In pictures: Maya Angelou
- Published
Maya Angelou, who has died at the age of 86, rose from a background of poverty, racism and violence to become one of America's most celebrated poets, authors and civil rights activists.
She was born Marguerite Johnson in St Louis, Missouri, on 4 April 1928. She was writing poetry by the age of nine, had become San Francisco's first female cable car conductor by 15 and a single mother at 16. She went on to work as a dancer, waitress, prostitute, pimp and journalist.
The first volume of her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, published in 1970, told of her coming of age in an era defined by racial segregation in America's Deep South. She wrote frankly of being raped at the age of seven, and how she refused to speak for several years afterwards.
As a civil rights activist, Angelou worked with Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X. She is pictured here with Martin Luther King Jr 's widow, Coretta Scott King, after visiting Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, shortly before she died in 1997.
Angelou became one of America's foremost orators and an adviser to several presidents. President Barack Obama awarded her the Medal of Freedom in 2010.
As well as poetry, she wrote cookbooks, children's books, a feature film screenplay, and even a 10-part TV series. Here she talks with Johnnetta Cole, director of the National Museum of African Art, at the unveiling of a portrait in April 2014.
Angelou visited Scotland in 1996 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the death of the poet Robert Burns. She said: "He was the first white man I read who seemed to understand that a human being was a human being, and that we are more alike than unalike."
The 86-year-old had been a professor of American studies at Wake Forest University since 1982.
- Published28 May 2014
- Published28 May 2014
- Published10 December 2013
