HOME

READ THE
SERMONS
 

► February 2012 CALENDAR

(updated regularly)

NEWSLETTER
BACK ISSUES


WHAT WE BELIEVE
 

WHAT WE DO
 

OUR MINISTER
 

Maya Angelou …

Author, poet, civil rights activist, playwright, performer, actress, and composer. ¹

Presented by Frankie Jennings, July 8, 2007 at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation

When we say the name Maya Angelou - what tends to come to mind for many of us is her great auto-biography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sing. Published in 1970, it chronicles her life up to age of 16 and ends with the birth of her son. (She was born on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri).  

It tells of how she and her older brother were abandoned by their parents at an early age and sent to live with their father’s mother in Stamps, Arkansas.

The book details the racism, sexism and the isolation and loneliness she faced growing up.

And who would forget her vivid account of how during a visit to her mother in St. Louis, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. When he was murdered by her uncles for his crime, Maya felt responsible, and stopped talking.

She and her brother were sent back to Stamps, Arkansas, where she remained speechless for five years.

We read of how in her mute state, she developed a love for language and the spoken word; of how she read and memorized books, including the works of black authors and poets, Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Paul Lawrence Dunbar.

It is not surprising she took the title for I know Why the Caged Bird Sings from Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s poem of the same name. Allow me to say a few lines:

    I know why the caged bird sings,

    When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,

    When he beats his bars and would be free;

    It is not a carol of joy or glee,

    But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,

    But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings ….

Even though she and her brother were discouraged from reading the works of white writers at home, she read and fell in love with the works of William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe.

Then, at the age of 12, something wonderful happened to Maya - an educated black woman by the name of Mrs. Flowers, finally got her to speak again!

By the time she was in her early twenties, Maya Angelou had been a Creole cook, a streetcar conductor, a cocktail waitress, a dancer, a madam, and a mother.

The following decades saw her emerge as a successful singer, actress, playwright, lecturer, civil rights activist, editor for an English-language magazine in Egypt, and a popular author of five collections of poetry and five autobiographies.

In 1993 she gave a moving reading of her poem On The Pulse of Morning, at Bill Clinton's presidential inauguration.

The poem calls for peace, racial and religious harmony, and social justice for people of different origins, incomes, genders, and sexual orientations.

It recalls the civil rights movement and Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous I Have A Dream speech as it urges America to Give birth again and To the Dream of Equality.

Maya challenged the Clinton administration and all Americans to work together for progress: In On the Pulse of Morning, she says:

Here, on the pulse of this new day

You may have the grace to look up and out

And into your sister's eyes, and into

Your brother's face, your country

And say simply; very simply with hope

Good morning.

In an interview for the New York Times, she said, "In all my work, what I try to say is that as human beings we are more alike than we are unalike. It may be that Mr. Clinton asked me to write the inaugural poem because he understood that I am the kind of person who really does bring people together."

Maya is recognized as not only a spokesperson for blacks and women, but also for all people who are committed to raising moral standards of living throughout the world.

Today, Maya Angelou is hailed as one of the great voices of contemporary black literature and as a remarkable Renaissance woman. The works, awards and accomplishments of this extra-ordinary woman are too many to for me to list.

So, without further ado, let’s listen to two of Maya’s well-known poems: On The Pulse of Morning and A Brave and Startling Truth.

(Taped versions by Maya Angelou were played.)

Click here for the texts of the poems.

______________________

1 Presented by Frankie Jennings at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation on July 8, 2007