Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri, as Marguerite Anna Johnson. At three her parents got a divorce that’s when her mom made the decision of sending her and her brother, Bailey to live with grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas.   When Maya was seven she visited her mother in Chicago, during her visit she got sexually molested by her mother’s boyfriend. She confided in no one except for her brother, she later heard that her uncle had killed her attacker. She felt as if it was her fault that her uncle had killed him, that’s when she became silent for five years, and did not speak to any one. At the age of thirteen is when Maya and Bailey returned to their mother, and that is when she began to talk again. She attended Mission High School while there she won a scholarship to San Francisco’s Labor School for dance and drama. Maya dropped out of high school to become   San Francisco’s first African American female cable conductor. Once she was finished with that phase of her life, she returned to high school, and got pregnant, weeks after her graduated she gave birth to her son, Guy.   At the age of 16 she left her home and experienced life as a single mother, and worked as a waitress and a cook to support her son and herself. Maya married a Greek sailor known as Tosh Angelou in 1952. She worked as a nightclub singer, that’s when her professional name, Maya Angelou, appeared. In the years of 1954 and 1955 she toured Europe with the Production of the opera Porgy and Bess. Maya moved to New York, to join   the Harlem Guild, that’s when she became associated with the Civil Rights Movement. Later on, she fell in love with Vusumzi Make, South African civil rights activist. In 1960 her, Vusumzi, and her son moved to Cairo, Egypt. She the moved to Ghana with her son only, and she joined the group known as African American expatriates, and she also met Malcolm X. While her years there she read and studied that’s why she mastered the languages of French, Spanish,... [continues]

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