A Second Look; 105; Maya Angelou

BILL MOYERS: A SECOND LOOK June 4, 1989 Show #105 Maya Angelou

BILL MOYERS: I'm Bill Moyers. Over the years I've met so many extraordinary people in my work that I'd be hard pressed to identify just one if Readers Digest should ask me to write about my most unforgettable character. But when for the pleasure of it I make up a list in mind, al≠ ways right there at the top is Maya Angelou. Maya Angelou s life transcends her achievements, and those are many. She's written best sellers. My favorite is ìI Know Why the Caged Bird Singsî. She's a poet and an actress. You may remember her as Kunta Kinte's grandma in ìRootsî. She adapted Sophocles' Ajax to modern theater, wrote the original for the film ìGeorgia, Georgiaî, and produced a 10-part TV series on African traditions in America. I could go on. Itís a very long list. But itís not what Maya Angelou has done in her life that so engages me. Itís the story she has made of her life. Two years ago, for example, she spoke at a conference in Texas of people who had gathered to discuss how men and women can under≠ stand evil. But Mayaís witness was about surviving evil, about facing evil in a way that affirms life. Here's an excerpt of her testimony.

MAYA ANGELOU: I am obliged to tell you about an uncle of mine, Uncle Willie, in a little town, a little Arkansas town not far from this site, about as large this side of the room. My uncle raised me. I was sent to him when I was three from California, and he and my grand-mother owned the only black-owned store in the town. And, he was obliged to work in the store, but he was severely crippled. So he needed me to help, and my brother. So at about four he started us to learn to read and write and do our times tables. And he used to, in order to get me to do my times tables, he would take me behind my neck, my clothes, and stand me in front of a potbellied stove, and he would say, "Now, sister, do your sixes." I did my sixes. I did sevenses. Even now after an evening of copious libation I can be awakened at 11:00 at night and ask, ''Will you do your elevenses.'' I do my elevenses with alacrity.

A few years ago my uncle died and I went to Little Rock and was met by Miss Daisy Bates. She told me, "Girl, there's somebody who wants to meet you." I said, "I'll be glad to meet whoever it is." She said, "A good looking man." I said, "Indeed, yes, certainly." So that evening she brought a man over to the hotel. And he said, "I donít want to shake your hand; I want to hug you." And I agreed. He said, "You know, Willie has died in Stamps." Well, now, Stamps is very near to Texas, and Little Rock, when I was growing up, was as exotic as Cairo, Egypt, Buddha and Pest. I mean, I couldn't -- this man knew where Stamps was? And my crippled uncle? He said, "Because of your Uncle Willie Iím who I am today." He said, "In the '20s I was the only child of a blind mother. Your uncle gave me a job in your store, make me love to learn and taught me my times tables." I asked him, "How did he do that?" He said, "He used to grab me right-" He said, "I guess you want to know who I am today." I said, "Yes, sir." He said, ìI'm Bussy. Iím the vice mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas " went on to become the first black mayor of Little Rock, Arkansas. He said, ìNow, when you get down to Stamps, look upî - and he gave me the name of a lawyer, he said, ìHe's a good ol' boy. He will look after your property."

I went down expecting a middle-aged black man. A young white man leapt to his feet. He said, "Miss Angelou, Iím just delighted to meet you. You - why donít you understand - Mr. Bussy called me today. Mr. Bussy is the most powerful black man in the state of Arkansas. But more important than that, he's a noble man. Because of Mr. Bussy I'm who I am today." I said; "Let me sit down first." He said, "I was an only child of a blind mother, and when I was 11 years old Mr. Bussy got hold to me and made me love to learn. And I'm now in the state legislature."

That which lives after us.

I look back at Uncle Willie, crippled, black, poor, unexposed to the worlds of great ideas, who left our generation and generations to come a legacy so rich. So I wrote a song for Miss Roberta Flack. You may have heard it. It says:

Willie was a man without fame

Hardly anybody knew his name

Crippled and limpin' and always walkin' lame

He said, But I keep on movin'

I'm moving just the same.

Solitude was the climate in his head

Emptiness was the partner in his bed

Pain echoed in the steps of his tread

He said, But keep on followin'

Where the others led.

I may cry and I will die

But my spirit is the soul of every spring

Watch for me and you will see

That Iím present in the songs

That children sing.

