Strong And Influencial Maya Angelou - Free Essay Example

Maya Angelou was a critically acclaimed writer, poet, actress, singer, professor, civil rights activist, and so much more. She accomplished many feats that were difficult when considering the time she grew up in. She became the first black woman to do many things including the first to write a screenplay. She was a true inspiration to many and many were saddened by her death on May 28, 2014. Marguerite Annie Johnson, better known as Maya Angelou, was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis Missouri to Bailey Johnson and Vivian Baxter Johnson. She got the name Maya from her older brother, Bailey Jr. When she was three years old, her father sent her and her brother alone by train to live with his mother, Annie Henderson, in Stamps, Arkansas. There, they lived with their uncle, Willie, and grandmother in the back of the Store that their grandmother owned. While there she became good at her times tables and she found her love of reading. Some of her favorites included William Shakespeare, Kipling, Poe, Butler, Thackeray, Henley, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, and W.E.B. Du Bois. People would often speak ill of her looks and would praise Baileys, but Bailey would always say something to offend them back. She looked up to her brother and he was her favorite person in the world. While living there she encountered racism on numerous occasions. One was when a black man attacked a white woman and a man came down to warn Annie to tell Willie to lay low. Another time she sensed it was when her grandmother sent her and her brother to the white side of town to buy meat. Maya felt that white people were not real and she did not care for the way they looked. She had many other encounters with white people when they would come into the Store. These white people were always dirty and were renting on the land that Annie owned. Annie was loving, but strict and made sure that Maya and Bailey were always clean and that they addressed adults in a respectful manner. When the white children would come to the store, they would make fun of Annie and call them by her first name. This mad her upset as she felt they were disrespecting her grandmother. She found her grandmother to be powerful and strong. Annie always went to church and made sure that her grandkids were there as wel l. People also said that she was good looking and very pretty in her youth. During the Great Depression Annie found a way to keep her store going by making items that her customers received from the welfare agencies such as powdered milk and eggs equal to a dollar amount. Customers would bring in their food and essentially barter it for other things that they needed. One Christmas Maya and Bailey received gifts from their mother and father, living separately in California. Up until that point Maya though they were dead. The gifts made her cry and made her wonder why she was sent away and what she did wrong. A year later her father came to visit. She found him handsome and that made her feel that maybe she was an orphan because she did not feel as good looking as her father and brother. After three weeks, her father said he was taking them back to California with him. While Bailey was excited, Maya did not want to go, although she did not speak up and say anything. While on the way, her father said that they would be going to see her mother in St. Louis. Maya became nervous and expressed that she wanted to go back to Stamps. When she met her mother she immediately felt out of place as her mother was beautiful. While in St. Louis she and her brother were skipped up a grade. She was amazed by the packaged foods, flushing toilets, and store-bought clothes. She enjoyed and loved her family, who were educated, respected, and tough. She lived with her mom and brother at her grandparents house for half a year before moving into a house with her, her brother, her mother, and her mothers boyfriend, Mr. Freeman. While living there, Mr. Freeman sexually molested her twice over the course of a few months and eventually raped her. She was afraid to tell anyone because he had threatened to kill Bailey. After she was raped he told her mother that she was sick. Later on, Maya learned that her mother and he had a fight and that he left. While Bailey was taking care of her he found the panties she had had on and he saw the soiled sheets. In the hospital Bailey got her to tell who had done that to her. Her family came to visit her in the hospital while she healed and Mr. Freeman was arrested. During court, h is lawyer interrogated her, an eight year old girl, rather harshly. She ended up lying about the molestation and that made her cry as she saw lying as bad. She had an angry outburst and then she was returned to her mothers arms. He was sentenced to one year and one day, but his lawyer was able to get him released that same day. Later on, an officer came to their house and informed them that he and been found killed. Mayas uncles had killed him, but Maya thought that her lie and her voice had killed him. She