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Maya Angelou: my terrible, wonderful mother

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Maya Angelou was just three when her mother sent her to live with her grandma, and 13 when they were reunited. After so long apart, could she ever learn to love her?

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Maya Angelou in 1969. Credit Credit Chester Higgins Jr.

The news of Maya Angelou's death arrived with the abruptness of a great twister - violent, without warning, tearing things up and flipping things over.

I ached the way the soul aches in the world when a great soul is lost from it.

I have a group of writers I call my literary mothers and fathers: Alice Walker and James Baldwin and Toni Morrison and Alex Haley and Gwendolyn Brooks and Langston Hughes. And yes, Maya Angelou.

This is not because I knew them, but rather because, through their words, they have nurtured me, inculcating in me a sense of myself that sustains me. They helped me to see myself and love myself when I felt least seen and least loved.

They saved me.

So this is the scale of the loss for me, a disbelieving, bending-over-at-the-waist kind of loss, the kind where the eyes grow misty and the breath grows short.

You see, when I discovered Angelou's memoir "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," which she published the year before I was born, it irreversibly altered me.

(That book would stay on the New York Times paperback nonfiction best-seller list for a record two years.)

Maya (her real name was Marguerite; Maya was a nickname taken from the fact that her brother, Bailey, insisted on calling her "Mya Sister" when she was a baby) spent part of her young life living with a grandmother and her brother in the small town of Stamps, Arkansas.

Because my own mother got dreadfully ill every time she got pregnant, I also spent the first few years of my life with a grandmother in a small Arkansas hamlet, one county over and about 50 miles away from Stamps.

Reading her words, for the first time, I could see myself and my life in literature.

There were the calabooses and the slaughter of hogs and the picking of cotton. Though her childhood and mine were 40 years separated, the echoes to my life were uncanny. She wrote of how the mind of a child does battle with darkness, the intricacies of complex families, the simple beauty of rural living, how horrific and rather ordinary racism can be, and how a gifted spirit can find a way to soar.

Hers was an enviable ability as a writer to lower the lens so that it was just above the ground, so that the reader could record the grit and the minutia and the places where the bodies fell and struggled again to stand.

She showed me, personally, something that I was not fully aware of - that my voice was steeped in the cadence and mysticism that comes with Southern storytelling, told by women in straight-backed chairs and men with reed-stemmed pipes.

She gave the people I knew - and the person I was - value, and she did so with a phenomenal power of presence, her words lingering and her voice swelling.

She demonstrated to me, even as a child, the overwhelming power of a great story well told, the way it could change hearts and change history. I am forever in her debt for that.

And her poetry was no less stunning and moving. Her poem "Still I Rise," which opens with the line "You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies" and closes with "I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise," bears testament to her staggering talent and her eternal optimism.

Angelou subscribed to a sort of grand unification theory of humanity. Where others saw difference, she saw sameness. Where others lost hope in the midst of acrimony, she held fast to the possibility of harmony. This was her great gift - being a light in the darkness.

While in search of the truth, she became the truth.

Angelou will be remembered as many things by many people. Not only was she a memoirist and a poet, she was an actress, singer and dancer. She was a friend of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and James Baldwin. She composed a poem for the inauguration of President Clinton and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama.

But I will remember her as a literary forebear, in whose shadow I stand and upon whose shoulders I hope to one day ride.

"Mya" Mother. Tears fall as you, magnificently, rise.

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Our childhoods were 40 years separated, but with uncanny echoes: she wrote of rural living, how a child battles darkness, how a spirit can soar.

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Maya Angelou, "Caged Bird" from Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? Copyright © 1983 by Maya Angelou. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Source: The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (Random House Inc., 1994)

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Caged Bird by Maya Angelou | Poetry Foundation

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Maya Angelou's extraordinary life and most beloved poem

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Dr Maya Angelou (1928-2014) lived an extraordinary life and is remembered today on what would have been her 90th birthday.

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The famed writer discusses her childhood, her writing and the importance of family

Turning 75 this month, Maya Angelou has led many lives. She is best known as a writer, for her numerous books of poetry and her six poignant memoirs, including the masterful 1969 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In February, she won a Grammy for the recorded reading of her most recent memoir, A Song Flung Up to Heaven. Her works have earned her more than 30 honorary degrees as well as nominations for a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. She wrote "On the Pulse of Morning" for the 1993 swearing-in of President Bill Clinton, becoming only the second poet in U. S. history-Robert Frost was the first, for John F. Kennedy- invited to compose an inaugural poem.

Less well known are Angelou's other lives: as a singer; as a composer; as a dancer in Porgy and Bess; as an actor in the Obie-winning play The Blacks and in films such as Calypso Heat Wave and How to Make an American Quilt; as a civil rights worker with Martin Luther King, Jr.; as a journalist in Egypt and Ghana; as a writer for television and Hollywood; as director of the 1998 film Down in the Delta. Angelou is the Reynolds Professor of American Studies at North Carolina's WakeForestUniversity in Winston-Salem. She is constantly on the lecture circuit and a regular guest on talk shows; she recently created a line of greeting cards for Hallmark. And there is little sign of her slowing down.

