With the guidance of her friend, the novelist James Baldwin, she began work on the book that would become I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. King's assassination, falling on her birthday in 1968, left her devastated. Angelou to serve as Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Shortly after her arrival in the United States, Malcolm X was assassinated, and the organization dissolved. 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. Angelou read and studied voraciously, mastering French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and the West African language Fanti. The next year, she moved to Ghana where she taught 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.ĭuring her years abroad, Dr. Angelou moved to Cairo, Egypt where she served as editor of the English language weekly The Arab Observer. In 1958, she moved to New York, where she joined the Harlem Writers Guild, acted in the historic Off-Broadway production of Jean Genet's The Blacks and wrote and performed Cabaret for Freedom. She studied modern dance with Martha Graham, danced with Alvin Ailey on television variety shows and, in 1957, recorded her first album, Calypso Lady. Angelou toured Europe with a production of the opera Porgy and Bess. As a young single mother, she supported her son by working as a waitress and cook, however her passion for music, dance, performance, and poetry would soon take center stage. She later finished high school, giving birth to her son, Guy, a few weeks after graduation. At 14, she dropped out to become San Francisco’s first African-American female cable car conductor.

Angelou’s love for the arts won her a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco’s Labor School. Angelou experienced the brutality of racial discrimination, but she also absorbed the unshakable faith and values of traditional African-American family, community, and culture.Īs a teenager, Dr. Angelou is a celebrated poet, memoirist, novelist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker, and civil rights activist.īorn on April 4th, 1928, in St. Hailed as a global renaissance woman, Dr. Maya Angelou is one of the most renowned and influential voices of our time.

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