People called him uncle, boy, and hey

Said, You can't live through this another day

And then they waited to hear what he would say

He said, But I'm living in the games

That children play

You may enter my sleep, people my dreams

Threaten my early morning's ease

But I keep comin', I'm followiní

I'm laughing, I'm crying,

Iím certain as a summer breeze

Look for me, ask for me

My spirit is the surge of open seas

Call for me, sing for me

Iím the rustle in the autumn leaves

When the sun rises I am the time

When the children play I am the rhyme

Just look for me.

We need the courage to create ourselves daily, to be bodacious enough to create our≠ selves daily, as Christians, as Jews, as Muslims, as thinking, caring, laughing, loving human beings. I think that the courage to confront evil and turn it by dint of will into something applicable to the development of our evolution, individually and collectively, is exciting, honorable.

I have written a poem for a woman who rides a bus in New York City. She's a maid. She has two shopping bags. When the bus stops abruptly she laughs. If the bus stops slowly she laughs. If the bus picks up someone she laughs. If the buss misses someone she [laughs]. So I watched her for about nine months. I thought, hmmm, uh-huh. Now, if you don't know black features you may think she's laughing. But she wasn't laughing; she was simply ex≠ tending her lips and making a sound. I said, Oh, I see. That's that survival apparatus. Now, let me write about that to honor this woman who helps us to survive by her very survival. Miss Rosie, through your destruction I stand up. So I used the poem with Mr. Paul Lawrence Dunbar's poem "Masks" and my own poem "For Old Black Men." Mr. Dunbar wrote "Masks" in 1892.

We wear the mask that grins and lies.

II shades our cheeks and hides our eyes.

This debt we pay to human guile,

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties,

Why should the world be overwise

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us while we wear the mask.

We smile, but oh my God our tears

To thee from tortured souls arise.

And we sing, [sings]

The clay is vile beneath our feet

And long the mile,

But let the world think otherwise.

We wear the mask.

When I think about myself

I almost laugh myself to death.

My life has been one great big joke,

A dance that's walked, a song what's spoke,

I laugh so hard I almost choke

When I think about myself

Seventy years in these folks' world,

The child I works for calls me girl.

I say, Yes, ma' am for working's sake;

I'm too proud to bend and too poor to break.

So I laugh until my stomach ache

When I think about myself.

My folks can make me split my side,

I laughed so hard I nearly died.

The tales they tell sound just like lyiní

They grow the fruit but eat the rind.

I laugh until I start to cry

When I think about myself

And my folks and the little children.

My fathers sit on benches,

Their flesh count every plank,

The slats leave dents of darkness

Deep in their withered flank,

And they nod like broken candles

All waxed and burnt profound.

They say, But, sugar, it was our submission

That made your world go round.

There in those pleated faces

I see the auction block,

The chains and slavery's cockles

The whip and lash and stock.

My fathers speak in voices

That shred my fact and sound.

They say, But, sugar, it was our submission

And that made your world go round,

They laughed to shield their crying,

They shuffled through their dreams,

They step and fetch to country

And wrote the blues in screams.

I understand their meaning

It could and did derive from living

On the ledge of death.

They kept my race alive

By wearing the mask.

BILL MOYERS: Well, as you can see, Maya's performance that day was spellbinding. But for more reasons than the power of her performance. The story's the thing, and the story, Maya's story, conveys a deep mythological truth about suffering and redemption, about the journey a person takes into the experience and knowledge of self, where any potential gift anyone has to share with the world lies waiting to be discovered.

For Maya this meant going back for the first time in 30 years to the little town of Stamps,

Arkansas, not far from where I grew up in east Texas. I took this trip with her some years ago for my PBS series on creative people. She didn't want to go back, too many ghosts. But then she consented, and so began the journey home and inward.

MAYA ANGELOU: In my memory Stamps is a place of light, shadow, sounds and enchanting odors. The earth's smell was pungent, spiced with the odor of cattle manure, the yellowish acid of the ponds and rivers, the deep pots of greens and beans cooking for hours with smoked or cured pork. Flowers added their heavy aroma. And above all, the atmosphere was pressed down with the smell of old fears and hates and guilt.

