04/12/2021
woman of the week - 4/12/21-4/18/21: Maya Angelou
Born on April 4, 1938 in St. Louis, Missouri, Angelou had a difficult childhood. Her parents had split up when she was very young; her and her brother Bailey were sent to live with their father’s mother, Anne Henderson, in Arkansas. In Arkansas, she experienced firsthand racial prejudices and discrimination as a young child. At the age of seven she suffered at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend and this traumatic experience left her mute for a few years. During World War II, she moved to San Francisco, California and received a scholarship to study dance and acting at California Labor School. In 1944, at the age of 16, she gave birth to a son, Guy, and she worked many different jobs in order to support herself and her son. The mid-1950s is when her performance career began to take off. As member of the Harlem Writers Guild and a civil rights activist, she organized and started in the musical “Cabaret for Freedom” as a benefit for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and served as the SCLCs northern coordinator. Also in the 1950s, she married Anastasios Angelopulos, from whom she took her professional name and the couple later divorced. She spent much of the 1960s studying abroad, living in Eqypt and then in Ghana, and worked as an editor and freelance writer. In Ghana, she joined the community of “Revolutionist Returnees” and became close with Malcom X, helping him set up the Organization of Afro-American Unity in 1964 which disbanded after his assassination the following year. Throughout her lifetime, Angelou had published many works of literature including several collections of poetry, and many books including her most-popular autobiographical work “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” (1969). Additionally, she was the first African American woman to have her screenplay produced after writing her 1972 drama “Georgia, Georgia”. After experiencing health issues for a number of years, she died on May 28, 2014 in her home in North Carolina. President Barack Obama issued a statement about Angelou after her passing, calling her a “brilliant writer, a fierce friend, and a truly phenomenal woman”.