![]() Martin Luther King, Jr., she became the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and in 1975 she received the Ladies Home Journal Woman of the Year Award in communications. "I am human," Angelou said, quoting from her own work, "and nothing human can be alien to me." But always, she came back to love - and humanity. She spoke of her early love for William Shakespeare's works, and offered her audience excerpts from the poems of several African-Americans, including James Weldon Johnson and Paul Lawrence Dunbar. "The honorary duty of a human being is to love," Angelou said. She ranged from story to poem to song and back again, and her theme was love and the universality of all lives. ![]() Maya Angelou, poet, was among the first African-American women to hit the bestsellers lists with her "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," held the Great Hall audience spellbound with stories of her own childhood. She was appointed by President Gerald Ford to the Bicentennial Commission and by President Jimmy Carter to the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year. Angelou became the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In Ghana, she was feature editor of The African Review and taught at the University of Ghana. She married a South African freedom fighter and lived in Cairo where she was editor of The Arab Observer, the only English-language news weekly in the Middle East. ![]() Maya Angelou, who spoke French, Spanish, Italian and West African Fanti, began her career in drama and dance. At the request of President Clinton, she wrote and delivered a poem at his 1993 presidential inauguration. She published ten best selling books and numerous magazine articles earning her Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominations. She lectured throughout the US and abroad and was Reynolds professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina since 1981. She was a poet, historian, author, actress, playwright, civil-rights activist, producer and director. Louis, was raised in segregated rural Arkansas. But worry not: We’ve also drawn up a complete list of her work, should you want to expand your study of this remarkable writer.Maya Angelou, born Apas Marguerite Johnson in St. And though it was ( really) difficult, we narrowed down her vast body of work to the 10 most essential in her repertoire. But just like Oprah, Angelou’s candor encouraged many people to maintain hope during even in the darkest of times.įrom her profound I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings to the lyrical And Still I Rise, Angelou continues to inspire us through her written words, and the indelible example she set. Referred to by Oprah as her “mentor, mother/sister, and friend,” Angelou-who died in 2014 at age 86-spent her life offering earned wisdom to society through countless poems, essays, and memoirs, bravely sharing her many trials and tribulations-but also triumphs- as a Black woman in America. When you get, give’ is one of my best lessons from her.” “The world knows her as a poet, but at the heart of her, she was a teacher,” Oprah said of Angelou. During a 50-year career that culminated in three Grammys, one Presidential Medal of Freedom, a Pulitzer nomination, and 36 books, Maya Angelou never failed to use the power of her skilled words to candidly reflect on the sorrows and celebrations of the human experience.
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