I am a writer and Stamps must remain for me in that nebulous, unreal reality, because I'm

a poet and I have to draw from these shadows, these densities, these phantasmagories for my poetry. I don't want it to become a place on the map, because the truth is you never can leave home. You take it with you everywhere you go. It's under your skin, it moves the tongue or slows it, colors the thinking, impedes upon the logic. So as the time came for me to actually come to Stamps, I started to dread it, I started to really fear the ghosts who I was about to bestir.

Is that all the size of the bridge! Miss Lizzy used to live there, Willie Williams' store was

there. My lord I used to come to fish on the pond there, and people were also baptized right there.

I was terribly hurt in this town, and vastly loved.

We lived with our grandmother and uncle in the rear of the store. Until I was 13 and left Arkansas for good, the store was my favorite place to be. Alone and empty in the mornings, it looked like an unopened present from a stranger. Opening the front doors was pulling the ribbon off the unexpected gift.

BILL MOYERS: If anyone has never been in an old country store, you just can't imagine what it did to the imagination. I can remember right now the feel of the seed bags in Hillary's Grocery and the smell of old TJ. Taylor's potato bags. It just made you feel so good to go into there. It was a wonderful world for a child, white or black.

MAYA ANGELOU: Well, you can't imagine it now, but it used to be filled with shelves which had all sorts of exciting, exotic things, like sardines from Portugal -Port-tu-gal. That's the way we pronounced it. We pronounced it as carefully as we pronounced the game we played, which was mono-poly.

BILL MOYERS: Mono-poly?

MAYA ANGELOU: Well, we found out when we got to California that it was really Monopoly.

BILL MOYERS: What else did you see here? What else was on the shelf? It was kind of like an enchanted land.

MAYA ANGELOU: It was an enchanted land. There were things from Kansas that had, you know, were canned in Kansas and Louisiana, and even things from New York City. And we had matches from Ohio. So there. I mean-

BILL MOYERS: That was living.

MAYA ANGELOU: That was big time.

All the whites who picked up cotton pickers would pick them up in front of our store. And about dawn the wagons would come rolling in. We'd open the store early so they could buy peanut patties, cans of sardines, hunks of cheese, and take them out to the cotton fields. And then they would bring them back at dusk, just about dark. They fall out these wagons dead tired, beat. But on Saturday, big day Saturday at the store, then the people would talk and they would be so sassy. And then if a white person would come, they'd become meek and "sho, yessir, thas righ'." And you would see this thing that happened, this mask, or these masks. And Paul Lawrence Dunbar helped me to understand that with the poem. We wear the mask that grins and lies, It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes. This debt we pay to human guile, with torn and bleeding hearts we smile, and mouth myriad subtleties. Why should the world be overwise in counting all our tears and sighs. Nay, let them only see us while we wear the mask.

When was a child this was called the pond, and I knew that-people bragged that it had the best sun perch in all of Arkansas, but I'd forgotten how beautiful it was. It's really lovely, isn't it?

BILL MOYERS: Did you think then it was beautiful?

MAYA ANGELOU: Nope, not at all. It was just a pond. And on the other side, on the black side of the pond, churches had their baptisms. That to me was beautiful, but the actual topography, I donít-didn't remember it. It's lovely.

BILL MOYERS: It is. But you say the other side of the pond. There really were two Stamps weren't there?

MAYA ANGELOU: Oh, yes. It started- the black part of Stamps started right there at that bridge.

BILL MOYERS: Where that fellow's fishing?

MAYA ANGELOU: Yes. Well, there and behind us at the railroad track. This was more or less no man's land here it seemed, because if you were black you never felt really safe when you simply crossed the railroad tracks. You still had to go all this way. It was like an international tarmac where anybody could get you. You were really in the black part of town when you crossed that little bridge and the pond. Then you were safe, then if you didn't know every≠ body, at least everybody knew who you were, you know. And as a child it was a chance to have some protection. I used to have to walk over here. Oh, gosh, I hated it I had no protection at all over there. I had an idea of protection on this side, I had my grandmother on this side, I had the church, my uncle and all my people were on this side. So I had an idea of protection. But there I would be all alone, and I loathed it crossing those railroad tracks.

Bill, I tell you, to show you how much things don't change, I'm not even going to cross it with you now. I don't really- I'm not doing this for any reason other than I really do not want to go across there. I really don't.

BILL MOYERS: I understand. So what are you thinking right now?

MAYA ANGELOU: You stay on my side. We'll both be safe.

