Freedom. In 1960 Maya moved to Cairo, Egypt. She was the editor of The Arab Observer. In 1961 she moved to Ghana. This is where she taught music and drama at the University of Ghana’s School of Music and Drama. Maya studied several languages. Then in 1964 she met up with Malcolm X and moved back to America to help him build up his new organization of African American Unity. It wasn’t long after they arrived back to the U.S when Malcolm got assassinated. The organization failed. Soon after Malcolm’s assassination Martin Luther King, Jr. asked her to serve as a Northern Coordinator Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Her book I Know Why the Cadged Bird Sings was published in 1968. Maya wrote the screenplay and composed the score for the 1972 film Georgia, Georgia. Her script, the first script by an African American woman ever to be filmed, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. In 2008, she wrote poetry and narrated the award-winning documentary, The Black Candle. Maya has served on two presidential comities and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Arts in 2000. She received the Lincoln Medal in 2008 and has won three Grammys. President Clinton asked her to write a poem to present at the inauguration in 1993. Maya’s reading of her poem, On the Pulse of the Morning, was broadcast around the world. Maya has received over thirty honorary degrees and is Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University. Maya is a very touching lady and her thoughts and actions still have an effect on our hearts and minds!
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