Blog Assingment #9- Maya Angelou

                  Dr. Maya Angelou is one of the most famous and affecting voices of this time. She is a celebrated poet, memorist, novelist, education, dramatist, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Dr. Angelou was born on April 4th, 1928 in St.Louis, Missouri. She was raised in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. In Stamps, she experienced crucial treatment of racial discrimination, but took in the steady faith and values of the usual African-American family, community, and culture.

                 When she was a teen, her love for the arts got her a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco's labor School. Dr. Angelou dropped out at the age of 14, to become San Francisco's first African-American female cable car conductor. Then later she finished high school. She gave birth to her son, Guy, a few weeks after graduation. Maya supported her son by working as a waitress and cook, but her passion for music, dance, performance, and poetry would soon take her center stage.

                 In1954 and 1955, she toured Europe with a production of opera. Maya studied modern dance with Martha Graham and danced with Alvin Ailey on TV shows. In 1957, Maya Angelou recorded her first album Calypso Cady. Then in 1958, she moved to New York and joined the Harlem Writers Guild. She acted in The Blacks and wrote and performed Cabaret for Freedom.

                1960, Dr. Angelou moved to Cairo, Egypt where she served as editor of the English language weekly The Arab Observer. The folowing year, she moved to Ghana and worked at the University of Ghana's School of Music and Drama, worked as feature editor for The African Review and wrote for The Ghanaian Times. During that time, Dr. Angelou read and studied voraciously, mastering French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and the West African language Fanti. While in Ghana, she met with Malcolm X and, in 1964, returned to America to help him build his new Organization of African American Unity. Shortly after her arrival in the United States, Malcolm X was assassinated, and the organization dissolved. Soon after X's assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked Dr. Angelou to serve as Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

               
                  Dr. Angelou has served on two presidential committees, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Arts in 2000, the Lincoln Medal in 2008, and has received 3 Grammy Awards. President Clinton requested that she compose a poem to read at his inauguration in 1993. Dr. Angelou's reading of her poem "On the Pulse of the Morning" was broadcast live around the world. Dr. Angelou has received over 30 honorary degrees and is Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University. Dr. Angelou’s words and actions continue to stir our souls, energize our bodies, liberate our minds, and heal our hearts.