In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, making her the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F Kennedy in 1961.
34 Facts About Maya Angelou
2.
In 2014, Maya Angelou received a lifetime achievement award from the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials as part of a session billed "Women Who Move the Nation".
3.
In 1951, Maya Angelou married Tosh Angelos, a Greek electrician, former sailor, and aspiring musician, despite the condemnation of interracial relationships at the time and the disapproval of her mother.
4.
In 1957, riding on the popularity of calypso, Maya Angelou recorded her first album, Miss Calypso, which was reissued as a CD in 1996.
5.
Maya Angelou appeared in an off-Broadway review that inspired the 1957 film Calypso Heat Wave, in which Angelou sang and performed her own compositions.
6.
Maya Angelou met novelist John Oliver Killens in 1959 and, at his urging, moved to New York to concentrate on her writing career.
7.
Maya Angelou had joined the crowd cheering for Fidel Castro when he first entered the Hotel Theresa in Harlem New York during United Nations 15th General Assembly on September 19,1960.
8.
In 1961, Maya Angelou performed in Jean Genet's play The Blacks, along with Abbey Lincoln, Roscoe Lee Brown, James Earl Jones, Louis Gossett, Godfrey Cambridge, and Cicely Tyson.
9.
Maya Angelou remained in Accra for his recovery and ended up staying there until 1965.
10.
Maya Angelou returned to the US in 1965 to help him build a new civil rights organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity; he was assassinated shortly afterward.
11.
Maya Angelou acted in and wrote plays, and returned to New York in 1967.
12.
Maya Angelou met her lifelong friend Rosa Guy and renewed her friendship with James Baldwin, whom she had met in Paris in the 1950s and called "my brother", during this time.
13.
Maya Angelou married Paul du Feu, a Welsh carpenter and ex-husband of writer Germaine Greer, in San Francisco in 1973.
14.
Maya Angelou was "a reluctant actor", and was nominated for a Tony Award in 1973 for her role in Look Away.
15.
In 1977, Maya Angelou appeared in a supporting role in the television mini-series Roots.
16.
Maya Angelou returned to the southern United States in 1981 because she felt she had to come to terms with her past there and, despite having no bachelor's degree, accepted the lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she was one of a few full-time African-American professors.
17.
Maya Angelou's final speaking engagement at the university was in late 2013.
18.
In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton, becoming the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.
19.
Maya Angelou achieved her goal of directing a feature film in 1996, Down in the Delta, which featured actors such as Alfre Woodard and Wesley Snipes.
20.
Maya Angelou campaigned for the Democratic Party in the 2008 presidential primaries, giving her public support to Hillary Clinton.
21.
In late 2010, Maya Angelou donated her personal papers and career memorabilia to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.
22.
In 2011, Maya Angelou served as a consultant for the Martin Luther King, Jr.
23.
Maya Angelou owned two homes in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and a "lordly brownstone" in Harlem, which was purchased in 2004 and was full of her "growing library" of books she collected throughout her life, artwork collected over the span of many decades, and well-stocked kitchens.
24.
Maya Angelou followed up in 2010 with her second cookbook, Great Food, All Day Long: Cook Splendidly, Eat Smart, which focused on weight loss and portion control.
25.
Maya Angelou went through this process to "enchant" herself, and as she said in a 1989 interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation, "relive the agony, the anguish, the Sturm und Drang".
26.
Maya Angelou died on the morning of May 28,2014, at the age of 86.
27.
On May 29,2014, Mount Zion Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, of which Maya Angelou was a member for 30 years, held a public memorial service to honor her.
28.
Maya Angelou was a prolific writer of poetry; her volume Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and she was chosen by US president Bill Clinton to recite her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" during his inauguration in 1993.
29.
Maya Angelou's successful acting career included roles in numerous plays, films, and television programs, including her appearance in the television mini-series Roots in 1977.
30.
When I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was published in 1969, Maya Angelou was hailed as a new kind of memoirist, one of the first African-American women who were able to publicly discuss their personal lives.
31.
Maya Angelou's honors included a Pulitzer Prize nomination for her book of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie, a Tony Award nomination for her role in the 1973 play Look Away, and three Grammys for her spoken word albums.
32.
Maya Angelou served on two presidential committees, and was awarded the Spingarn Medal in 1994, the National Medal of Arts in 2000, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.
33.
In 2021, the United States Mint announced that Maya Angelou would be among the first women depicted on the reverse of the quarter as a part of the American Women quarters series.
34.
When Maya Angelou wrote Caged Bird at the end of the 1960s, one of the necessary and accepted features of literature at the time was "organic unity", and one of her goals was to create a book that satisfied that criterion.