Curators Office Maya Angelou By: Kaylee Sources Cited

Facts about Maya Angelou Real name is Marguerite Annie Johnson born on April 4, 1928 Parents divorced when she was 3 and was sent with her brother to live with their Grandmother Was abused at the age of eight She had a close relationship with her brother but he was not able to say her name because of stutter so he called her My for my sister a few years later when he read a book about the Mayan Indians he began to call her Maya and the name stuck She went to public school in Arkansas and later California While she was still in high school she dropped out to become the first African American Lady to be a streetcar conductor in San Francisco, California Whenever she and her brother rejoined their mother in San Francisco, Maya attended Mission High School and won a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco's Labor School Later she went back to High School but became pregnant in her senior year and graduated a few weeks before giving birth to her son Guy She left home at age sixteen as a single mother, supporting her and her son by being a cook and waitress but she had not given up on her talents for music, dance, performance, and poetry

Maya Angelou’s Accomplishments In 1952 she got married to a Greek Sailor named Anastasias Angelopoulos When she started her career as a night club singer she took the professional name Maya Angelou Combining her childhood name and her husbands name She recorded her first record album Calypso Lady in During her years abroad, she read and studied and mastered French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, and the west African language Fanti. In the year of 2000 Maya got the Presidential Medal of the Arts. In 2008 she narrated the award winning film The Black Candle In 2011 President Barack Obama gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Maya Angelou Today Since 1981 Maya has served as Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston- Salem, North Carolina. She has continued to appear on TV and in films

Sources Cited These are the sites I used!

Curator’s Office My name is Kaylee I have two brothers Chase and Reid I am nine years old I like to read and play with my friends I go to Salem Elementary School My teacher is Mrs. Piercy I liked this project because I don’t know a lot about North Carolina history