Still, you rise.
Maya Angelou (April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American memoirist, poet, playwright, civil-rights activist, and cultural icon whose seven autobiographies—beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)—transformed personal trauma into universal testimony. A towering voice of resilience, she recited her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at Bill Clinton’s 1993 inauguration, becoming the first poet to perform at a presidential swearing-in since Robert Frost in 1961. Her work spans 36 books, 50 honorary doctorates, the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2011), and a Tony and three Grammy nominations. Angelou’s life embodied the alchemy of turning pain into power.
Born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, to Bailey Johnson (doorman and naval dietitian) and Vivian Baxter (nurse and card dealer), she was sent at age three with her brother Bailey Jr. to Stamps, Arkansas, after her parents’ divorce. Raised by their paternal grandmother Annie Henderson (“Momma”), who ran the town’s only Black-owned general store during the Great Depression, Maya learned thrift, scripture, and racial etiquette in the Jim Crow South.
At seven, during a visit to St. Louis, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. The man was convicted but kicked to death days later. Believing her voice had killed him, Maya fell mute for nearly five years. Literature—Dickens, Shakespeare, Dunbar—became her refuge. A teacher, Mrs. Bertha Flowers, reintroduced spoken language through poetry recitation.
| Period | Role & Milestone |
|---|---|
| 1954–55 | Toured Europe and Africa with Porgy and Bess as Ruby |
| 1957 | Released calypso album Miss Calypso; appeared in Off-Broadway Calypso Heat Wave |
| 1960 | Appointed Northern Coordinator for SCLC by Martin Luther King Jr. |
| 1961–62 | Lived in Cairo (editor, Arab Observer) and Ghana (editor, African Review; University of Ghana faculty) |
| 1969 | Published I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings—first nonfiction bestseller by a Black woman |
| 1972 | First Black woman to have an original screenplay produced (Georgia, Georgia) |
| 1977 | Starred in landmark miniseries Roots |
| 1993 | Inaugural poem “On the Pulse of Morning” |
| 1995–2014 | Reynolds Professor of American Studies, Wake Forest University |
| Title | Year | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | 1969 | Banned in schools yet required reading; 1,000+ weeks on bestseller lists |
| Gather Together in My Name | 1974 | Survival as sex worker and madam |
| The Heart of a Woman | 1981 | Civil-rights era; Malcolm X, MLK |
| On the Pulse of Morning | 1993 | Grammy for Best Spoken Word |
| A Song Flung Up to Heaven | 2002 | King assassination aftermath |
| Letter to My Daughter | 2008 | Essays to women she never birthed |
From 1982, Angelou lived in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, teaching one seminar per year at Wake Forest while writing in hotel rooms. She directed her first film (Down in the Delta, 1998) at 70, published cookbooks, and mentored young artists.
On May 28, 2014, she died at home at age 86. Her final tweet (May 23):
“Listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God.”
Angelou’s caged bird did not merely sing—it shattered the bars, teaching generations that storytelling is survival, empathy is revolution, and phenomenal womanhood is a birthright.