But when we met recently in her art-filled home in Winston- Salem, it was her family, not her varied career, that she most wanted to discuss. Our conversation often returned to the loved ones who helped her triumph over the tragedies of her childhood and made her believe she could meet whatever challenge life threw in her path.
You've said that society's view of the black woman is such a threat to her well-being that she will die daily unless she determines how she sees herself. How do you see yourself?
Her grandmother Annie Henderson was one of the most important, a pious woman who ran a general store in Stamps, Arkansas. Angelou lived most of her childhood with her grandmother, whom she called "Momma." Angelou's sometimes-absentee mother, Vivian Baxter, had a steel will and several careers of her own. She was an inadvertent player in an early, formative trauma in Angelou's life. When Angelou was 8 and briefly living with Baxter in St. Louis, her mother's boyfriend raped Angelou. The man was arrested, convicted and released; soon after, he was found beaten to death. Believing she had caused the killing because she had told of the rape, Angelou refused to speak for several years; only her beloved older brother, Bailey, could coax her to talk. He remained a source of support throughout her life until his death more than a year ago. And there is Angelou's son, Guy Johnson, 57, author of Echoes of a Distant Summer and one other novel. He is, she says, her "monument in the world."
You have never been bored? How is that possible?
I just received a letter yesterday from the University of Milan. Aperson is doing a doctoral dissertation on my work. It's called Sapienza, which means wisdom. I'm considered wise, and sometimes I see myself as knowing. Most of the time, I see myself as wanting to know. And I see myself as a very interested person. I've never been bored in my life.

Oh God, if I were bored, now that would interest me. I'd think, my God, how did that happen and what's going on? I'd be caught up in it. Are you kidding? Bored?

I realized when I was about 20 that I would die. It frightened me so. I mean, I had heard about it, had been told and all that, but that I . . . ? [She points at herself and raises her brows as if in disbelief.] It so terrified me that I doublelocked the doors; I made certain that the windows were double- locked-trying to keep death out-and finally I admitted that there was nothing I could do about it. Once I really came to that conclusion, I started enjoying life, and I enjoy it very much.

Another occurrence took place at about the same time- maybe about a year later-and the two occurrences liberated me forever.

I had two jobs. I was raising my son. We had a tiny little place to live. My mother had a 14-room house and someone to look after things. She owned a hotel, lots of diamonds. I wouldn't accept anything from her. But once a month she'd cook for me. And I would go to her house and she'd be dressed beautifully.

One day after we'd had lunch, she had to go somewhere. She put on silver-fox furs-this was when the head of one fox would seem to bite into the head of the other-and she would wear them with the tails in front; she would turn it around with the furs arching back. We were halfway down the hill and she said, "Baby"-and she was small; she was 5- feet-4 1/2 and I'm 6 foot-"You know something? I think you're the greatest woman I've ever met." We stopped. I looked down at this pretty little woman made up so perfectly, diamonds in her ears. She said, "Mary McLeod Bethune, Eleanor Roosevelt, my mother and you-you are the greatest." It still brings me to te-. [Her eyes tear up.]

We walked down to the bottom of the hill. She crossed the street to the right to get into her car. I continued across the street and waited for the streetcar. And I got onto the streetcar and I walked to the back. I shall never forget it. I remember the wooden planks of the streetcar. The way the light came through the window. And I thought, suppose she's right? She's very intelligent, and she's too mean to lie. Suppose I really am somebody?
One of your large thoughts must have been about planning to have a diverse life and career. How do you move so easily from one thing to another?
Those two incidents liberated me to think large thoughts, whether I could comprehend them or not [she laughs], but to think. . . .

I have a theory that nobody understands talent any more than we understand electricity. So I think we've done a real disservice to young people by telling them, "Oh, you be careful. You'll be a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none." It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I think you can be a jack-of-all-trades and a mistress-of-all-trades. If you study it, and you put reasonable intelligence and reasonable energy, reasonable electricity to it, you can do that. You may not become Max Roach on the drums. But you can learn the drums. I've long felt that way about things. If I'm asked, "Can you do this?" I think, if I don't do it, it'll be ten years before another black woman is asked to do it. And I say, yes, yes, when do you want it?

My mom, you know, was a seaman. At one point, I was in Los Angeles. I called her in San Francisco and said, I want to see you, I'm going to New York and I don't know when I'll be back, so let's meet mid-state. She said, "Oh, baby, I wanted to see you, too, because I'm going to sea." I said, going to see what? She said, "I'm going to become a seaman." I said, Mother, really, come on. She said, "No, they told me they wouldn't let women in their union. I told them, 'You wanna bet?' I put my foot in that door up to my hip so women of every color will get in that union, get aboard a ship and go to sea." She retired in 1980, and Asian, white and black women gave a party for her. They called her the mother of the sea.
Do you resent the fact that your mother wasn't there for much of your childhood?
So, yes, we cripple our children, we cripple each other with those designations that if you're a brick mason you shouldn't love the ballet. Who made that rule? You ever see a person lay bricks? [She moves her hands in a precise bricklaying manner.] Because of the eye and the hands, of course he or she would like to see ballet. It is that precise, that established, that organized, that sort of development from the bottom to the top.

Oh, yes. Yes. I was an abandoned child as far as I was concerned, and Bailey also. We didn't hear from her- we heard maybe twice in seven years or something. And then I realized that she was funny and loving and that there are certainly two different kinds of parents. There is the person who can be a great parent of small children. They dress the children in these sweet little things with bows in their hair and beads on their shoestrings and nice, lovely little socks. But when those same children get to be 14 or 15, the parents don't know what to say to them as they grow breasts and testosterone hits the boy.