Many years ago I was with an opera company, and the company was Porgie and Bess, and we traveled through Europe. And we arrived in Morocco. And they said, "We want you to sing-do a concert." But I was the first dancer of the company and I'd never studied opera. So I told the conductor, I said, "I'm sorry, that is not my discipline. I can't sing opera, I have no arias ready." So he was Russian, and he turned to me with great hair sticking out like that. he said, "But don't you know a spiritual?" And I just grinned and thought about Stamps, Arkansas, where from the time I was three mama took me to church on Sunday. I don't mean she took me to church and then we went home. I mean we went to church all day Sunday. Then on Monday evening we went to the missionary meeting, Tuesday evening the usher boy meeting, Wednesday evening the prayer evening, Thursday evening choir practice. We went to church all the time. And at all those meetings we sang. So I told the man, "Yes, I know a spiritual." So I stood on the stage alone and sang:

I am a poor pilgrim of sorrow. I'm lost in this wide world alone. No hope have I for tomorrow. I started to make heaven my home. My mother she's found her sweet glory, and my father's still living in sin. And my brothers and sisters won't own me because I am trying to get in. Sometimes I'm tossed and I'm driven, lord. Sometimes I don't know where to roam. 0, but I've heard of a city called heaven, and I've started to make it my home.

When I finished singing this song, the sorrow song, songs written not by a free and easy people, not by a leisure class, songs written from the heart, written with their blood, written with the whip and the lash; on the back, when I sung these songs the people couldn't stop screaming. I mean, they just shouted and stamped, 4,500 people shouting and screaming at you in another language. The people started to sing back to me ìSteal Awayî in Arabic. I didn't know what to do. Then I began to think, ah, I see; now I see. When the people were passing out the big packets of land and money, my people had none of that to give me, no names that would make people shake in the marketplace -Rockefeller, ooo, and people would start trembling. But what they gave me, look at what they gave me. My lord, look at what they gave me and opened doors for me all over the world! Look .at it. It's a great blessing. So I ask you for your prayers, I beg you for your prayers; I thank you with all my heart. And please sing with me ìSteal Awayî, choir. Will you all just please stand up. Would you all? ìSteal away, steal away, steal away home. I ain't got long to stay here.î

Louise was a lonely girl. Her face had a thin sheet of sadness over it, as light but as permanent as the viewing gauze on a coffin. She became my first friend.

LOUISE: Someone said, "Louise.do you know your name is in one of Margaret's books?'' And she say, "If you go to Magnolia you can find this book at the library."

MAYA ANGELOU: What it meant to me that you were my friend, I mean, when you come down the hill in all these long legs.

LOUISE: I was skipping- you remember when I used to pick up hickory nuts out there. Pickin' up hickory nuts, and I'd go home and eat those hickory nuts.

MAYA ANGELOU:That must be very important for children.

LOUISE: That's right

MAYA ANGELOU: That first friendship where you learn you can trust, you can tell a secret≠

LOUISE: You sure can.

MAYA ANGELOU:......and no-and that person will not tell it to a soul.

LOUISE: That's right.

MAYA ANGELOU: And we used to tell-we thought they were important secrets.

LOUISE: You should be here now.

MAYA ANGELOU: I'm here now.

LOUISE: I n living here.

MAYA ANGELOU:I have a few things to do.

LOUISE:Huh?

MAYA ANGELOU:I have a few things to do.

LOUISE: Oh, yeah?

MAYA ANGELOU:In other places.

LOUISE: Someone say you was on the Johnny Carson show.

MAYA ANGELOU: Yeah, I've done all those shows.

LOUISE:I guess I work all the time.

MAYA ANGELOU: Yeah.

LOUISE: And you should always send me a card.

MAYA ANGELOU: I will.

LOUISE: Drop me a card.

MAYA ANGELOU: I will. I will never lose touch with you. I never forgot you. Now, that's obvious.

LOUISE: know that, I know that.

MAYA ANGELOU: But, I mean-

LOUISE: But you just, you know, when you get grown, you get away from each other≠

MAYA ANGELOU:I know.

LOUISE:-and you got your life to live and everything.

MAYA ANGELOU: Yeah, and you have your children and their children.

LOUISE: Yeah, yeah.

MAYA ANGELOU:And husbands, of which I had a few. Come on, let's≠

LOUISE: Where is your husband?

