Maya Angelou (1928-2014) -- an extraordinary human being

Poet, memoirist, novelist, role model for a generation of black women writers, wise and eloquent advocate for freedom and dignity for all, "warrior for equality, tolerance and peace" -- and so much more -- Maya Angelou has died at the age of 86.

I heard her speak at the 2000 annual Human Rights Campaign dinner in Atlanta.   Her life journey, her hard-earned wisdom, and the way she melded the visionary and the practical, were beautiful.  I felt I had been in the presence of a great soul, more memorable even than the incomparable Bishop Desmond Tutu who had spoken the year before.

Angelou grew up in poverty in the South, was raped as a child, became a single mother as a teenager.   And yet much of the strength of her story lies in the resilience and courage that propelled her out of that potential quagmire, to become a cherished national icon who was invited to the White House to deliver the inaugural poem for one president (Clinton) and to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from another (Obama).  

In awarding that medal to Ms. Angelou, President Obama revealed that his own mother had been so impressed by her that she had named his sister, Maya, for her.

Few people have lived lives of such breadth nor have gone so far.   By the time she was 41 and the author of the 1969 landmark best seller, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou had worked as a streetcar conductor, a cook, managed a brothel, been an interpreter at the United Nations, danced with Alvin Ailey, appeared on Broadway in a two-character play with Geraldine Page, and been a Calypso singer in the movies.   

She had also been a magazine editor in Cairo, an administrative assistant in Ghana, worked in civil rights organizations in the U.S., been a friend to Martin Luther King, Jr. and to Malcolm X., and had a featured role in "Roots," the TV series about slavery.  Nominated for a Tony as a stage actress, and for a Pulitzer Prize for one of her books, she became a friend of Oprah and of Nelson Mandela.

Even more than her life, though, it was her words that made such an indelible impression.   Or perhaps it was the way she used words to evoke the emotional understanding that she had gleaned from her life.   Author of several volumes of autobiographical fiction and several collections of essays, Angelou did not have a college education;  but she has been awarded numerous honorary doctorate degrees and was a long-term, chaired professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.

Maya Angelou wrote:  "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you;"  and "A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, but because it has a song."

And it was that song, that story, that voice, that life well lived, that has graced our world and made it better.   Thank you;   and may you rest in peace, Maya.

Ralph