Well, my mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God-I thank God every time I think of it-I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult. When she found out I was pregnant, she said, "All right. Run me a bath, please." Well, in my family, that's really a very nice thing for somebody to ask you to do. Maybe two or three times in my life she had asked me to run her a bath. So I ran her a bath and then she invited me in the bathroom. My mother sat down in the bathtub. She asked me, "Do you love the boy?" I said no. "Does he love you?" I said no. "Well, there's no point in ruining three lives. We're going to have us a baby."

And she delivered Guy-because she was a nurse also. She took me to the hospital. It was during one of the Jewish holidays, and my doctor wasn't there. My mother went in, told the nurses who she was, she washed up, they took me into the delivery room. She got up on the table on her knees with me and put her shoulder against my knee and took my hand, and every time a pain would come she'd tell a joke. I would laugh and laugh [she laughs uproariously] and bear down. And she said, "Here he comes, here he comes." And she put her hand on him first, my son.
It seems your mother and Bailey always came to your rescue. Were they more vigilant, do you think, because you didn't speak for so long?
So throughout her life she liberated me. Liberated me constantly. Respected me, respected what I tried to do, believed in me. I'd go out in San Francisco-I'd be visiting her, I was living in Los Angeles-and stay really late at some afterhours joint. Mother knew all of them and knew all the bartenders. And I'd be having a drink and laughing, and the bartender would say on the phone, "Yeah, Mama, yeah she's here." She'd say to me: "Baby, it's your mother. Come home. Let the streets know you have somewhere to go."
What went through your mind during the years you were mute?
All those years ago I'd been a mute, and my mother and my brother knew that in times of strife and extreme stress, I was likely to retreat to mutism. Mutism is so addictive. And I don't think its powers ever go away. It's as if it's just behind my view, just behind my right shoulder or my left shoulder. If I move quickly, it moves, so I can't see it. But it's always there saying, "You can always come back to me. You have nothing to do-just stop talking." So, when I've been in stress, my mother or my brother, or both sometimes, would come wherever I was, New York, California, anywhere, and say, "Hello, hello, talk to me. Come on, let's go. We'll have a game of Scrabble or pinochle and let's talk. Tell me a story." Because they were astute enough to recognize the power of mutism, I finally was astute enough to recognize the power of their love.

Oh, yes, I memorized poetry. I would test myself, memorizing a conversation that went by when I wasn't in it. I memorized 60 Shakespearean sonnets. And some of the things I memorized, I'd never heard them spoken, so I memorized them according to the cadence that I heard in my head. I loved Edgar Allan Poe and I memorized everything I could find. And I loved Paul Laurence Dunbar-still do-so I would memorize 75 poems. It was like putting a CD on. If I wanted to, I'd just run through my memory and think, that's one I want to hear.
You lived with your grandmother during your silent years. How did she respond?
So I believe that my brain reconstructed itself during those years. I believe that the areas in the brain which provide and promote physical speech had nothing to do. I believe that the synapses of the brain, instead of just going from A to B, since B wasn't receptive, the synapses went from Ato R. You see what I mean? And so, I've been able to develop a memory quite unusual, which has allowed me to learn languages, really quite a few. I seem to be able to direct the brain; I can say, do that. I say, remember this, remember that. And it's caught! [She snaps her fingers as if to emphasize "caught."]
If your mother liberated you to think big, what gifts did your grandmother give you?
She said, "Sister, Momma don't care what these people say, that you must be an idiot, a moron, 'cause you can't talk. Momma don't care. Momma know that when you and the good Lord get ready, you gon' be a teacher."

She gave me so many gifts. Confidence that I was loved. She taught me not to lie to myself or anyone else and not to boast. She taught me to admit that, to me, the emperor has no clothes. He may be dressed in the finery of the ages to everybody else, but if I don't see it, to admit that I don't see it. Because of her, I think, I have remained a very simple woman. What you see is all there is. I have no subterfuge. And she taught me not to complain.

My grandmother had one thing that she would do for me about twice a year. Shall I tell you? [She laughs loudly.] Momma would see a whiner, a complainer come down the hill. And she would call me in. She'd say, "Sister, Sister, come out here." I'd go and look up the hill and a complainer was trudging. And the man or woman would come into the store, and my grandmother would ask, "How you feel today?"

"Ah, Sister Henderson, I tell you I just hate the winter. It makes my face crack and my shins burn."
Did you write during your childhood?
And Momma'd just say, "Uh-huh," and then look at me. And as soon as the person would leave, my grandmother would say, "Sister, come here." I'd stand right in front of her. She'd say, "There are people all over the world who went to sleep last night who did not wake again. Their beds have become their cooling boards, their blankets have become their winding sheets. They would give anything for just five minutes of what she was complaining about."
I read that you wrote the inaugural poem, "On the Pulse of Morning," in a hotel room. Were you on the road when you composed it?
Well, I've always written. There's a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother's papers were destroyed. I'd written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then. I would write some-of course it was terrible-but I'd always written something down.
Where does writing rank in your accomplishments?
I keep a hotel room here in Winston when I'm writing. I take a room for about a month. And I try to be in the room by 6 a.m., so I get up, make coffee and keep a thermos and I go out to the hotel. I would have had everything removed from the room, wall hangings and all that stuff. It's just a bed, a table and a chair, Roget's Thesaurus, a dictionary, a bottle of sherry, a yellow pad and pens, and I go to work. And I work 'til about twelve or one; one if it's going well, twelve if it isn't. Then I come home and pretend to operate in the familiar, you know?

I'm happy to be a writer, of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn't a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use. So the writer has to take the most used, most familiar objects-nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs-ball them together and make them bounce, turn them a certain way and make people get into a romantic mood; and another way, into a bellicose mood. I'm most happy to be a writer.

