The Grandma wants to talk about the struggle of Black People along the American history, a struggle that continues nowadays.
Also, on a day like today, we celebrate the birthday of one of the greatest civil rights activist, Maya Angelou, who was a great poet and memoirist.
Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928-May 28, 2014) was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist.
She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, films, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees.
Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.
She became a poet and writer after a string of odd jobs during her young adulthood. These included fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, Porgy and Bess cast member, Southern Christian Leadership Conference coordinator, and correspondent in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa.
She was also an actress, writer, director, and producer of plays, films, and public television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
She was active in the Civil Rights Movement and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
More information: Maya Angelou
Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem On the Pulse of Morning (1993) at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, making her the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961.
With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou publicly discussed aspects of her personal life. She was respected as a spokesperson for Black people and women, and her works have been considered a defence of Black culture. Her works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to ban her books from some US libraries.
Angelou's most celebrated works have been labelled as autobiographical fiction, but many critics consider them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt to challenge the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing and expanding the genre. Her books centre on themes including racism, identity, family and travel.
More information: Poetry Foundation
Marguerite Annie Johnson was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928, the second child of Bailey Johnson, a doorman and navy dietitian, and Vivian (Baxter) Johnson, a nurse and card dealer. In an astonishing exception to the harsh economics of African Americans of the time, Angelou's grandmother prospered financially during the Great Depression and World War II because the general store she owned sold needed basic commodities and because she made wise and honest investments.
Angelou met novelist John Oliver Killens in 1959 and, at his urging, moved to New York to concentrate on her writing career. She joined the Harlem Writers Guild, where she met several major African-American authors, including John Henrik Clarke, Rosa Guy, Paule Marshall, and Julian Mayfield, and was published for the first time.
In 1960, after meeting civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and hearing him speak, she and Killens organized the legendary Cabaret for Freedom to benefit the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and she was named SCLC's Northern Coordinator. According to scholar Lyman B. Hagen, her contributions to civil rights as a fundraiser and SCLC organizer were successful and eminently effective.
Angelou also began her pro-Castro and anti-apartheid activism during this time.
She had joined the crowd cheering for Fidel Castro when he first entered the Hotel Theresa in Harlem New York during the United Nations 15th General Assembly on 19th September 1960.
In 1961, Angelou performed in Jean Genet's play The Blacks, along with Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Lee Brown, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Cicely Tyson. Also in 1961, she met South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make; they never officially married.
She and her son Guy moved with Make to Cairo, where Angelou worked as an associate editor at the weekly English-language newspaper The Arab Observer.
In 1962, her relationship with Make ended, and she and Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, so he could attend college, but he was seriously injured in an automobile accident. Angelou remained in Accra for his recovery and ended up staying there until 1965. She became an administrator at the University of Ghana, and was active in the African-American expatriate community. She was a feature editor for The African Review, a freelance writer for the Ghanaian Times, wrote and broadcast for Radio Ghana, and worked and performed for Ghana's National Theatre. Likewise, she performed in a revival of The Blacks in Geneva and Berlin.
In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. asked Angelou to organize a march. She agreed, but postponed again, and in what Gillespie calls a macabre twist of fate, he was assassinated on her 40th birthday (April 4).
When I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
was published, Angelou was hailed as a new kind of memoirist, one of
the first African-American women who were able to publicly discuss their
personal lives.
More information: Time
In late 2010, Angelou donated her personal papers and career memorabilia to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. They consisted of more than 340 boxes of documents that featured her handwritten notes on yellow legal pads for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, a 1982 telegram from Coretta Scott King, fan mail, and personal and professional correspondence from colleagues such as her editor Robert Loomis.
In 2011, Angelou served as a consultant for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. She spoke out in opposition to a paraphrase of a quotation by King that appeared on the memorial, saying, The quote makes Dr. Martin Luther King look like an arrogant twit, and demanded that it be changed. Eventually, the paraphrase was removed.
In 2013, at the age of 85, Angelou published the seventh volume of autobiography in her series, entitled Mom & Me & Mom, which focuses on her relationship with her mother.
Angelou died on the morning of May 28, 2014 at the age 86. She was found by her nurse. Although Angelou had reportedly been in poor health and had cancelled recent scheduled appearances, she was working on another book, an autobiography about her experiences with national and world leaders.
During her memorial service at Wake Forest University, her son Guy Johnson stated that despite being in constant pain due to her dancing career and respiratory failure, she wrote four books during the last ten years of her life. He said, She left this mortal plane with no loss of acuity and no loss in comprehension.
More information: Harvard Business Review
Download I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
because without courage you can't practice
any other virtue consistently.
You can practice any virtue erratically,
but nothing consistently without courage.
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