stopped talking to everyone except Bailey so eventually they were sent back to Stamps. Once back in Stamps, she was still mute. However, a family friend named Bertha Flowers helped her speak again. She also introduced her to authors like Dickens, Johnson, Frances Harper, and Anne Spencer. When she was 14 she and her brother moved back in with her mother who was now in Oakland California. Shortly after that her mother married a man named Clidell, who was the first father she would know, and he moved them to San Francisco. She had been skipped up two semesters and eventually earned a scholarship to the California Labor School, a college for adults, and while there she took drama and dance. When she was fifteen her brother moved out and she did not know how to take it, but she and her mother were growing closer. At sixteen, after much perseverance, she became the first black female cable car conductor in San Francisco. Shortly after graduating high school she gave birth to her son. For a time she went from job to job and relationship to relationship and she moves around a lot. While she was working in a record store she met a Greek sailor named Tosh Angelos. They fall in love and in 1952, against her mothers wishes, they got married. Their marriage was good at first, but she grew tired of his demands to stay at home. He was also an atheist while she was a Christian. She secretly attended church during this time. She did little to stand up for herself and after three years he tells her that he no longer wants to be married. After this relationship is over she gets a job singing and dancing in a nightclub and this is when she changes her name to Maya Angelou. She joins an European tour of Porgy and Bess and leaves her son, Clyde, with her mother. During this time she traveled to 22 countries, but she felt guilty about leaving Clyde behind. After hearing of his sickness she quits and goes to be with him. He decided that he wishes to be called Guy and she agrees. She then accepts a job in Hawaii and he goes along with her. After her stay in Hawaii she and Guy moved to Sausalito, California for a little while and they moved back to San Francisco. While living there Singer Billie Holiday visited her, sang her song Strange Fruit, a song about the lynching off black men, She then tells Maya that she will be famous but that it will not be for singing. Maya and Guy move to New York City in 1959, but while there, she must protect Guy from a gang and she grows tired of performing in nightclubs. She decides to focus on her son, politics, acting, and writing. She is invited to join the Harlem Writers Guild by John Gillens and there she met James Baldwin who becomes her mentor. While in New York she participated in protests, rallies, and sit ins. She even helped organize a sit in at the United Nations after Patrice Lumumba, the exiled prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was executed. She heard Martin Luther King Jr. speak and she became inspired to fundraise for an event for the Southern Cristian Leadership Conference (SCLC). After this she was named the coordinator of the SCLCs New York Office. She met a South African freedom fighter and moved to London and then Cairo with him. They never married and he expected her to be subservient to him. They separated eventually and she began working in Liberia. She later accepted a job at the University of Ghana after Guy is in a car accident, but after he recovered he left for college. She organized a demonstration to commemorate the 1963 march on Washington and it became a tribute for Du Bois. While in Ghana she met Malcolm X and they ended up becoming close friends. He asked her to come back to America to help him just as she did Martin Luther King Jr. Maya decided to take Malcom X up on his offer and she returned to America. She chose to visit her family first, but while doing so he was assassinated. This devasted her and she moved closer to her brother, however she soon moved back to California and she was there for the Watts riots. Afterwards, she moved back to New York and began to help King again. On her birthday he was assassinated and she was devastated once again.   She published her first autobiography in 1969 and she went on to publish seven autobiographies in total and several works of poetry. Later in life she became a professor at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Her mother died in 1991 and her brother died in 2000. She had one son, one grandson, and two great-grandchildren. Maya Angelou accomplished so much throughout her life. She overcame rape, teen pregnancy, racism, and other things and became famous. She never gave up, even if it meant working as a singer, prostitute, madam, in a record store, or any of the other numerous jobs she held. She spoke at several presidential inaugurations and has received numerous honorary degrees. She has received several honors and awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010, three Grammy awards, and a stamp by the U.S. Postal Service. To me, her perseverance and strength are shown in her poem Still I Rise.