and later worked with Macolm X to set up the Organization of Afro-American Unity when she lived in Africa. Throughout her many careers, she was actively involved with the civil rights movement, serving as the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference where she met Martin Luther King Jr. The renaissance woman continued evolving her artistic talents by focusing on poetry, even reciting her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Bill Clinton’s 1993 inauguration - the first inaugural recitation since 1961. Her bestseller about her early life went on set a record for being on the New York Times paperback nonfiction bestseller list for two years, and when her screenplay for Georgia, Georgia was turned into a movie in 1972, she also became the first African American woman to have her screenplay produced. While she got a Tony nomination for the play Look Away in 1973 and Emmy nomination for the TV miniseries Roots in 1977, it was her writing that helped her pave even more firsts. The next decade, she found success as a performer, starring in a touring production of Porgy and Bess, as well as off-Broadway’s Calypso Heat Wave in 1957 and releasing an album Miss Calypso the same year. As retaliation, her uncles killed her perpetrator, scarring the young girl to the point that she didn’t speak for about five years.Įventually, she moved out west and started carving out her own path - becoming the first African American cable car conductor in San Francisco in the 1940s. There, she faced discrimination - and was raped by her mother’s boyfriend at the age of seven. Louis, Missouri, Angelou had a traumatic childhood after her family moved to Arkansas. Maya Angelou made her mark in literary history by writing the first nonfiction bestseller by an African American woman: her 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.īut that wasn’t her only first - or even her first one.īorn April 4, 1928, in St.
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