Sei sulla pagina 1di 2

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelous experiences living in the 1930s shaped the person that she became.
1.) While growing up in the 1930s and 1940s in Stamps, Arkansas with her paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson, and
her older brother, Bailey, Angelou was a victim of racial discrimination and brutality. Because of the first hand
experiences with racism growing up, she later lived through, led, and participated in the Civil Rights Movement. She
documented the history of African-American landscape through her biographies, her journalism, her poetry, her books
(childrens books, cook books, and essays).
2.) After meeting Malcolm X in Ghana, she returned to America to help him build a new Organization of African-American
Unity. After Malcolm Xs assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked Angelou to serve as the Nothern Coordinator
for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). After Kings assassination on Angelous birthday in 1968,
Angelou stopped celebrating her birthday because she was so devastated by the loss of her friend, and instead, she
would send flowers to his widowed wife, Coretta Scott King, until she died in 2006.
3.) Maya Angelou was a pioneer. She was the first African American female cable care conductor, the second poet in
history, the first female poet, the first African-American to deliver a poem at a U.S.A. presidential inauguration, the first
African-American woman to have her screenplay produced, and the first African-American woman to direct a film for
Down in the Delta in 1998.
To Kill a Mockingbird Relations

After Scout hears that Atticus is defending an African-American and that its a bad thing, she asks Atticus if its true
and why he is doing it. He responds, The main one is, if I didnt I couldnt hold up my head in town. I couldnt
represent this county in the legislature. I couldnt even tell you or Jem not to do something again (Lee 100). Atticus
takes action for what he believes is right even though it is hard, and he receives a lot of negative feedback for it, like
Dr. Angelou.
When Scout is describing the Radley place, she says, A Negro would not pass the Radley place at night, he would cut
across to the sidewalk opposite and whistle as he walked (Lee 11). This does not only show how everybody was
terrified of the Radley place, it shows an African-American was especially scared, and it might be because they were
afraid of what the Radleys would do to them if the encountered them because they were African-American.

What kept Maya Angelou positive during the 1930s as she endured the effects of racism?
She was exposed to love, respect, compassion and faith in her home. (Her crippled) Uncle Willie had a firm spirit that
instilled compassion onto her. Her grandmother, Annie Henderson, would teach Christian principals while being a living
example of interdependence and courage. She started a business selling hot meals to workers, eventually building the

Johnson Grocery store that served both Caucasians and African-Americans. Her love and passion for the arts eventually led
her to a prosperous life in a world that segregation of the races is against the law.

Potrebbero piacerti anche