Maya Angelou

About Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri, and raised primarily in Stamps, Arkansas, and San Francisco. She worked as a dancer, actress, journalist, and civil rights organizer before publishing her landmark memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1969. That book—a frank account of childhood trauma, racism, and self-discovery in the Jim Crow South—was nominated for the National Book Award, remained on the New York Times bestseller list for two years, and became one of the most widely read and most frequently challenged books in American schools and libraries.

Over a career spanning more than five decades, Angelou produced seven autobiographies, three collections of essays, and numerous volumes of poetry. Her other books include Gather Together in My Name (1974), The Heart of a Woman (1981), and A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002). Her poetry collection Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. In 1993, at President Bill Clinton's invitation, she delivered her original poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at his inauguration—only the second poet in history to read at a presidential inauguration.

Recognition and Influence

In 1982, Angelou became the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, a lifetime appointment she held until her death. The American Library Association listed I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as the third most challenged book of the 1990s and sixth most challenged of the 2000s. Challenges typically cited sexual frankness, language, and the book's portrayal of racism—the very elements scholars and readers have most often praised as essential to its power.

Angelou received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011, the National Medal of Arts in 2000, the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP in 1994, and three Grammy Awards for spoken-word recordings. She held more than fifty honorary degrees. In 2022, she became the first Black woman to appear on a regularly circulating U.S. coin, honored in the American Women Quarters series. She died in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on May 28, 2014, at the age of 86.