MAYA ANGELOU: I have-I finally married my own husband. My mother has a theory that

most people marry other peoples' husbands.

LOUISE: How many husbands?

MAYA ANGELOU: I've had -enough. But I finally have my own. I've been married eight years.

LOUISE: Eight years? Well, good.

MAYA ANGELOU: Well, good. And you been married how many?

LOUISE:Thirty-six. So you just-

MAYA ANGELOU: I'm a woman.

LOUISE: You're a woman.

MAYA ANGELOU: I'm a woman, and I was looking for a man.

LOUISE:What is your husband's name?

MAYA ANGELOU: My husband's name is Paul Du Feu.

LOUISE: Du Feu.

MAYA ANGELOU:The man I married.

LOUISE:That sounds foreign.

Ms. ANGELOU: It does sound like that It sounds just like you too. Trying to ask a question.

LOUISE: You say it sounds like me? Do you know me?

MAYA ANGELOU: Oh, yeah. That sounds just like you. Instead of asking the question out≠right, you say, "That sounds like a foreigner." Waiting for me to fall in the trap. Well, you know me.

LOUISE:Oh, you're too smart to fall in the trap, huh?

MAYA ANGELOU: This town is all ears, that's all we've got, our ears. Whether people walk by calmly as if nothing at all is happening, and they record everything that is happening. The way you're sitting now is being recorded at this moment and will become a part of the lore of my family. People wi1140 years from now say yes, "It was early in the 1980s when eight or nine white folks came from New York City, and they had these cameras, and this white man sat with his hand like this and his knee up." All of that is being recorded. And it stays. Nothing-that's why you really can't leave Stamps. I never have. I mean, I take it with me, I am a Stampsonian, I'm a recorder. And it's not particularly kind, it's not particularly cruel; it just very ingrown.

I started reading early, very early. Every book in the library. I could actually be on the moors, followed by lovely, adoring and obedient dogs, on my way to the house where I would sit and drink tea, whatever that was. I only heard of ice tea, you know, in this town. I never heard of anybody drinking hot tea.

BILL MOYERS: Much less moors.

MAYA ANGELOU: And moors. And milk in the tea, when I was sick they had-but those

books allowed me, showed me doors which led to degrees of freedom.

BILL MOYERS:What were some of the books?

MAYA ANGELOU: I loved Shakespeare.

BILL MOYERS: I think you wrote somewhere that Shakespeare was

your first white love.

MAYA ANGELOU: That's true. When I read Shakespeare and heard that music I couldn't believe it, that a white man could write so musically. I already, mind you, had an affection for Poe, because I liked his rhythm. I like Then, upon that velvet sinking, I betook myself to thinking fancy unto fancy, linking, it's marvelous, it's rhythmic. Then when I read Shakespeare, When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I wept, because I thought myself certainly in disgrace with fortune, being black and poor and female in the South. And I was also out of grace with men's eyes because I wasn't pretty.

BILL MOYERS:You weren't pretty?

MAYA ANGELOU: I wasn't pretty. Oh, I was strange looking. Although momma told me I was pretty. And people admired her so much, she was the most powerful person in the world. I thought at one time that I, maybe I was the only person who knew it, but I knew she was God. She was straight and strong and kind and all of that. And she adored me.

You knew my grandmother Annie Henderson.

FLORIDA HARRIS: Oh, yes, ma'am, yes. She was a Shannon, wasn't she.

MAYA ANGELOU: That's right.

FLORIDA HARRIS: And lived in Magnolia, the Shannons did.

MAYA ANGELOU: That's right

FLORIDA HARRIS:She had a brother named Gus Shannon that was a preacher.

MAYA ANGELOU: That's right. Well, my great grandmother's name was Kentucky Shannon--

[voice-over] FLORIDA HARRIS, 102 YEARS OLD: She reminded me of my grandmother, and they were contemporaries.

MAYA ANGELOU: I remember that name. Sure do. That, such a strange name.

FLORIDA HARRIS: Yeah. Well, she had a sister named Lois, Lois Young.

