Maya Angelou
Dr. Maya Angelou speaks with Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Angelou’s work discussed her personal story and her experience with sexual assault. Her poetry collection “Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘Fore I Die” was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis Missouri. Through her life, she faced and overcame racial prejudices and trauma from her childhood.
Angelou had an expansive career. During the 1950s, she started acting, dancing, screenwriting, and directing. She became the first African-American woman director in Hollywood.
However, she is most well-known as an accomplished writer, poet, and essayist. Her most notable book, a memoir, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” traced her childhood and young adult life. Her memoir, according to biography.com, “made literary history as the first nonfiction best-seller by an African- American woman.”
Angelou also assisted civil rights activists like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, and was offered a job as a norther coordinator for the SCLC in 1959.
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
