A literary voice revered globally for her poetic command and her commitment to civil rights has fallen silent, reports CNN.
Maya Angelou died at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on Wednesday, said her literary agent, Helen Brann. Angelou had been “frail” and suffering from heart problems, the agent said.
Angelou’s legacy is twofold. She leaves behind a body of important artistic work that influenced several generations. But the 86-year-old was praised by those who knew her as a good person, a woman who pushed for justice and education and equality.
In her full life, she wrote staggeringly beautiful poetry. She also wrote a cookbook and was nominated for a Tony. She delivered a poem at a presidential inauguration. In 2010, President Barack Obama named her a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor.
She was friends with Malcolm X and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and inspired young adults and world celebrities.
She sang calypso. She lived through horrors.
Her lasting contribution to literature, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” bore witness to the brutality of a Jim Crow South, portraying racism in stark language. Readers learned of the life of Marguerite Ann Johnson (Angelou’s birth name) up to the age of 16: how she was abandoned by her parents and raped by her mother’s boyfriend. She was homeless and became a teen mother.
Its publication was both daring and historic, given the era of its debut in 1969.
“All of the writers of my generation must honor the ground broken by Dr. Maya Angelou,” author Tayari Jones posted on her Facebook page Wednesday.
HRC President Chad Griffin released the following statement in response to the news:
“I’ll never forget the first time I heard ‘On the Pulse of Morning’ in 1993. I was only 19 years old and still very much in the closet, but Maya Angelou’s greatest gift was the ability to reach each and every person with her wisdom, the beauty of her language, and her simple insistence upon a better and more just world.”
“Angelou has said that there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you. LGBT people know this truth well—and it is part of why so many in our community have looked to her as a hero for so long. For those of us whom Angelou inspired to tell our own stories and live our own truths, we will always miss her indispensible voice.”
Maya Angelou was a longtime friend to the LGBT community and to the Human Rights Campaign in particular. As far back as 2000, Angelou spoke at an HRC dinner in Atlanta, GA. Her books, poems, speeches and essays have long been—and doubtless will continue to be—a source of inspiration for LGBT people and for all people who seek a more open, more hopeful and more just world.
