How Maya Angelou Changed The World

The Earth is home to over seven billion people who most of which are ordinary, but sometimes the world is presented with an incredibly unique individual that changes the world for years to come (World Population Clock). Maya Angelou was incredibly diverse with job titles ranging from dancer to civil rights activist, a very interesting childhood that shaped the rest of her life, and a legacy that will forever change the areas she was involved in. The poetry of Maya Angelou was greatly influenced by her early and adult life, the harsh time periods that she had to live through, and the people that surrounded.

Maya Angelou was born on April 4, 2014 in St. Louis Missouri to Vivian Johnson, a nurse and realtor, and Bailey Johnson, a naval
She neglected to share what happened until she eventually confided in her brother. This resulted in the murder of her mother’s boyfriend committed by the hands of her uncle. Thinking that it was her words that caused someone’s death she went mute for five years. Since nobody could handle her current unusual state she was sent back to Stamps (Maya Angelou Childhood). In 1941 Angelou moved back to her mother in San Francisco where she attended George Washington High School along with studying drama and dance at California Labor School through a scholarship. She finally regained her confidence to speak again with the help of Ms. Bertha Flowers in 1942. That same year she dropped out of high school to become San Francisco’s first African American female cable car conductor. After that, Maya Angelou returned to school and found out she was pregnant and gave birth to her son, Guy, a few weeks before graduating. In 1952 she worked as a nightclub singer and took the name of Maya Angelou. Six years later she became a civil rights activist and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. She quickly
The civil rights era at the end of middle and end of the 20th century was prevalent at the time that she wrote almost all of her poems. Most of her poems are written about the disputes between blacks and whites and the terrible racial prejudice that was taking place or the stereotypes of a “typical women” which she most definitely was not. The poems “Still I Rise,” “Phenomenal Women,” and “Caged Bird” deal with these issues. All these poems move to strike and defy discrimination and to empower women, more specifically black women, or even blacks in general to rise up and take a stand. This is a result of her being black, female, morally accurate, and her extensive work with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Also, many themes are recurring in Angelou’s poems. Sadness and love are two emotions that fill her poems to the brim as in “Caged Bird” where she feels trapped, lonely, and not free in the land where that is their foundation. The sadness that she felt after Malcolm X was killed and then Martin Luther King Jr. being assassinated on her birthday also gave way to the writing of “Caged Bird.” On the contrary she also conveyed much about love in her poems like “Remembrance” and “Touched By an Angel” (Poem Hunter). In these poems love is simply described as being beautiful and calm. Maya Angelou constructed her poems in a chaotic time period and