April 4, 1928
Poet, author, playwright, film director, music composer and activist Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis.
Due to her parents’ turbulent relationship, she went to live with her grandparents in Stamps, Arkansas. When she was returned briefly to her mother’s care at age 7, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend, who was jailed and later killed. Believing her confession contributed to the man’s death, she refused to speak a word for almost five years.
During this time, she wrote essays, poetry and kept a journal. She memorized Shakespeare and other writers. She found her voice again, not just in school, but in the civil rights movement, where she served as a coordinator for Martin Luther King Jr.
She wrote what she could not speak, and her memoir, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” became a bestseller. She went on to pen more than a dozen books.
“Nothing so frightens me as writing, but nothing so satisfies me,” she wrote. “It’s like a swimmer in the (English) Channel: you face the stingrays and waves and cold and grease, and finally you reach the other shore, and you put your foot on the ground —Aaaahhhh!”
In 1993, she recited her poem, “On the Pulse of Morning” at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration — the first poet to do so at an inauguration since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration.
Five years later, she made her feature film directorial debut with “Down In the Delta,” starring Alfre Woodard and Wesley Snipes. Three years before she died in 2014, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Eight years later, she became the first Black woman to be represented on a quarter.
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