MAYA ANGELOU: My grandmother was a quiet, very powerful woman that many people loved because she was kind. But she was absolute- there was absolutely no give-

People used to come into the store and they'd say, "Oh, sister Henderson, it's just awful today, it's just terrible. I can't stand it It's killing me, this heat, or this cold." And my grand≠ mother would say, "Hum-mmm, yes, ma'am, hum-mmm." And as soon as the people would

leave, she would call me. And I knew what she was going to say, she said it so often I could have mouthed it with her, but if I had, I'd have gotten knocked out that front door. She's say, "Sister, did you just hear what sister Murphy said?" or "brother Thompson said?î I'd say, "Yes, ma'am." She's tum and her eyes would get like stones. She's say, "Sister, there are people all over this planet who went to sleep last night when sister Murphy went to sleep who will never wake again. Their beds have become their cooling boards and their blankets have become their winding sheets, and they would give anything for five minutes of what that person was complaining about.''

Her contemporaries called her sister Henderson, mother Henderson, Mrs. Henderson.

These little white kids would come in and call her Annie. That was worse than abusing me. You understand? It was terrifying that I could be so powerless, that this great powerful

woman who was my protection couldn't protect herself, nor could she protect her son really from this kind of violation, intrusion. For myself, for me, the white kids- well, I fought them quite a lot.

BILL MOYERS:Physically?

MAYA ANGELOU: Physically, of course. I would hit a stone, I would hit a tree, of course. I would have a rage that just-I kept in my teeth. As soon as one would look: at me I would hit him or her, <md quite often got beaten up too. But I would hit anybody one time. And it wouldn't clear me of my rage, and I could never get enough to get my rage out. So one of my fantasies, when I was, oh, seven, six or seven, was that suddenly there'd be a-somebody would just say Shazaam and I would be white, and I wouldnít be looked at with such loathing when I walked in the white part of town, which I had to do, where white men and women could look at you with such loathing that you really wished either that you could dry up in a moment, just shrivel up like that. And instead of that I put my head up and walked through, grit my teeth, surviving. But my God, what scars does that leave on somebody. I don't even dare examine it myself. And when I reached for the pen-

BILL MOYERS: To write.

MAYA ANGELOU:--to write, I have to scrape it across those scars to sharpen that point And I-yet, I still have never yet really gone down to look at those scars. I just think I might dissolve. They're very serious and theyíre very deep. The power of hate is almost as strong as the power of love.

The best way, of course, for me to get out was through the music and the poetry. It wasn't so much a belief in God as it was love of the music.

BILL MOYERS:Music in this church.

MAYA ANGELOU: Music in the church.

BILL MOYERS: What did that music say?

MAYA ANGELOU: Well, there was a promise, you see, always in the black spirituals there's that promise that things are going to be better, by and by now, not at any recognizable date, but by and by things were going to be better. There was that. And then there was this incredible poetry- which I don't know why I knew at the time that it was great poetry, but lines like -- there's a line in a spiritual that always made me weep when I was about eight, and the line is ìGreen trees are bendin', poor sinner stands a tremblin'.î Now, Bill, that used to-- it still does, it can bring tears to my eyes. That schemed to-- somehow, listening to it I transcended the pit.

[to young woman leaving Stamps]

MAYA ANGELOU: Oh, God bless you.

WOMAN: Thank you, and pray for -me.

MAYA ANGELOU: God bless you. You know my prayers are with you. Where'd you go to school.

WOMAN:I went to school at [unintelligible].

MAYA ANGELOU: Oh, and you're going to Des Moines, Iowa.

WOMAN: I'm leaving next Thursday.

MAYA ANGELOU: With the Federal Government. What a blessing, what a blessing.

WOMAN: Thank you. I'm proud of myself.

MAYA ANGELOU: At least I can tell you, my dear, since I grew up right here on this piece of land, it is a wonderful thing to come home and have people say you are a blessing and not a curse. You, then, put Stamps on the map. Stamps, darlin', creates survivors. Believe it, believe in Stamps, in this town. You have to be pretty tough. Ask me. You keep your sweetness always, but inside underneath that sweetness is a ball of steel. Absolutely. And you donít go for the Ok-i-doke in Des Moines when somebody talk to you just like a radio: ìHey, baby, let me tell you-î You don't go for that. You don't go for the- you select carefully, because you are born to survive if you're born and raised in this town.

MAN: You never, I don't think, had the slightest intention, you understand what I mean? that you would be just a person. If you skinned you, you wouldn't know you from white or black. You never thought of it like that You says, "I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it," regard≠ less to who be around or who hear or who sees. And you made it. And I am so proud.

