Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in Saint Louis, Missouri on April 4, 1928. Her older brother nick-named her “Maya”. She spent her early childhood with her paternal grandmother in Arkansas. After returning to live with her mother when she was 7, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. She testified against him and he was found guilty but only served one day in jail. Four days after his release, it is suspected that her four uncles beat him to death, but Maya, believing that her voice had killed him, did not speak for five years.
When she was 12, Maya moved to San Francisco with her mother and brother where they lived at 1661 Post in Japan Town. She received a scholarship for the short-lived California Labor School where she studied dance and drama. After the school closed she attended George Washington High School. When she was sixteen and, ahead in her studies, Maya took a semester off to become the first black female streetcar conductor for the Market Street Railway. She lied about her age and was subjected to a number of qualifying exams including a blood test, an aptitude test, physical coordination tests and a Rorschach test. It is believed she worked on the 7-Haight and 5-Fulton lines. Her shifts were 4am-8am and 1pm-5pm.
She graduated from George Washington High School and gave birth to her son a few weeks later. In 1951 she married Tosh Angelos. When they divorced three years later, she worked as a Calypso singer and dancer at the Purple Onion[1] in North Beach[2]. San Francisco Chronicle[3] critic Luthor Nichols wrote that her “deep, untrained, vibrant singing voice…makes it might hard to take your eyes off her.” It was while she was working at the Purple Onion that she changed her name to Maya Angelou. One of her closest friends was Reverend Cecil Williams[4], with whom she stayed in touch for the remainder of her life.
In 1959 Angelou met novelist John Oliver Killens and they moved to New York. In 1962 she moved to Ghana where she met and became friends with Malcolm X. Becoming interested in civil rights, she moved back to the States in 1965 to help Malcolm X establish the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Malcolm X was assassinated before the organization could get off the ground. In 1968 she was asked by Martin Luther King, Jr (whom she had met in 1960) to organize a march, but he was also assassinated before the march took place. Grieving these two losses, Angelou began writing. Her 1970 autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings launched her into literary stardom. In 1974 she married artist Paul du Feu (they divorced in 1983). Angelou moved to North Carolina in 1981 where she would go on to publish a total of seven autobiographies, three books of essays, poetry, and is credited on a list of plays, movies and television shows.
In 1993 Angelou recited her poem On the Pulse of Morning at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration. In 1995 she returned to San Francisco to speak at a fundraiser that Cecil Williams organized for mayoral candidate Willie Brown. She spent the 1990s on the lecture circuit, making approximately 80 appearances per year. In 1996 she directed her first and only feature film, Down in the Delta, becoming the first black woman to direct a major motion picture. Angelou won 3 Grammys, a Pulitzer, a Tony nomination and received more than 50 honorary degrees.
Angelou died on May 28, 2014 in North Carolina. On June 15th, a memorial service was held for her in San Francisco at Glide Memorial.
In 2019 the San Francisco Arts Commission announced that a statue designed by artist Lava Thomas was commissioned for the main entrance to the San Francisco Main Library[5]. But after selecting and then rejecting Thomas’ design because a City Supervisor objected to the design’s lack of “nonfigurative elements”, City officials announced that the search for another design has been indefinitely suspended.
In 2022 Angelou became the first black woman to appear on a US quarter.
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[1] Purple Onion: story coming March 7th [2] North Beach: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=5026 [3] San Francisco Chronicle: story coming January 16th [4] Cecil Williams and Glide Memorial: story coming September 22nd [5] San Francisco Main Library: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4605
