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"His tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom."

By:
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Maya Angelou, born April 4, 1928 as Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, was raised in segregated rural Arkansas. Her parents divorced in 1931, and was sent with her brother Bailey, to Stamps, Arkansas to live with their grandmother. Then in 1935 she moves to Chicago with Bailey to live with their mother. Just a year later Maya, traumatized by a sexual assault when she is only eight. The man who assaults her is murdered. And also refuses to speak to anyone but her brother, then she was sent back with Bailey to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. At age eleven, she begins to speak again after four years of silence. Then, three years later she moves to San Francisco with Bailey to live with their mother. Maya drops out of high school in 1944 and works as the first Black cable car conductor in San Francisco. After one year of dropping out of High School she goes back and graduates and becomes a single parent with the birth of her son named Guy. In 1952, she marries Tosh Angelos. A year after their marriage, her career starts, as she performs at a night club called the Purple Onion in San Francisco, and adopts the stage name Maya Angelou (Maya is what her brother called her in childhood, and Angelou was a corruption of her married name). In the years of 1954-1955 she tours internationally in the chorus with the Everyman's Opera Company production of Porgy and Bess. In 1959 she writes lyrics, which turn into poetry and short stories and her singing career blossoms Moves to Brooklyn, New York, to join the Harlem Writers Guild. In 1960 she becomes the Northeaster Regional Coordinator for Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). She appears in off-Broadway play, "The Blacks", produced as a benefit for the SCLC. and directs and performs in "Cabaret for Freedom", which she writes with comedian Godfrey Cambridge. She also meets the most well-know civil rights activists of all time Martin Luther King Jr, and Malcom X". Then she "Marries" South African freedom fighter Vusumi Make. In 1961-1962 Maya moves to Africa with Guy and her husband Make .Becomes an associate editor for Arab Observer in Cairo, Egypt. In the years of 1963-1965 she serves as assistant administrator at the School of Music and Drama, at the University of Ghana, and works as feature editor for the African Review; and contributor to the Ghanaian Times and Ghanaian Broadcasting Company. And in 1968, "Black, Blues, Black", her 10-show series, is produced on San Francisco National Educational Television is produced. In 1970 "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", an autobiographical novel nominated for National Book Award, is published she becomes writer-in-residence at University of Kansas, and gains a Yale University Fellowship. Maya appears on TV shows, speaks at Universities as a Motivational Speaker, and still writes her books.

Maya Angelou is a poet, historian, author, actress, playwright, civil-rights activist, producer and director. She lectures throughout the US and abroad and is Reynolds professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina since 1981. She has published ten best selling books and numerous magazine articles earning her Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominations. At the request of President Clinton, she wrote and delivered a poem at his 1993 presidential inauguration.

Dr. Angelou, who speaks French, Spanish, Italian and West African Fanti, began her career in drama and dance. 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. In Ghana, she was feature editor of The African Review and taught at the University of Ghana. In the 1960's, at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ms. Angelou became the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. 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.

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 ranged from story to poem to song and back again, and her theme was love and the universality of all lives. "The honorary duty of a human being is to love," Angelou said. 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. But always, she came back to love - and humanity. "I am human," Angelou said, quoting from her own work, "and nothing human can be alien to me."

In the sixties, at the request of Dr. 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. She received numerous honorary degrees and was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the National Commission on the Observance of International Woman's Year and by President Ford to the American Revolutionary Bicentennial Advisory Council. She is on the board of the American Film Institute and is one of the few female members of the Director's Guild.

In the film industry, through her work in script writing and directing, Maya Angelou has been a groundbreaker for black women. In television, she has made hundreds of appearances. Her best-selling autobiographical account of her youth, "I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings," won critical acclaim in 1970 and was a two hour TV special on CBS. She has written and produced several prize winning documentaries, including "Afro-Americans in the Arts," a PBS special for which she received the Golden Eagle Award. She was also nominated for an Emmy Award for her acting in Roots, and her screenplay Georgia, Georgia was the first by a black woman to be filmed. In theatre, she produced, directed and starred in "Cabaret for Freedom" in collaboration with Godfrey Cambridge at New York's Village Gate; starred in Genet's "The Blacks" at St Mark's Playhouse; and adapted Sophocles "Ajax" which premiered in Los Angeles in 1974. She wrote the original screenplay for "Georgia, Georgia" and wrote and produced a ten-part TV series on African traditions in American life. Maya Angelou is currently Reynolds Professor at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Links / Works Cited

Major portions of the above text were directly copied from public domain documents found on the internet.

I have listed those Internet Addresses beneath for your convenience.

Maya Angelou	A Look Into Her Poetry, Her Life
Biography Center	Time Lines
Pictures of Maya	Yahoo! Images
Books by: Maya Angelou	Maya's Published Books
The Academy of American Poets	Maya Angelou
The Gale Group	Gale Group