The Life & Times of Dr. Maya Angelou
1. She worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement and served for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and named SCLC’s northern coordinator.
2. Dr. Angelou Received the Presidential Medal of Freedom From President Obama in 2011.
3. Dr. Angelou was civil rights activist. She had met with Malcolm X in hopes of helping him build his new organization of African American Unity before he passed.
4. Her most well known autobiography of her life is I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings (1969), where she detailed her life up until her 17th year.
5. Best known for series of seven autobiographies, focused on childhood and early adulthood.
6. Angelou danced professionally for several years and also recorded her first album titled “Miss Calypso” which was reissued as a CD in 1996.
7. Angelou’s “Georgia, Georgia” was produced by a Swedish film company was the first to be screenplay written by an African American woman, which was released in 1972.
8. Dr. Maya Angelou served on two presidential committees.
9. Dr. Angelou first African American woman to direct a major motion picture “Down in the Delta” in 1998.
10. Dr. Angelou has been awarded over 30 honorary degrees.
11. In 1993, Maya Angelou recited poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration of President Clinton. This was the first poet to make inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at J.F. Kennedy’s in 1961
12. Her screenplay “Georgia, Georgia” was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize
13. Received a Grammy for best spoken word “On the Morning Pulse” in 1995, one of three received in her life.
14. Traveled Africa and moved to Ghana where she thrived in a group of African American expatriates
The Life & Times of Dr. Maya Angelou was originally published on mymajicdc.com