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Turning 75 this month, Maya Angelou has led many lives. She is best known as a writer, for her numerous books of poetry and her six poignant memoirs, including the masterful 1969 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In February, she won a Grammy for the recorded reading of her most recent memoir, A Song Flung Up to Heaven.

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Maya Angelou - Poet - Maya Angelou was an author, poet, historian, songwriter, playwright, dancer, stage and screen producer, director, performer, singer, and civil rights activist.

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Caged Bird Legacy | The Legacy of Dr. Maya Angelou

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Maya Angelou was born as Marguerite Johnson on April 4th, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri and raised in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. Maya Angelou became one of the most renowned and influential voices of our time. With over 50 honorary doctorate degrees Dr. Maya Angelou became a celebrated poet, memoirist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker, and civil rights activist.

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Maya Angelou was born as Marguerite Johnson on April 4th, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri and raised in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. Maya Angelou became one of the most renowned and influential voices of our time. With over 50 honorary doctorate degrees Dr. Maya Angelou became a celebrated poet, memoirist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker, and civil rights activist.

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Or if you have a minute take this Nearly 16 MILLION page views since November 2003 ....and still counting! (actually 15,835,035 as of April 16, 2018) Thanks to everyone who has made this site available and possible...

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Photo above: Prohibition Era Brewery. Courtesy National Archives. Right: Photo montage, images courtesy Library of Congress.

U.S. Timeline - The 1920s

Prosperity and Its Demise

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1920

January 1, 1920 - For the first time, the 1920 census indicates apopulation in the United States over 100 million people. The 15% increase since the last census now showed a count of 106,021,537. The geographic center of the United States population still remained in Indiana, eight miles south-southeast of Spencer, in Owen County.

January 10, 1920 - The League of Nations is established with the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, ending the hostilities of the first World War. In a final vote, the United States Senate again votes against joining the League.

February 3, 1920 - The first performance of the play, Beyond the Horizon, is held. The play by Eugene O'Neill would win the first of his four Pulitzer Prizes.

August 18, 1920 - Women are given the right to vote when the 19th Amendment to the United States constitution grants universal women's suffrage. Also known as the Susan B. Anthony amendment, in recognition of her important campaign to win the right to vote.
September 17, 1920 - The American Professional Football League is formed in 1920 with Jim Thorpe as its president and eleven teams. It would change its name to the National Football League in 1922.
November 2, 1920 - A landslide victory for Warren G. Harding in both the Electoral College and popular vote returns the Republican Party to the White House. Harding gained over 16 million popular votes to Democratic candidate James M. Cox's 9 million and won the Electoral contest with a 404 to 127 landslide. This was the first election in which women had the right to vote.

1921

May 19, 1921 - A national quota system on the amount of incoming immigrants is established by the United States Congress in the Emergency Quota Act, curbing legal immigration.

July 2, 1921 - A Congressional resolution by both houses is signed by President Warren G. Harding, declaring peace in World War I hostilities with Germany, Austria, and Hungary. The treaties would be executed one month later.

July 10, 1921 - The proposal for a trail along the Allegheny Mountain ridges is put forward by regional planner Benton MacKaye. The trail, completed in 1937 and designated officially as the Appalachian National Scenic Trail in 1968, stretches from Maine to Georgia.
September 7-8, 1921 - The first Miss America pageant is held in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It is won by Margaret Gorman for the title of the Golden Mermaid trophy, later dubbed Miss America.

November 12, 1921 - The Limitation on Armaments Congress convenes in Washington, D.C.

1922

February 5, 1922 - Reader's Digest is founded and the first issue published by Dewitt and Lila Wallace.

February 6, 1922 - The Armaments Congress ends. It would lead to three agreements, including the Five Power Disarmament Treaty, between the major world powers and the United States, to limit naval construction, outlaw poison gas, restrict submarine attacks on merchant fleets and respect China's sovereignty.

April 7, 1922 - The Teapot Dome scandal begins when the U.S. Secretary of the Interior leases the Teapot Oil Reserves in Wyoming.

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May 5, 1922 - Construction begins on Yankee Stadium in New York City, often dubbed the House that Ruth Built.
May 30, 1922 - The Lincoln Memorial, located on the opposite end of the National Mall from the Capitol building, is dedicated in Washington, D.C.

1923

January 23, 1923 - The 12th century Aztec Indian ruins in New Mexico are proclaimed as a National Monument by President Warren G. Harding, following in the footsteps of all presidents since Theodore Roosevelt. It is known as Aztec Ruins National Monument.

March 3, 1923 - Time Magazine is published for the first time, becoming one of the most dominant media companies of the Twentieth Century.
April 4, 1923 - Warner Brothers Pictures is incorporated.

April 15, 1923 - The first sound on film motion picture Phonofilm is show in the Rivoli Theatre in New York City by Lee de Forest.
August 2, 1923 - President Warren G. Harding dies in office after becoming ill following a trip to Alaska, and is succeeded by his Vice President, Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge would oppose the League of Nations, but approved of the World Court.

1924

January 25, 1924 - The first Winter Olympic Games are held in the French Alps in Chamonix, France with sixteen nations sending athletes to participate, including the United States, which won four medals. Norway, with four gold and eighteen medals total had the most in both categories. The Winter Olympic Games have been held since this year, except during World War II.

February 14, 1924 - The IBM corporation is founded.

