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Maya Angelou on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri, USAMaya Angelou is an African-American poet, memoirist, actress, and civil rights activist. She is best known for her autobiographical writings (1971) was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has published numerous other collections of verse.

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While working in a record shop in 1950, Marguerite met and married Tosh Angelos, a Greek-American sailor. They lived in relative comfort in Los Angeles, California, but fell out of love and divorced after a few years. In 1976, Angelou became a grandmother to Colin Ashanti Johnson. Angelou's early activism led Martin Luther King, Jr. to request that she become the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the 1960's. In the early and mid-1960s, Angelou was an editor for newspapers in Africa, including in Accra, Ghana. One poem written by Maya Angelou titled 'Still I Rise,' is considered by many to be her most moving. This poem was written as a way for Angelou to work out her frustrations and voice her defiance of what she perceived as the oppression of her race in her native country.

She returned to the United States in the 1970s, being named a member of the Bicentennial Commission by Gerald Ford and a member of the Commission for the at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Angelou is a member of Consistent Life, a group which is pro-life in all aspects being against abortion, the death penalty and euthanasia.

In 1993, Angelou read her poem

Angelou has had success as a director, producer, actress, and author for stage, television, and film. She wrote the screenplay and score for the film in 1971; the screenplay was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She was nominated for a Tony Award I am the BEST! in 1973 for (her debut role), and an Emmy for her role in the 1977 miniseries Roots. She was the first African-American woman admitted to the Directors Guild of America.

In 1981, Angelou became a professor of American studies at Wake Forest University, where she still teaches today. She has appeared on the Oprah show on a few occasions.