His influence positioned her as a prominent voice in Civil Rights in the 1960s. When she was ready to speak, she went on to master five foreign languages and live in Africa, where she met Malcolm X. I'll never speak, what she talking about preachin' but she continue to tell me that 'You don't have to talk. Mama knows that when you and the good lord get ready, sister you gonna be a preacher.' I used to sit there and think 'poor ignorant mama'. "My grandmother would say, 'Mama don't care what these people say about you being an idiot or you being a moron, mama don't care. She was right."From the time I was eight until I was almost 13 I didn't speak," she said in a 1993 interview. Billie Holiday once sang a sweet lullaby to Angelou’s son Guy, and gave his mom a backhanded compliment. She was also San Francisco’s first female African-American cable car conductor.īut Angelou’s artistic side soon emerged, and she landed a gig singing in San Francisco’s Purple Onion cabaret. Her early adulthood was tumultuous: A single mother at 17, working in a strip club as a waitress and a cook running a brothel marriage, and divorce. The name she adopted combined her brother’s mispronunciation of her given first name and the slightly altered surname of ex-husband Tosh Angelos.Īngelou wrote about Bertha Flowers, the woman who persuaded her to speak again, in the 1986 children’s book “Mrs. The precocious talent began writing her earliest poems at age 9 and graduated at the top of her eighth-grade class. The small girl, convinced she was to blame for the killing, stopped speaking for five years.ĭuring that time, she became a voracious reader of writers from Shakespeare to Edgar Allan Poe to W.E.B. Her uncles then murdered the man in retribution. Until her death in 2006, Coretta Scott King would in turn send a bouquet to Angelou.īorn Marguerite Annie Johnson, the future writer grew up amid poverty and racism after her parents’ divorce relocated the child to small-town Stamps, Ark., where she lived with her brother and grandma.ĭespite the hard times, Angelou long maintained that living in the Deep South also imbued her with the faith and values of the African-American family and culture.Īs she wrote in her memoir, Angelou was raped by her mother’s boyfriend when she was just 7. She stopped celebrating her birthday for years, instead opting to send flowers to King’s widow, Coretta. The 1968 assassination of King fell on Angelou’s April 4 birthday. Rappers like Kanye West name-dropped her in their lyrics. She earned an Emmy nomination for her work in “Roots,” and studied modern dance with Martha Graham. and befriended South Africa’s Nelson Mandela. She worked for both Malcolm X and the Rev. She will always be the rainbow in my clouds.” “She moved through the world with unshakable calm, confidence and a fierce grace. She was mentored by Baldwin and was a mentor to Oprah Winfrey.Īngelou “was there for me always, guiding me through some of the most important years of my life,” said Winfrey. She was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize that same year for her poetry collection “Just Give Me a Drink of Cool Water ‘fore I Diiie.”ĭuring her extraordinary eight-plus decades of life, Angelou was often on the front lines of history and pop culture. She continued to break down barriers with her writing, penning the screenplay and the score for the 1972 film “Georgia, Georgia.” The book made literary history as the first nonfiction best seller by an African-American woman, and became the first of six autobiographical works. Louis native, during her remarkable lifetime, published more than 30 titles and received more than 50 honorary degrees.Īngelou’s breakthrough book was her best-selling 1969 memoir, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” a work encouraged by her novelist friend James Baldwin. “The poems and stories she wrote and read us in her commanding voice were gifts of wisdom and wit, courage and grace,” Clinton said. Obama honored her in February 2011 with a Medal of Freedom - planting a kiss on her cheek inside the White House.Ĭlinton on Wednesday praised Angelou as “a national treasure” and “beloved friend.” She also read the poem “Amazing Peace” at the White House for a 2005 Christmas tree lighting during President George W. The composition sold more than 1 million copies. Her final tweet last Friday said, “Listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God.”Īngelou was a Pulitzer Prize nominee and repeat White House guest, reading her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at President Bill Clinton’s 1993 inauguration. The oft-lauded writer was set to receive the Beacon of Life Award as part of Major League Baseball’s annual Civil Rights Game.
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