May 10, 1924 - J. Edgar Hoover is appointed to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

June 2, 1924 - All Indians are designated citizens by legislation passed in the U.S. Congress and signed by President Calvin Coolidge. The Indian Citizenship Act granted this right to all Native Americans that had been born within the territory of the United States.
November 4, 1924 - Calvin Coolidge wins his first election as President, retaining the White House for the Republican Party over his Democratic foe, John W. Davis, and Progressive Party candidate Robert M. La Follette. The Electoral margin was 382 to 136 (Davis) to 13 (La Follette).

1925

January 5, 1925 - Nellie Tayloe Ross is inaugurated as the first woman governor of the United States in Wyoming. Miriam Ferguson is installed two weeks later as the second during a ceremony in Texas.

June 13, 1925 - Radiovision is born. The precursor to television is demonstrated by Charles Francis Jenkins when he transmits a 10 minute film of synchronized pictures and sound for five miles from Anacostia to Washington, D.C. to representatives of the United States government.

July 10, 1924 - The Scopes Trial or Monkey Trial begins and would later convict John T. Scopes of teaching Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory at a Dayton, Tennessee high school, which violated Tennessee law. He is fined $100 for the charge.

November 21, 1925 - Lava Beds National Monument in California is designated by President Calvin Coolidge. It was the site of a volcanic rock, natural fortress used by the Modoc Indians during the Modoc War of 1872-3.
November 28, 1925 - The Grand Ole Opry transmits its first radio broadcast.

1926

March 16, 1926 - Robert H. Goddard demonstrates the viability of the first liquid fueled rockets with his test in Auburn, Massachusetts. The rocket flew one hundred and eighty-four feet over 2.5 seconds.

May 9, 1926 - The first flight to the North Pole and back occurs when pilot Floyd Bennett, with Richard Evelyn Byrd as his navigator, guided a three-engine monoplane. They were awarded the Medal of Honor for their achievement.

May 20, 1926 - Air Commerce Act is passed, providing aid and assistance to the airline industry, plus federal oversight under the Department of Commerce for civil air safety.

May 31, 1926 - The Sesqui-Centennial Exposition opens in Philadelphia to celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth birthday of the United States. With nineteen nations and four colonies participating, the event failed to live up to the wonder and expectation of the former Centennial Exposition, and is often regarded as a failure in world expo circles. Due in part to inadequate preparation and a very wet summer, it closed on November 30 a disappointment with 6 million visitors in total attendance.

November 15, 1926 - The NBC Radio Network is formed by Westinghouse, General Electric, and RCA, opening with twenty-four stations.

1927

March 5, 1927 - The civil war in China prompts one thousand United States marines to land in order to protect property of United States interests.

April 22 to May 5, 1927 - The Great Mississippi Flood occurs, affecting over 700,000.

May 20, 1927 - Charles Lindbergh leaves Roosevelt Field, New York on the first non-stop transatlantic flight in history. He would reach Paris thirty-three and one-half hours later in the Spirit of St. Louis, his aircraft. A ticker tape parade would be held in New York City after his return on June 13.

October 4, 1927 - Work on the gigantic sculpture at Mount Rushmore begins. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum would complete the task of chiseling the busts of four presidents; George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt, fourteen years later.

October 6, 1927 - The advent of talking pictures emerges. Al Jolson in the Jazz Singer debuts in New York City.

September 7, 1927 - First success in the invention of television occurs by American inventor Philo Taylor Farnsworth. The complete electronic television system would be patented three years later on August 26, 1930.

1928

March 26, 1928 - The Tennessee national military park known as Fort Donelson National Battlefield, site of the first major Union victory in the Civil War and known for the unconditional surrender of Confederate troops to Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant, is created by legislation signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge.

May 15, 1928 - The first appearance of Mickey and Minnie Mouse on film occurs with the release of the animated short film, Plane Crazy.

June 17, 1928 - Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly over the Atlantic Ocean.

November 6, 1928 - Herbert Hoover wins election as President of the United States with an Electoral College victory, 444 to 87 over Democratic candidate Alfred E. Smith, the Catholic governor of New York.

December 21, 1928 - The United States Congress approves the construction of Boulder, later named Hoover Dam.

1929

January 15, 1929 - Future Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King is born in his grandfather's house in Atlanta, Georgia.

February 14, 1929 - In Chicago, Illinois, gangsters working for Al Capone kill seven rivals and citizens in the act known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

October 11, 1929 - JC Penney opens its Store #1252 in Milford, Delaware, the last state in the Union to have one of their stores. The growth of the nationwide chain indicated the prosperity of the decade only two weeks before the stock market crash of 1929 would ensue.

October 25, 1929 - The Teapot Dome scandal comes to a close when Albert B. Fall, the former Secretary of the Interior, is convicted of accepting a $100,000 bribe for leasing the Elk Hills naval oil reserve. He is sentenced to one year in jail and a $100,000 fine.

October 29, 1929 - Postwar prosperity ends in the 1929 Stock Market crash. The plummeting stock prices led to losses between 1929 and 1931 of an estimated $50 billion and started the worst American depression in the nation's history.

History Photo Bomb

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U.S. History Timeline 1920-1929 - America's Best History

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Photo above: Prohibition Era Brewery. Courtesy National Archives. Right: Photo montage, images courtesy Library of Congress. Prosperity and Its Demise Sponsor this page for $300 per year. Your banner or text ad can fill the space above.Click here to Sponsor the page and how to reserve your ad.

