Maya Angelou Influences

Throughout our lifetime, we have come across many great people who have influenced our lives or changed the way we thought of others or ourselves. Someone who greatly influenced many lives in different ways was Maya Angelou. Maya Angelou is a woman who has overcome many struggles as a child, and as an African American. She has also written many memoirs and poems about her life experiences and the injustice that was happening to all African Americans in America. Due to these memoirs and poems, she has become very famous and acquired many awards such as the Grammy Award for the Best Spoken Word Album, Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Quill Award. Maya Angelou, the most famous female poet, was born in St Lois, Missouri on April 4, 1928
While living in Arkansas, she experienced many events that degraded or discriminated an African American. One event she remembers vividly is when her grandmother was being degraded by the white primacy group, the Ku Klux Klan. Maya’s grandmother owned a black corner store where many people in the neighborhood to buy food. On this particular day Maya’s Uncle was hiding because for some reason the Ku Klux Klan was coming after him. When the white group came in Maya Angelou’s grandmother was standing out at the counter listening to all of the racist comments the group was saying to her. When the racist group became convinced that the Uncle was not there, they walked out, and Maya came out from the shadows flabbergasted at what just happened. From this experience Maya Angelou was very proud of her grandmother fir having such thick skin and dealing with all the hate without lashing out. From this experience Maya knew black women is powerful and strong and she wanted to become that, she also wanted the whole world to know that black women and black people in general was more than what most people