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When a baby is born, most parents have all the hopes in the world that their baby will have a childhood of only positive experiences.
For the artist we’ve come to know as Maya Angelou, it was not to be. And yet, there were those who would help her build a life that would touch millions of others.
Marguerite Annie Johnson was born on April 4, 1928, to Vivian Baxter, the daughter of a former slave. Adults in the family called her Rita or Ritie. But her brother, Bailey, called her “mya sister.” The name Maya stuck. Maya and Bailey lived in St. Louis, Missouri, for three years, until their parents divorced. At that time, their father, Bailey Johnson Sr., sent the children to live with his mother, Annie Henderson, in Stamps, Arkansas, a small, segregated town.
▲ When Maya was seven, she and her brother returned to St. Louis to live with their mother. There, Maya was abused by her mother’s boyfriend. She told Bailey about it, who told others in the family. The family took its revenge by taking the man’s life. After his death, Maya stopped talking. For five years, she remained mute. Maya spent much of that time reading. She read the works of Black authors like Langston Hughes and W.E.B. Du Bois. She also read works by William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allen Poe. Years later, in her autobiography, she explains her silence:
I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, because I told his name. And then I thought I would never speak again, because my voice would kill anyone.
◀ After a few months of Maya’s silence, she and her brother were sent back to Stamps to live with their grandmother again. There, Maya met Bertha Flowers (left), an especially sophisticated member of the community. Flowers took an interest in Maya and became her mentor, or guide. Though their time together was brief, it was a lifeline for Maya. Flowers is said to be the person who urged Maya to speak again. She gave her books to read aloud and encouraged her to read the sentences to “sound in as many different ways as possible.” This opened Maya’s eyes – and ears – to language as poetry. Flowers also gave Maya “lessons in living.” This is one of them:
She said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors.
When Maya was 14, she and her brother went to live with their mother again, this time in Oakland, California, and then San Francisco. In San Francisco, Maya attended the California Labor School for dance and drama on a scholarship. While still in high school, at age 16, she worked as a streetcar conductor in the city. Starting her life of firsts, Maya was the first female African American conductor in San Francisco. After graduating high school, she gave birth to a son, Clyde. (Clyde later changed his name to Guy.) ▶
◀ Life was anything but easy for Maya Angelou. As a young mother, she struggled to support herself and her son. Recalling her life at that time, Angelou said, “The birth of my son caused me to develop enough courage to invent my life.” She seized one opportunity after another. She was a short-order cook in a hamburger hangout. Then a dinner cook in a Creole restaurant. She even took a job in a mechanic’s shop taking paint off cars.
In 1951, Maya married Greek American Tosh Angelos. The marriage lasted about three years, but Maya Johnson retained a variation of her former husband’s surname. And Maya Angelou was born. Now, with a name that had a calypso ring to it, Angelou reinvented herself as a calypso singer and took jobs singing and dancing professionally in nightclubs. As in many of her earlier jobs, Angelou took her chances and made it work. ▶