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Twenties Fashions, Major Advances in Technology with many of the inventions still in use today, The growth of the movie industry, Start of the Mass Production of cars, Radios For The Home and Popular Culture, The Twenties were a time of radical change caused by the many changes happening in technology with new advancements, discoveries, and inventions. The decade is often referred to as the Roaring Twenties.
Jump To 1920's Fashions -- Toys -- Cars -- Popular Culture -- Homes -- Technology

What Happened in 1920 History

With the ending of World War I a housing boom in Britain and the United States leads to an increase in home ownership.

The League of Nations is founded but the United States votes against joining.

Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified on August 18, giving women the right to vote.

The Russian Civil war ends but the country struggles as a famine begins in 1920 and worsens the following year.

The Summer Olympics take place in Antwerp, Belgium and they emphasize reconciliation after World War I.

The 18th Amendment ( Volstead Act / National Prohibition Act ) goes into force at the beginning of the decade which in turn leads to increased black market alcohol that is sold in speakeasies and run by mobsters who pay off local politicians

The Palmer Raids lead to the arrest and deportation of 6,000 foreign aliens suspected radical leftists.

Personalized Birthday newspaper style front page print features historical information from the chosen month/year. Personalize with Name / DOB / Photos / Personalized Message ( From Our Back In Time History Related Gift Collection ) Features a top news story depending on the month/year chosen, and other more general information from the year such as popular music and movies, world leaders, Broadway shows (1920s), radio shows (1930s), and television (1940s to Present), sports news, prices, and other news events.

What Happened in 1929 History

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 started the period of The Great Depression in the United States

During most of the decade turf wars between rival gangs were frequent and extremely violent. The best known of the many was Al Capone's Saint Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago during 1929.

Vatican City becomes an independent and sovereign state located within Rome after the Lateran Pacts are signed.

Part of our Ladies Hats From The Decade

Ladies Dresses From The Decade

Part of our Collection of Childrens Clothes From the Decade

Check out the new toys pages where you can see some of the children's toys that could be found during the Roaring Twenties and other decades. Toys include Teddy Bears, Velocipedes, Tinker Toys, Gyroscopes, and Magic Lanterns.
From Our Twenties Toys Page
Below are some examples of kids pedal cars, you will notice from the advert below the toy pedal car makers were quick to mimic the cars of the period

Possibly the most significant change during the decade was the mass production of the Car started by Henry Ford in the early 1900's. He had manufactured and sold some 15 million Model-Ts by 1927. I have included 20 examples of cars for sale in the decade

Baseball
The Yankees and Babe Ruth rule the world of Baseball setting records for the team and the Great Babe Ruth.
Major League Teams Buy up Minor League Teams allowing them to get top players much cheaper than the open market.
Association Football (Soccer)
Soccer had been gaining in popularity since the mid 1800's but the Twenties gave an even bigger boost with the Growth Of Radio In Britain making the top players into stars.

To provide an estimate we have given a guide to the value of $100 US Dollars for the first year in the decade to the equivalent in today's money
If you have $100 Converted from 1920 to 2009 it would be equivalent to $1023 in today's money

There were many inventions and new types of technology developed during the 1920s, but possibly the one that had the greatest impact before the turn of the next decade was Radio. It soon became a staple of peoples lives providing entertainment, news, and new ideas. Another very important invention also started to impact peoples lives and that was the uses of airplanes apart from as a weapon of war. Air Mail would provide some of the impetus and investment needed to improve stability and provide a practical use, as a byproduct the airplane became used as a means for entertainment with stunts at Fairs. Man also realized he could push the bounds by attempting previously un-thought of ideas. A good example is Charles A. Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic Ocean by himself in an airplane. It was during the 20's that automatic vending machines began to appear to dispense soft drinks.

Inventions -- The Year Invented, Inventors, and Country (or attributed to First Use)

Aerosol Sprays ----- 1926 Norway by Erik Rotheim
Antibiotic Penicillin ----- 1928 England by Alexander Fleming
Frozen Food ----- 1924 USA by Clarence Birdseye
Handheld Hair Dryer ----- 1920 USA by Hamilton Beach Co.
Vacuum Tube Hearing Aid ----- 1921 USA by Earl Hanson
Iron Lung ----- 1928 USA by Philip Drinker
Liquid Fuel Rocket ----- 1926 USA by Robert Goddard
Quartz Clock ----- 1927 USA by Warren Marrison
Adhesive Bandages ----- 1920 USA by Earle Dickson
Talking Pictures ----- 1927 USA
Television ----- 1924 Scotland by John Logie Baird
Ultracentrifuge (Separates Proteins) ----- 1923 Sweden by The Svedberg
Videophone ----- 1927 USA
Electric Razor ----- 1927 USA by Jacob Schick
Period Leading up to the Decade You can not talk about the decade without mentioning "The Great Pandemic" from 1918-1919. This influenza epidemic (also known as the Spanish Flu) was a global catastrophe which is believed to have caused the death of over 40 million people worldwide. This is one of the main reasons governments round the world are still so concerned with "Bird Flu" and other largescale influenza outbreaks.

