Biography
Maya Angelou was born in St Louis, Missouri in 1928. At this time, there were very few economic opportunities for African American people, and her family did the best they could to survive. Her best friend was her brother, Bailey. Sometimes, she and Bailey lived with their mother, and sometimes they stayed with their grandmother. But, not everybody could be trusted. Her mother had a boyfriend, who abused Maya. When she told her family, her uncles killed the boyfriend. Maya was so shocked by the power of speaking up and saddened that her voice resulted in somebody’s death. After that incident, she chose to not speak. She stopped talking for five years.
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
Eventually, Maya could not be quiet any longer. She began expressing herself through art—mostly writing poetry and stories. She was very creative, and soon was acting in theater too. Exposure to the arts began providing her with opportunities to travel, meet new people, and perform.
At age sixteen, Maya had a son. Despite her love of acting, theater and arts, she had to take a break and come up with a plan to support him. She was living in San Francisco, California at the time, but she decided to move south to San Diego. She worked a variety of odd jobs for many years. Her creativity was put to use learning how to survive.
In 1954, she was discovered by a theater group and offered a part in a touring play. That year, she performed in twenty-two countries around the world. When she got back to the United States, she moved to Harlem, a predominantly African American neighborhood in Manhattan, with a rich African American literary tradition. Maya met influential writers and artists, and she got involved in the Civil Rights Movement, which was beginning to gain momentum at that time.
My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.
However, she soon decided she needed to spend time in the Africa. In 1961, while dating a South African freedom fighter, she moved to Egypt and worked as an editor. She then lived in Ghana where she worked in a university as well as an editor and freelance writer for two publications. She was involved in the African-American expatriate community, or the community of people who emigrated from, or left, the United States. She became friends with civil rights revolutionary and leader of the Black Panther Party, Malcolm X, during his visit to Accra, Ghana.
During the early 1960s, Maya’s writing flourished, in part because of the African cultural renaissance -also known in Harlem, NY as the Harlem Renaissance- that was occurring on the continent. African poetry, music, and art was blossoming, thus becoming more known across the globe.
When Maya returned to the United States in 1965, she wanted to produce and publish art. She did so feverishly, moving between Los Angeles, New York, and other cities. This was the time of the Civil Rights Movement, so people like Maya were often very mobile. They traveled where they needed to be to organize protests and nonviolent actions. But Maya’s art never ceased.
Though she is famous for her books and poems, Maya’s work was prolific. In the 1970’s she became the first African American woman director in Hollywood. She wrote and produced several documentaries, including a PBS special called “Afro-Americans in the Arts.” For this work, she received the Golden Eagle Award.
In 1981, Maya became a professor at Wake-Forest University in North Carolina. She continued publishing books, including several memoirs and books of poems. Her work included themes of struggle, pain, and trauma, but also resilience, love, and beauty.
Maya continue to receive acclaim and recognition for her work, which is honest, brave, and beautiful. In 1993, President Bill Clinton requested for her to write and read a poem for his inauguration, thus making her the first inaugural poet since 1961. She received the National Medal of Arts in 2000, and in 2010 President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In 2014, at age eighty-six, Maya Angelou passed away in her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Her legacy is one of bravery, truth, and art.
Learning Activity
Download Activity Document
Civil Rights Scrapbook
Subject(s): Reading & Language Arts, Social Studies
This activity could compliment lessons based on the following, and other, Common Core Standards:
- Speaking and Listening Standard 1: Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9–10 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
- Speaking and Listening Standard 2: Integrate multiple sources of information presented in diverse media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) evaluating the credibility and accuracy of each source.
- Speaking and Listening Standard 3: Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, identifying any fallacious reasoning or exaggerated or distorted evidence.
- Writing Standard 4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1–3 above.)
- U.S. II Standard 4.3: Students will identify the civil rights objectives held by various groups, assess the strategies used, and evaluate the success of the various civil rights movements in reaching their objectives, paying specific attention to American Indian, women, and other racial and ethnic minorities.
- U.S. II Standard 4.2: Students will use case studies involving African-American civil rights leaders and events to compare, contrast, and evaluate the effectiveness of various methods used to achieve reform, such as civil disobedience, legal strategies, and political organizing.
- U.S. II Standard 4.3: Students will identify the civil rights objectives held by various groups, assess the strategies used, and evaluate the success of the various civil rights movements in reaching their objectives, paying specific attention to American Indian, women, and other racial and ethnic minorities.
Objective: Students will examine historical photos of the Civil Rights movement. Then, they will organize the photos into chronological order, while they compare artistic elements of the photos with those utilized in the poems. They will then assign a poem to each image to convey a narrative with an appropriate tone, feeling, and timeline.
Materials Needed: Oprah Super Soul Sunday interview, pen/pencil, paper or journal, handouts of Maya Angelou’s poems (with dates), handout of photos of the Civil Rights movement (with dates and locations), scrapbooking materials such as large construction paper, hole punch, string, glue, stickers, etc. (modify your scrapbook based on your budget and supplies, or use pre-bought, blank scrapbooks & materials)
Intro / Warm Up:
Play Maya’s interview with Oprah for students
Have students answer the following questions in their journals:
- What is the best advice that you’ve ever given?
- What is the best advice you’ve ever received? From whom did you receive it?
Dive In:
This lesson involves some teacher preparation. To prepare:
- Create a handout of Maya Angelou’s poems. Be sure to include the date, if possible.
- Create a packet of photos from the Civil Rights Movement, with captions and dates. Print your packet single-sided so that students can cut the photos out.
Activity Procedures:
- Pass out poem handout along with collection of Civil Rights photos.
- Go through photos with students and answer their questions. Scaffold their exploration with important dates, events, movements, leaders, etc.
- Ask for volunteers to read each poem out loud, while the rest of the students observe the photos and listen.
- Tell students they will be creating a Civil Rights scrapbook (choose whether either individually or in groups).
- Have them arrange the photos in chronological order, and select one of Maya Angelou’s poem to accompany each photo. For each photo, they must select the poem they feel is most appropriate for the plot, tone, and mood of the photo.
BREAK OUT! Extending Activity
- Have students search the library for newspaper clippings to add to their scrapbook.
- Extend the timeline of the scrapbooks to include the Black Lives Matter movement of the 21st century. Or, have them make a separate scrapbook for this movement. Ask students to consider whether the Civil Rights movement is actually “over,” or still evolving. Include contemporary poets works for the period of time after Maya Angelou’s death.
- Ask students to read Sarah Kendzior’s “The View From Flyover Country.” Discuss: Why does Kendzior refer to St. Louis as “Flyover Country?” Do you agree? Maya Angelou was from St. Louis, or Flyover Country. How do you think it has changed from the time Maya Angelou lived there? How do you think it is the same?
- Have students reflect on Martin Luther King’s quote “A riot is the language of the unheard.” Ask them why those who protested during the Civil Rights Movements felt unheard. Who were they unheard by?
