Each week we will honor a woman that has truly made a difference by her contributions, courage, love, and selflessness. Women honored will be chosen from inside AdlandPro, outside AdlandPro, living in the present, and yes, we will not forget those heroines that paved the way for the freedoms we now enjoy. We will honor women who have shown tremendous courage and fortitude against all odds.
Assisting us in coordinating these awards are four outstanding ladies who are Women of Courage in their own right.
Presenting:
Carla Cash
http://community.adlandpro.com/go/245569/default.aspx
Veronica Davidson
http://community.adlandpro.com/go/vdavidson1972/default.aspx
Joyce Hyde
http://community.adlandpro.com/go/031849/default.aspx
Pauline Raina http://community.adlandpro.com/go/301079/default.aspx
Aparna Ganguli http://community.adlandpro.com/go/blukiwi/default.aspx
Geketa Holman http://community.adlandpro.com/go/313726/default.aspx
Our Sweethearts of Courage
Shirley Caron http://community.adlandpro.com/go/scaronpoet2005/default.aspx
Michael Caron http://community.adlandpro.com/go/192260/default.aspx
And Adlands very own man of Courage
John Partington http://community.adlandpro.com/go/114695/default.aspx
We are proud to introduce our new Team Member:
Terry Gorley
http://community.adlandpro.com/go/169711/default.aspx
WE PRESENT TO YOU OUR THIRTY SECOND
WOMAN OF COURAGE
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Ann Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. In 1931, when she was three years old, her parents divorced and she and her 4-year old brother, Bailey, were sent alone, by train, to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. While living with her grandmother, Maya participated in a wide variety of dance classes including tap, jazz, foxtrot, and salsa. After four years in Stamps, the children returned to their mother's care. At age eight, Maya confessed that her mother's boyfriend, Mr. Freemen, had sexually abused her, and Maya's uncles beat the man to death. Horrified by the outcome, she became mute, believing, as she has stated, that "the power of her words led to someone's death." She remained nearly mute for another five years, at which point her mother sent the children to live with their grandmother once again. Maya credits a close friend in Stamps, Mrs. Flowers, for helping her "refind her voice". She began to speak again at age 13. During one of her first bouts of activism, Maya persisted at age 15 in becoming the first black person hired on the San Francisco streetcars.
In 1940, while spending the summer with her father in the Los Angeles area, Maya was assaulted by her father's live-in girlfriend, which led to her running away from home and spending a month as a resident of a junk yard that housed other homeless children. She finally called her mother and was sent a ticket back home to San Francisco, but her month of homelessness had a profound effect on her way of looking at the world. As she says in p. 254 of Caged Bird, "After a month my thinking processes had so changed that I was hardly recognizable to myself. The unquestioning acceptance of my peers had dislodged the familiar insecurity...After hunting down unbroken bottles and selling them with a white girl from Missouri, a Mexican girl from Los Angeles and a Black girl from Oklahoma, I was never again to sense myself so solidly outside the pale of the human race. The lack of criticism evidenced by our ad hoc community influenced me, and set a tone of tolerance in my life."
Maya became pregnant at the age of 16 and gave birth to her son, Guy Raphael Johnson, who also became a poet later in life. To support herself, she sang, with an affected Caribbean accent, at Enrico Banducci's famed Purple Onion San Francisco nightclub. During this phase of her career she released a record album on the Liberty Record label entitled 'Miss Calypso.' It has since become a highly sought-after collectible among fans of record albums by celebrities.
Maya wrote the screenplay and score for the film Georgia in 1971; the screenplay was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She was nominated for a Tony Award in 1973 for Look Away (her debut role), and an Emmy for her role in the 1977 miniseries Roots. In 1976 she directed an episode of the award-winning television anthology series, "Visions." She was the first African-American woman admitted to the Directors Guild of America. In 1998 she directed the feature film, Down in the Delta, starring Alfre Woodard. She was also on the popular children's television show, Sesame Street. She also appeared in Tyler Perry's "Madea's Family Reunion" (2006).
Maya Angelou has been honored by numerous academic institutions throughout her career. She has been awarded a fellowship by Yale University, and also served as a Rockefeller Foundation Scholar in Italy. Maya has taught at the University of Ghana, Radford University, University of Kansas, and at Wake Forest University, where she holds a lifetime chair as the Z. Smith Reynolds Professor of American Studies. For several years she has delivered an opening address to the incoming freshman class of Duke University. Although Maya has, in her later career, received several honorary doctorates, she never received a college education.
Outside of academia, Maya has achieved recognition for her poetry from bodies honoring achievement in music and theater. In 1993, she won the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for On the Pulse of Morning. In 2005, Maya was honored by Oprah Winfrey at her "Legends Ball" along with 25 other African-American women whom Oprah considered inspirational.