Maya Angelou 1928-2014

“All my work, my life, everything I do is about survival, not just bare, awful, plodding survival, but survival with grace and faith. While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated” It was Bill Clinton that introduced the world to Maya Angelou in 1993 when she read her poem, “On the Pulse of Morning” at his presidential inauguration. Clinton has been described, with justification, as “the first black President” of America in spite of his evident white ancestry for the compassion and genuine friendship he brought to his relationship with the African-American community during his Presidency. One may in fact assert that Clinton was closer to the pulse of black America than Barack Obama! Maya Angelou’s words that inauguration day were poignant as she connected America’s difficult history of slavery, segregation and discrimination with its promise of unity and reconciliation, “…So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew/ The African and Native American, the Sioux, / The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek/ The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,…The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher. /They hear. They all hear/ The speaking of the Tree.// You, who gave me my first name, you/ Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you/ Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then/ …You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot .../ You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought/ Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare/ Praying for a dream.//Here, root yourselves beside me.//I am the Tree planted by the River,/ Which will not be moved.//… History, despite its wrenching pain, / Cannot be unlived, and if faced/ With courage, need not be lived again.” Born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, second child of Bailey Johnson, doorman and Navy dietician and Vivian Baxter Johnson, nurse and card dealer, Angelou was nicknamed “Maya” by her older brother and appeared to derive “Angelou” from an entertainment branding-inspired tweaking of her first husband, Tosh Angelos, a Greek electrician’s name. Her parent’s marriage ended when Maya was 3 years old, and she was sent to her grandmother who exceptionally prospered during the great depression and Second World War. Angelou’s life was a pot pourri of occupations and activities-fry cook, street car conductor, prostitute and Madame, night club dancer and performer, opera cast member of “Porgy and Bess”, coordinator of Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), journalist and writer in Africa, civil rights and decolonization activist, actor, writer, director and producer, teacher and university professor, author and lecture circuit speaker! According to Wikipedia, a reviewer wrote about Maya Angelou’s eclectic, eventful and complicated life that “to know her life story is to simultaneously wonder what on earth you have been doing with your own life and feel glad that you didn’t have to go through half of the things she had”! At eight she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend who was subsequently murdered, probably by Maya’s uncles. She remained mute for five years, her young mind feeling responsibility for the villain’s death but in that period developed a passion for books and literature, and her ability to listen and observe the world, as well as her exceptional memory. Angelou’s life reinforces the notion that one is likely to learn more by silent observation and introspection. Angelou, who never obtained a university degree, went on to become a reputable author and poet, global personality, professor and recipient of America’s highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom! After the rape, she returned again to her grandmother where she met a teacher and family friend, Mrs Bertha Flowers who helped her speak again and introduced her to the works of Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, Douglas Johnson and James Weldon Johnson and black female artistes like Frances Harper, Anne Spencer and Jessie Faucet. In 1957, Angelou produced her first music album, “Miss Calypso” which inspired a film “Calypso Heat Wave” in which she sang and performed. In 1960 she met Martin Luther King, became SCLC’s Northern Coordinator and acted as a fund raiser and organizer for civil rights causes. She moved to Cairo with a South Africa lover, working as a journalist, and when the relationship ended, to Ghana as an administrator at the University of Ghana and editor and writer. She met Malcolm X in Accra and returned to the US to help him build an “Organisation of Afro-American Unity” but sadly Malcolm X was assassinated shortly thereafter. In another tragedy, Martin Luther King Jnr was killed on her 40th birthday in 1968 after she had teamed up with him. Maya Angelou wrote seven autobiographies-“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” (1969); “Gather Together in My Name” (1974); “Singin’ and Swingin’ and Getting Merry Like Christmas” (1976); “The Heart of a Woman” (1981); “All God’s Children Need Travelling Shoes” (1986); “A Song Flung Up To Heaven” (2002); “Mom & Me & Mom” (2013). She also wrote several books of essays, poetry, two cookbooks, many plays, movies and TV shows and received by some reports up to 50 honourary doctorates. In 1981 she became a university teacher at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC and lifetime Reynolds Professor of American Studies. President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. She earned several Grammys, Pulitzer and Tony nominations, a National Medal of Arts and a Lincoln Medal. In spite of poor health and advanced age, she was working on another autobiography focused on her experiences with national and world leaders when she died on May 28, 2014 at 86.