Due to the new technology available allowing movies to have both sound and color, the movie industry in Hollywood grew fast, as did the number of Cinemas showing the films. In 1919, laws were passed for the Prohibition of the consumption and even possession of alcohol, making it illegal. Due to these laws, the Decade provided some of the best known gangsters a means to create vast wealth by opening illegal bars called speakeasies that would provide alcoholic drinks for the people that patronized these establishments. The most well known gangster of the time was possibly Al Capone.
Also this period saw the growth of the Ku Klux Klan and the growth of the Vigilante groups who took the law into their own hands and lynched victims most often black without any trial.
The other great change in people's lives came from an invention and technology developed prior to the twenties. After World War I, the birth of commercial radio helped the radio to became a significant part of life providing news and entertainment to the masses in their homes.
Music Jazz was the music of popular choice and some of the best known musicians were jazz musicians including Duke Ellington and Al Jolson. One other popular musician/composer was George Gershwin. Many of his songs are still recorded and listened to today. A popular dance of the times was known as the Charleston.
From Our 20's Music Section

Electrical Home Goods
The range of things you could own was low because the vast number of Americans still did not have electricity, Below is one great example from our Electrical page featuring a radio, as I did the research I was amazed at the complexity involved in owning a radio for your home. All the items shown below were required to own a radio, more information on this and other items can be found on our
From Our 1920's Home Appliances Page

Homes and Furniture From The Twenties
Our new updated Homes page includes a number of self build homes with varying designs and sizes ranging from a small cottage to a two floor large 7 room house example below is taken from our 1920's Homes and Houses Page
Price: Sectional $2,205
It is interesting looking at the furniture and fixtures you might find in a home from the decade, below are just two examples I found interesting from the more than 20 we have included on our 1920's Furniture
Two Bedroom Country Cottage -- Portable Bathtub With Water Heater

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What Happened in the 1920s inc. News, Popular Culture, Prices and Technology

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Twenties Fashions, Major Advances in Technology with many of the inventions still in use today, The growth of the movie industry, Start of the Mass Production of cars, Radios For The Home and Popular Culture, The Twenties were a time of radical change caused by the many changes happening in technology with new advancements, discoveries, and inventions.

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Discussion of themes and motifs in Maya Angelou's The Reunion. eNotes critical analyses help you gain a deeper understanding of The Reunion so you can excel on your essay or test.

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"They hate him. So much, they say they will disown me." Disbelief made her voice strong again. "They said I could never set foot in Baker again." She tried to catch my eyes in the mirror but I looked down at my drink. "I know there's a lot wrong with Baker, but it's my home."

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An acclaimed American poet, storyteller, activist, and autobiographer, Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri. Angelou had a broad career as a singer, dancer, actress, composer, and Hollywood's first female black director, but became most famous as a writer, editor, essayist, playwright, and poet. As a civil rights activist, Angelou worked for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. She was also an educator and served as the Reynolds professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University. By 1975, wrote Carol E. Neubauer in Southern Women Writers: The New Generation, Angelou was recognized "as a spokesperson for... all people who are committed to raising the moral standards of living in the United States." She served on two presidential committees, for Gerald Ford in 1975 and for Jimmy Carter in 1977. In 2000, Angelou was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton. In 2010, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S., by President Barack Obama. Angelou was awarded over 50 honorary degrees before her death.

Angelou's most famous work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), deals with her early years in Long Beach, St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas, where she lived with her brother and paternal grandmother. In one of its most evocative (and controversial) moments, Angelou describes how she was first cuddled then raped by her mother's boyfriend when she was just seven years old. When the man was murdered by her uncles for his crime, Angelou felt responsible, and stopped talking. Angelou remained mute for five years, but developed a love for language. She read Black authors like Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Paul Lawrence Dunbar, as well as canonical works by William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe. When Angelou was twelve and a half, Mrs. Flowers, an educated African American woman, finally got her to speak again. Mrs. Flowers, as Angelou recalled in her children's book Mrs. Flowers: A Moment of Friendship (1986), emphasized the importance of the spoken word, explained the nature of and importance of education, and instilled in her a love of poetry. Angelou graduated at the top of her eighth-grade class.

Angelou attended George Washington High School in San Francisco and took lessons in dance and drama on a scholarship at the California Labor School. When Angelou, just seventeen, graduated from high school and gave birth to a son, Guy, she began to work as the first African American and first female street car conductor in San Francisco. As she explained in Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry like Christmas (1976), the third of her autobiographies, she also "worked as a shake dancer in night clubs, fry cook in hamburger joints, dinner cook in a Creole restaurant and once had a job in a mechanic's shop, taking the paint off cars with my hands." Angelou married a white ex-sailor, Tosh Angelos, in 1950. After they separated, Angelou continued her study of dance in New York City, returning to San Francisco to sing in the Purple Onion cabaret and garnering the attention of talent scouts. From 1954 to 1955, she was a member of the cast of a touring production of Porgy and Bess. During the late 1950s, Angelou sang in West Coast and Hawaiian nightclubs, before returning to New York to continue her stage career.

Angelou joined the Harlem Writers Guild in the late 1950s and met James Baldwin and other important writers. It was during this time that Angelou had the opportunity to hear Dr. Martin Luther King speak. Inspired by his message, she decided to become a part of the struggle for civil rights. She was offered a position as the northern coordinator for Dr. King's SCLC. Following her work for Dr. King, Angelou moved to Cairo with her son, and, in 1962, to Ghana in West Africa. She worked as a freelance writer and was a feature editor at the African Review. When Angelou returned to the United States in the mid-1960s, she was encouraged by author James Baldwin and Robert Loomis, an editor at Random House, to write an autobiography. Initially, Angelou declined the offers, but eventually changed her mind and wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The book chronicles Angelou's childhood and ends with the birth of her son. It won immediate success and was nominated for a National Book Award.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first of Angelou's six autobiographies. It is widely taught in schools, though it has faced controversy over its portrayal of race, sexual abuse and violence. Angelou's use of fiction-writing techniques like dialogue and plot in her autobiographies was innovative for its time and helped, in part, to complicate the genre's relationship with truth and memory. Though her books are episodic and tightly-crafted, the events seldom follow a strict chronology and are arranged to emphasize themes. Other volumes include Gather Together in My Name (1974), which begins when Angelou is seventeen and a new mother; Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry like Christmas, an account of her tour in Europe and Africa with Porgy and Bess; The Heart of a Woman (1981), a description of Angelou's acting and writing career in New York and her work for the civil rights movement; and All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), which recounts Angelou's travels in West Africa and her decision to return, without her son, to America.

