Tosh Angelos was a Greek sailor Angelou met while working at a record shop in San Francisco.Īngelos was an atheist and Maya Angelou was very spiritual, so their marriage did not last long. Don’t anybody raise you from the way you have been raised…and remember this: You can always come home.” Angelou’s Early Career and Early Adulthoodĭespite her mother’s objections and despite the general condemnation of interracial relationships at the time, Maya Angelou married a white man in 1951.

With what you have learned from your grandmother in Arkansas and what you’ve learned from me, you know the difference between right and wrong. Before she left home, her mother said to her, “Remember this: when you cross my doorstep, you have already been raised.

When Guy was only 2 months old, Angelou moved out on her own. Angelou called the birth of her son Guy the “greatest blessing of her life.” When Maya Angelou told her mother that she was pregnant, Vivian welcomed the baby boy into their lives, offering advice and guidance, but never judgment. Something else monumental happened to Angelou at the age of 16: she became pregnant. They had caps with bibs on them and form-fitting jackets. In an interview with Oprah in 2013, Angelou recalled “I saw women on the street cars with their little changer belts. When Angelou was 14 and Bailey was 15, they moved to Oakland, California, to live with their mother again.Īt the age of 16, Maya Angelou became the first Black woman to conduct a cable car in San Francisco. You’ll never like it until you speak it.” So finally, Angelou says she took the books of poetry, and “I went under the house…and I tried poetry.” Through reading poetry, Angelou was able to find the courage to speak again. Flowers refused to read any more poetry to her, claiming, “Maya, you don’t like poetry. After several years of this, Angelou says Mrs. Flowers would make cookies and lemonade for Angelou and invite her over to read poetry. There, Angelou became close with a friend of the family named Mrs. When Angelou was 8 and her brother 9, they were sent back to live in Stamps with their grandmother. During this time, she also developed a great love for books and literature, and the ability to memorize most of what she read and observed. Angelou described envisioning her body as one big ear that could take in the world around her. “so I stopped speaking for five years.”Īccording to Marcia Ann Gillespie and her colleagues, who wrote the biography Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration, it was during these years of silence that Angelou was able to develop a keen ability to listen to others and observe the world around her. “My 7-year-old logic told me my voice had killed the man,” she explained. Four days after his release, he was murdered.įollowing the incident with Freeman, Angelou became mute for several years. After his day in prison, Freeman was released. Freeman was found guilty of sexually assaulting Angelou, but he remained in prison for the crime for only one day. Freeman warned Angelou not to tell anyone about the assault, but she told her brother, and Bailey told the rest of the family.

Family quotes by maya angelou