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Marguerite Ann Johnson was born April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. She was three when her parents divorced and she spent much of her childhood under the care of her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas.Stamps was a southern city reeking of discrimination, and Johnson experienced much of it at a young age. Fortunately, she was also absorbed in deep religious faith and credits her grandmother for instilling values that shaped her later life and career. Marguerite lived with her brother, Bailey who had a lisp and called her “My” (for “My sister”) which eventually developed into the name “Maya”. Marguerite had an interest in writing from a young age. and found herself memorizing poetry by Shakespeare and Poe. Unforuntale, at merely eight years old, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. Maya revealed what happened to her family, and after his release from jail, her uncles beat him to death. Traumatized at the power of her words and plagued with guilt for his murder, Maya went selectively mute for the next five years.

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At 13, Maya began to speak again, and she and her brother reunited with their mother in San Francisco. Maya earned a scholarship to pursue dance and drama at San Fracnisco’s Labor School, where she found inspiration for her later political activism. Before the start of World War II, Maya took dance/drama courses at the California Labor School. When World War II broke out, Maya applied to join the Women’s Army Corps but was rejected, as the California Labor school was accused of having communist ties. However, she later dropped out of school to become San Francisco’s first female African American cable car conductor. Shortly after returning to high school, she became pregnant and gave birth to her son, Clyde Bailey. At 16, she left home and supported herself and her son as a waitress and cook.

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Maya married US Navy electrician, Tosh Angelos, whom she adopted her last name from, however their marriage did not last long and ended in divorce in 1952. In 1961, she fell in love with civil rights activist Vusumzi Make, and moved to Egypt and edited for the Arab Observer. Shortly after leaving him, she headed to Ghana where her son was injured in a car accident. They stayed there in Ghana for a couple years while Maya took care of him. While there she worked for the African Review and worked as an instructor at the University of Ghana’s School of Music and Drama. While abroad, she also mastered French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and the West African language, Fanti.

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In 1959, Maya joined the Harlem Writers Guild, made to support the publication of Black authors. She was also involved in the Civil Rights Movement and acted as the northern coordinator of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She acted in Jean Genet’s The Blacks and performed A Cabaret for Freedom with actor Godfrey Cambridge. In 1969, Angelous published I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, a tale of her strength among childhood trauma and realism, which was nominated for the National Book Award. Her book has been translated into copious languages and has sold over a million copies worldwide. In 1972, she was the first African American woman to have her screenplay turned into a film, with the production of Georgia, Georgia, which was later nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

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She also recorded spoken albums of her poetry, including, “On the Pulse of the Morning,” for which she won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album. The poem was written for and delivered at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1992 and he awarded Maya with the National Medal of Arts. In 1994 she was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) She won three Grammys for her spoken word poems in 1993, 1995, and 2002. And in 2011, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor.

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Angelous died May 28, 2015 and was given service memorials in Waker Forest University, and Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco. To honor her, the US Postal Service issued a stamp in her likeness in 2015. In 2021 the United States Mint announced an image of Maya Angelous would appear on the reverse side of the quarter, replacing the eagle.