Maya Angelou Quote of The Week From Greg Bover

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

(1928-    )

Born Marguerite Ann Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, Angelou was raised in rural Arkansas by her grandmother. Sexually abused at age eight, she did not speak again for five years, during which time she acquired her love of poetry and writing. Although in early adulthood she worked as a pimp, prostitute, and night club dancer, she began to study modern and African dance and had a successful touring career. After a brief marriage, she moved to New York and began to write. Encouraged by friends James Baldwin and Jules Feiffer, she produced the first of seven autobiographies, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1968, which gained widespread acclaim despite its controversial treatment of sexual themes. Angelou went on to write plays, music for movie scores, and to act, appearing in the influential mini-series Roots, and won a Tony award in 1973. Her works won even greater notice after Bill Clinton asked her to read a poem at his first inauguration in 1993. Angelou was a supporter of Hilary Clinton in the 2008 primaries, but was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama in 2011.

Greg Bover