It took Angelou fifteen years to write the final volume of her autobiography, A Song Flung up to Heaven (2002). The book covers four years, from the time Angelou returned from Ghana in 1964 through the moment when she sat down at her mother's table and began to write I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1968. Angelou hesitated so long to start the book and took so long to finish it, she told Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service interviewer Sherryl Connelly, because so many painful things happened to her, and to the entire African-American community, in those four years. "I didn't know how to write it," she said. "I didn't see how the assassination of Malcolm [X], the Watts riot, the breakup of a love affair, then [the assassination of Dr.] Martin [Luther] King [Jr.], how I could get all that loose with something uplifting in it." A Song Flung up to Heaven deals forthrightly with these events, and "the poignant beauty of Angelou's writing enhances rather than masks the candor with which she addresses the racial crisis through which America was passing," Wayne A. Holst wrote in Christian Century.

Angelou was also a prolific and widely-read poet, and her poetry has often been lauded more for its depictions of Black beauty, the strength of women, and the human spirit; criticizing the Vietnam War; demanding social justice for all-than for its poetic virtue. Yet Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie, which was published in 1971, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1972. According to Carol Neubauer in Southern Women Writers, "the first twenty poems describe the whole gamut of love, from the first moment of passionate discovery to the first suspicion of painful loss." In other poems, "Angelou turns her attention to the lives of black people in America from the time of slavery to the rebellious 1960s. Her themes deal broadly with the painful anguish suffered by blacks forced into submission, with guilt over accepting too much, and with protest and basic survival."

As Angelou wrote her autobiographies and poems, she continued her career in film and television. She was the first Black woman to have a screenplay ( Georgia, Georgia) produced in 1972. She was honored with a nomination for an Emmy award for her performance in Roots in 1977. In 1979, Angelou helped adapt her book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, for a television movie of the same name. Angelou wrote the poetry for the 1993 film Poetic Justice and played the role of Aunt June. She also played Lelia Mae in the 1993 television film There Are No Children Here and appeared as Anna in the feature film How to Make an American Quilt in 1995.

One source of Angelou's fame in the early 1990s was President Bill Clinton's invitation to write and read an inaugural poem. Americans all across the country watched as she read "On the Pulse of Morning," which begins "A Rock, a River, a Tree" and calls for peace, racial and religious harmony, and social justice for people of different origins, incomes, genders, and sexual orientations. It recalls the civil rights movement and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I have a dream" speech as it urges America to "Give birth again / To the Dream" of equality. Angelou challenged the new administration and all Americans to work together for progress: "Here, on the pulse of this new day, / You may have the grace to look up and out / And into your sister's eyes, and into / Your brother's face, your country /And say simply / Very simply / With hope-Good morning."

During the early 1990s, Angelou wrote several books for children, including Life Doesn't Frighten Me (1993), which also featured the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat; My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me (1994), and Kofi and His Magic (1996), both collaborations with the photographer Margaret Courtney-Clark. Angelou's poetry collections include The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1994) and Phenomenal Woman (1995), a collection of four poems that takes its title from a poem which originally appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1978. The poem's narrator describes the physical and spiritual characteristics and qualities that make her attractive. Angelou also wrote occasional poems, including A Brave Startling Truth (1995), which commemorated the founding of the United Nations, and Amazing Peace (2005), a poem written for the White House Christmas tree-lighting ceremony.

Angelou published multiple collections of essays. Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993) contains declarations, complaints, memories, opinions, and advice on subjects ranging from faith to jealousy. Genevieve Stuttaford, writing in Publishers Weekly, described the essays as "quietly inspirational pieces." Anne Whitehouse of the New York Times Book Review observed that the book would "appeal to readers in search of clear messages with easily digested meanings." Even the Stars Look Lonesome (1997) is the sister volume, a book of "candid and lovingly crafted homilies" to "sensuality, beauty, and black women" said Donna Seaman in Booklist. Letter to my Daughter was published in 2008.

Angelou's poetry often benefited from her performance of it, and during her lifetime Angelou recited her poems before spellbound crowds. Indeed, Angelou's poetry can also be traced to African-American oral traditions like slave and work songs, especially in her use of personal narrative and emphasis on individual responses to hardship, oppression and loss. In addition to examining individual experience, Angelou's poems often respond to matters like race and sex on a larger social and psychological scale. Describing her work to George Plimpton, Angelou said, "Once I got into it I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass-the slave narrative-speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I meaning 'we.' And what a responsibility. Trying to work with that form, the autobiographical mode, to change it, to make it bigger, richer, finer, and more inclusive in the twentieth century has been a great challenge for me."

In 2013 she was the recipient of the Literarian Award, an honorary National Book Award for contributions to the literary community. She died in 2014 at the age of 86.

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An acclaimed American poet, storyteller, activist, and autobiographer, Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri. Angelou had a broad career as a singer, dancer, actress, composer, and Hollywood's first female black director, but became most famous as a writer, editor,...

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