Maya Angelou

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." An acclaimed American poet, storyteller and activist, Maya Angelou was born in St Louis, Missouri in 1928.

By the age of 40, Maya had held many roles of employment: cook, sex worker, dancer, actor, playwright, editor and singer. However today, she is known mostly for her writing.

At the age of 16, she became San Francisco's first African-American cable car conductor - a role she particularly wanted forthe uniform. During her 'daybreak' shifts, her mother drove behind the tram with a pistol on the front seat just to ensure she was safe while at work.

She was a respected member of the Civil Rights Movement and finding resources that would enable Martin Luther King Jr to organise historic challenges to the Jim Crow brutality.
Unable to be in Washington for 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, she instead rallied for the end of segregation and apartheid outside the American Embassy in Ghana.

On her 40th birthday she learnt of the assassination of MLK jnr, and it was this that lead her to focus on her writing - writing that would continue to be infused with the spirit of the Civil Rights movement..

"So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear.."