From Silence to Song: The Life and Legacy of Maya Angelou

In this episode, we explore the extraordinary journey of Maya Angelou, an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist who transformed her personal pain into a global legacy. Born Marguerite Annie Johnson in 1928, Angelou overcame a traumatic childhood in St. Louis and Arkansas, including a sexual assault at age eight that led her to become mute for nearly five years,. We trace her path from those early years of silence to her diverse career as San Francisco’s first Black female streetcar conductor, a Calypso dancer and singer, and a coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,,.

Join us as we discuss her time living in Egypt and Ghana, where she worked as a journalist and university administrator, and her close associations with civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X,. We delve into her literary breakthrough with the 1969 publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the first of her seven autobiographies that challenged the genre by blending truth with fiction-writing techniques,,.

Finally, we examine her later years as a celebrated public figure, from her tenure as a professor at Wake Forest University to her historic recitation of "On the Pulse of Morning" at Bill Clinton’s 1993 inauguration. Tune in to learn how a woman who once believed her voice could kill went on to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom and become the first Black woman depicted on the U.S. quarter,.