She met and befriended Malcolm X on his visit to Africa in the 1960s. She also contributed freelance writing to The Ghanaian Times and became involved in writing and broadcasting at Radio Ghana. When her relationship with Make ended in 1962 she moved to Ghana with her son, working as an assistant administrator of the School of Music and Drama at the University of Ghana. She and Clyde (who changed his name to Guy Johnson) moved to Cairo with him, where Angelou became an editor of the only English-language weekly newspaper in the Middle East: The Arab Observer. In 1961, Angelou met and fell in love with a South African freedom fighter named Vusumzi Make. She became Northern Coordinator of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) between 19 after she organised a fundraiser in support of Martin Luther King. She also became an active member of New York City’s literary and political scene. Following the divorce, she moved to New York where her career as an actress flourished. However, she and Angelos divorced in the late 1950s. She married Tosh Angelos, an adopted variation of his surname becoming her surname for life. Her popularity with audiences and innate charisma accelerated her career from strength to strength, until she eventually became as successful as to star in a European tour of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. In the early 1950s, Angelou’s career as a dancer and performer started to take shape. She flitted between many jobs to support herself financially: cook, barmaid, and dancer, all the while becoming more and more estranged from her son. Still not much more than a child herself, Angelou struggled to support her son. Fascinated by men as an enigma, she became increasingly fixated on the mystery of sex, until aged 16. Back in Oakland, California, she battled severe prejudice and racial discrimination to become the first black female streetcar director in San Francisco before she graduated from school. Following this incident, Maya ran away and spent the summer living in a junkyard with other homeless teens, before ultimately calling her mother and asking her to fly her home. She visited her father in southern California and Mexico for vacation but the trip ended in disaster when the already fraught relationship between herself and her father’s lover Dolores ended violently with Dolores stabbing her in the arm. Maya and Bailey were sent back to Stamps, but Maya was so horrified that her revelation had caused a death that she became a mute for the next five years until a family friend from Stamps named Mrs Flowers took an interest in her and introduced her to literature.Īt age 14, Maya moved back to California to live with her mother where she attended Washington High School. Mr Freeman threatened to kill Bailey if Maya ever revealed what had happened but the rape nonetheless soon became family knowledge. Although Maya and Bailey were initially enraptured by their beautiful, successful mother Vivian Baxter and the exciting city life in St Louis, the trip ultimately ended in tragedy when Maya was raped by her mother’s boyfriend Mr Freeman. Maya and Bailey grew up at Annie's store for the next five years until their father appeared to take them back to St Louis to visit their mother when Maya was eight and Bailey nine. Following the break-up of her parents’ marriage, Maya (aged three) and her brother (aged four) were sent to Stamps, Arkansas to live with their paternal grandmother Annie Henderson. Her given name was Marguerite Annie Johnson she later took the name ‘Maya’ inspired by the way that her elder brother Bailey used to call her ‘my sister’. Maya Angelou was born in St Louis, Missouri on the 4th April 1928.
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