Maya Angelou

Birth Name:

Marguerite Ann Johnson

Birth Place:

St. Louis, Missouri, United States

Profession

Actress, Writer, Soundtrack, Director, Producer, Script department

Her 1972 screenplay "Georgia, Georgia" was the first ever written by an African American woman to be filmed, and was later nominated for a Pulitzer Prize
Studied dance and drama at the Labor School in San Francisco and later studied modern dance with Martha Graham
Recorded her first album, "Calypso Lady," in 1957, and moved to New York the following year, where she wrote and performed in "Cabaret for Freedom․"
Toured Europe as a dancer with the opera "Porgy and Bess" in 1954 and 1955
Quote: "I'm Maya Angelou - whatever that means to whomever it means - because my mother loved me, and my grandmother loved me, and my brother loved me․ And they all told me I could do whatever I wanted to do․"
Best known as an author and poet whose biography series includes "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and "Gather Together in My Name․"
Spent several years abroad in the 1960s, serving as editor for The Arab Observer in Cairo and later teaching at the University of Ghana
At the age of 14, she became the first female African American cable car conductor in San Francisco
Was asked by President Clinton to compose a poem, which she called "On the Pulse of the Morning," for his inauguration in 1993
Worked with both Malcolm X, whom she had met in Ghana, and Martin Luther King, Jr․, who asked her to work with his Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Fast Facts