Welcome back to the third blog post! This blog will be about teaching you who the brave and trailblazing Maya Angelou is. As always, the goal of this blog is to teach you who Maya Angelou is and why she is inspirational. We will be covering her upbringings and her most famous works.

Maya Angelou – Source

Maya Angelou was born as Marguerite Ann Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents had a turbulent marriage that followed a divorce, so Angelou was sent to live with her paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas at a young age. Her older brother, Bailey, gave her the nickname “Maya”. She briefly returned to live with her mother at the age of seven, but she was soon raped by her mother’s boyfriend. Angelou told her brother, who then told their uncles who reported the rape to the police. The man, Freeman, spent 24 hours in jail as punishment. However, a few days after he was released, he was found dead. Nobody in the town knew who killed Freeman, but the rumors was that it was Angelou’s uncles. Believing that her confession of the rape played a part in his death, so she became mute for six years. During her mutism and into her teen years, she returned to live with her grandmother in Arkansas.

Before the start of World War II, Angelou returned to her mother’s care in Oakland, California. After the war began, she applied to for the position of a street car conductor, but was rejected because of her race. This did not stop Angelou and every day for three weeks she requested a job application and eventually the company relented and let her submit a job application. However, Angelou was only fifteen at the time, so she lied and wrote that she was nineteen. She is rumored to be one of the first African-American woman to work as a streetcar conductor in San Francisco.

In 1969, Angelou published her autobiography named, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Her autobiography was about her early life and her story of personal strength throughout childhood trauma and racism. These topics resonated with many readers throughout the nation and was nominated for the National Book Award, but many schools sought to ban the book because of it’s depiction of sexual abuse. Yet, it is credited with helping other abuse survivors with being able to find their own voice to tell their story.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Source

Angelou continued to write autobiographies and poetry volumes. She recorded spoken album for On the Pulse of the Morning, which won a Grammy for best Spoken Word Album and it was also delivered at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. In 1972, Angelou became the first African-American woman to have her screen play turned into a film (Georgia, Georgia) And, she won a Tony nomination in 1973 for her supporting role in Jerome Kitty’s play, Look Away.

Maya Angelou has been recognized by many organizations for her contributions to literature. She has helped many survivors find their voices to tell their stories and she has been a pioneer for African-American women in history.