Читать книгу Freedom Facts and Firsts - Jessie Carney Smith - Страница 33

Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, spent her early years in Stamps, Arkansas. It was here that she learned the glaring need for change in the South. As the movement for civil rights began to build in the 1950s, Angelou became an active participant for change. Upon moving to New York in the 1950s to pursue a professional dancing career, Angelou joined the Harlem Writers Guild and became one of many artists who participated in the movement. Along with Godfrey Cambridge, she wrote a revue called Cabaret for Freedom, which was to be performed as a fundraiser for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Between 1960 and 1961, Angelou served as the northern coordinator for the SCLC. Just as her reputation began to grow as a writer and poet, she decided to move with her son to Africa with African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make. They lived for a while in Cairo, Egypt, then Angelou and her son moved to Ghana. In Ghana, Angelou met Malcolm X and they later corresponded. When she returned to the United States in 1964, her goal was to assist him in building a new organization. Malcolm X was assassinated shortly after Angelou’s return, however, and this put an end to their plans. Angelou immersed herself in the Civil Rights Movement and again became a part of the SCLC. With the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Angelou became more serious about her writing and wrote her first book, the award-winning I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Maya Angelou (AP Photo/Doug Mills).

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