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Celebrated writer, artiste, civil rights icon Maya Angelou dies at age 86
She continued to break down barriers with her writing, penning the screenplay and the score for the 1972 film “Georgia, Georgia.” She was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize that same year for her poetry collection “Just Give Me a Drink of Cool Water’ fore I Diiie.”
Angelou was often on the front lines of history and pop culture. She was mentored by Baldwin, and mentored Oprah Winfrey. She worked for both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., and befriended Nelson Mandela.
She earned an Emmy nomination for her work in “Roots,” and studied modern dance with Martha Graham.
The 1968 assassination of King occurred on her April 4 birthday, and she stopped celebrating the event for years afterward. Angelou would instead send flowers to King’s widow, Coretta. Mrs. King, until her death in 2006, would in turn send flowers to Angelou.
Born Marguerite Annie Johnson, the future writer grew up amid poverty and racism after a divorce relocated the child to small town Stamps, Arkansas, where she lived with her brother and grand mother.
Despite the hard times, Angelou long maintained that living in the Deep South also imbued her with the faith and values of the African American family and culture.
She began writing her earliest poems at age 9, and graduated at the top of her eighth-grade class. Angelou wrote about the women who convinced her to speak again in the 1986 children’s book “Mrs. Flowers: A Moment of Friendship.”
