COUNTRY OF BIRTH

United States

INDUSTRY

Literature, performing arts, civil rights

TOP ACHIEVEMENTS

Maya Angelou was a singer and dancer, a journalist and civil-rights activist, a memoirist, poet, and screenwriter. She is best known for her acclaimed 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Her autobiographical works explore the themes of economic, racial, and sexual oppression.

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION

Maya Angelou, original name Marguerite Annie Johnson, was born on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents split up when she was very young. When she was seven years old, Angelou was sexually molested by her mother's boyfriend, who was subsequently killed in revenge by her uncles. This traumatic sequence of events left Angelou almost completely mute for five years. At age 13, she won a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco’s Labor School. She became pregnant in her senior year of high school and graduated shortly before giving birth to her son, Guy.

EARLY CAREER

In 1952, she married a Greek sailor named Anastasios Angelopulos. Her professional name is a combination of her childhood nickname with her husband’s surname. The couple later divorced. In 1954, Angelou worked in a touring production of the opera Porgy and Bess and recorded her first album, Calypso Lady, in 1957. In the late 1950s, Angelou moved to New York, where she joined the Harlem Writer’s Guild and became increasingly involved with the Civil Rights Movement. During the 1960s, she worked as an editor and a freelance writer first in Egypt and then in Ghana, where she also met human rights activist and Black nationalist leader Malcolm X.

ACHIEVEMENTS

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was the first nonfiction bestseller by an African-American woman, while her screenplay Georgia, Georgia (1972) was the first original script by an African-American woman to be produced as a feature film.

RECOGNITION

Angelou's 1971 poetry collection, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Diiie, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She received a Tony Award nomination for her role in the 1973 play Look Away, an Emmy Award nomination for her work on the television miniseries Roots in 1977, and three Grammys for her spoken-word albums. In 2000, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton. In 2010, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. After experiencing health issues for a number of years, Maya Angelou died on May 28, 2014.

ADDITIONAL FACTS

• Angelou never had a college education but by the end of her life she had been awarded more than 50 honorary degrees.
• Martin Luther King Jr., a close friend of Angelou's, was assassinated on her birthday in 1968. Angelou stopped celebrating her birthday from that day on.
• In 2021, the United States Mint announced that an image of Maya Angelou would appear on the reverse side of a new quarter, as part of a series of coins honoring the achievements of American women.