Maya Angelou

Information about Angelou's abundant life has been recorded in numerous interviews, journals, yearbooks, prefaces, and appendices. Often there are errors or inconsistencies among these sources- the date of her first marriage; the names of awards received; the titles of plays directed; and other details. These inconsistencies arise possibly because Maya Angelou, in her interviews, speaks eloquently but informally about her past, with no time chart in front of her, and possibly because her interviewers are so taken by her presence that they lose sight of the smaller details. The bulk of the facts presented in this chapter derive from the sources listed in the bibliography, under the category Biographical Sources. The remaining material is taken either from Angelou's published writings or from my interview with her in June 1997.

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis , Missouri , on April 4, 1928. Throughout the series Angelou refers to herself by a number of names. Her mother liked to call her Ritie or Baby. Her thoughtless employer, Mrs. Cullinan, called her Mary. But it was her brother Bailey who gave her the name that lasted, Maya, for "My" and "my sister".

As for her stage name, she kept Rita Johnson until her marriage to Tosh Angelos in 1952. Sometime after the three-year marriage ended in divorce she opted for a more theatrical name at the strong suggestion of her managers at the San Francisco night club, the Purple Onion. Her new name captured the feel of her Calypso performances. That name, Maya Angelou, will be used consistently in this book to preserve continuity.

Maya Angelou's mother, Vivian Baxter, was a nurse and card dealer; her father, Bailey Johnson Sr., was a doorman and also a dietician or meal adviser for the navy. They had a difficult marriage that ended in divorce and in their subsequent inability to deal with their young children. When Maya was three and her brother Bailey four, their father deposited the children on a train from Long Beach , California , to Stamps, Arkansas , home of Bailey Sr.'s mother, Annie Henderson, owner and operator of a general store.

In Caged Bird ( 1970), Angelou reconstructs her childhood as a young black girl living with her protective but stem grandmother, Annie Henderson; her Uncle Willie; and her brother Bailey Johnson. This first volume vividly recalls life in Stamps, Arkansas , with its Christian traditions and its segregated society.

When Maya Angelou was eight, her father took her and Bailey from Stamps to St. Louis to visit their mother, Vivian Baxter. It was there, in 1936, in a poorly supervised household, that Maya was seduced and raped by her mother's boyfriend, Mr. Freeman. After a brief trial Freeman was beaten to death, presumably by Maya's three uncles. Horrified that her words had caused anyone's death, Maya Angelou withdrew into a silence that the Baxters were incapable of handling. She and Bailey were returned to Annie Henderson and the community of Stamps, where for five years Maya remained mute. She was finally released from the burden of speechlessness in 1940, through her study of literature and guidance by a woman from Stamps named Mrs. Flowers.

After graduating from the eighth grade, Maya Angelou, along with her brother Bailey, moved back to California , where she gave an early sign of her enormous potential to succeed by becoming the first black streetcar conductor in San Francisco . She knew even then, from her experiences in Stamps and St. Louis , that she was black and female, someone with the cards stacked against her. "If you're black you're black. Whatever you do comes out of that. It's like being a woman. No matter what age or even sexual preference, if you're a woman you're a woman" ( "Icon" 1997).