MAN:O-tay ou-yay, a-may. I present to you-

MAYA ANGELOU: Is-thay is ine-may? Is-thay is ours-yay. I eak-spay ig-pay, atin-lay. Oh, darlin'.

MAN: As they were demolishing, I mean, changing the store around, and I saw it. You know, it's some of your works.

MAYA ANGELOU: My God.

MAN: Do you remember-who.

MAYA ANGELOU: Mrs. Reedy?

MAN: Yeah.

MAYA ANGELOU: Little short skinny-fingered woman?

MAN: Yeah, uh-huh.

MAYA ANGELOU: Yeah, and I took piano from her. Oh, darlin', God bless you. Really, really. All of that, I thought everything from my childhood was gone, you know, everything. I appreciate this with all my heart.

MAN: I felt you would.

MAYA ANGELOU: I appreciate it with all my heart I can't, I really can't≠

BILL MOYERS:So many people here who touched you.

MAYA ANGELOU: Yes. There was one woman in particular, there was one woman. Mrs. Flowers. Mrs. Flowers was the lady of Stamps, well to do, she was very, very black and very, very beautiful. I thought she was-she was pretty. Now, that was a pretty woman. And she seemed to me always to wear voile, which is an old cloth, old material. It's like a cotton chiffon which sways. And she'd wear talcum powder, and there'd always be a little of the talcum on this pretty black skin. And she spoke as softly as my grandmother. She'd walk up the road and pass going to her house; she had a summer house here. One day she stopped and she talked a few minutes with my grandmother. My grandmother would come off the porch. Now, that was a big step for my grandmother, but mommy used to stand on the porch to talk to people. But when Mrs. Flowers came, mamma would come out the door and step down and they would stand together and talk. So this day Mrs. Flowers said she wanted to invite me to her home. It was during the time when I couldn't talk and wouldn't talk.

BILL MOYERS: How old were you?

MAYA ANGELOU: I guess I was about eight. And mamma said, "Sister, Mrs. Flowers is inviting you to her home. Well, the beauty of the town, the most wonderful person in town to invite me? I couldn't believe it. It was just-it was as if someone said here's a million dollars, do anything you want with it. I followed her to her house, and all the shades were drawn. It was very cool in there, just like her, dark and cool. She raised the shades. And she had already made these big tea cookies that we make in the South, anyway in Arkansas, huge flat things, and they smell of vanilla. And the house smelled of vanilla. And she served me, which was very unusual because children usually served the older. She served me. I couldn't speak all the way up to her house,. which must be a half mile. And she gave me iced lemonade, and then she sat (!own and she said, "Now, Margaret, I'm going to read a book to you. It's called A Tale of Two Cities.". This is the very way she talked. [slow and deliberate]

''It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.'' I thought-I had already seen that in my house, I had that book. But I didn't know it sounded like that. So she read to me. And then she told me that poetry was music written for the human voice. She must have told me that 50 times. Then she said, ''Now, what I want you to do is, I want you to try by yourself to say a poem." So I'd get under my grandmother's bed, she has a high bed, you know, the mattresses are high up, and I would get under the bed and try saying some of the poems out loud. I could hear them in my head, but to say them out loud. And finally-it was through her and poetry that I began to talk.

BILL MOYERS: You said you would not talk.

MAYA ANGELOU: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: Why, what was it?

MAYA ANGELOU: Well, I had had a difficulty in St. Louis when I was seven and a half, and I had been- I had been raped. And the person who had raped me was killed. I said- I called his name and he was killed. And I thought at the time that it was my voice that caused the man to be dead, and so I just refused to put my voice out and put anybody else in danger.

BILL MOYERS: And Mrs. Flowers-

MAYA ANGELOU: Mrs. Flowers gave me back my voice.

TEACHER: Boys and girls, we are happy at this time to make a presentation. This is quite a unique honor. I'm going to present to you a lady of Arkansas, a person that is internationally known, a famous person from Stamps. At this time I'm going to present IQ you the person who will speak to you briefly, Mrs. Maya Angelou. And she will present to you her presentation in her own way.

MAYA ANGELOU: Thank you very much. Thank you. I must tell you first that I'm a little nervous. Although I appear so calm, in my heart the blood is going dump-dump-dump-dump. And yet I just pull myself up and I talk softly and I act cool, but that is not the truth at all.

Now, how many of you really saw Roots? Hold up your hands. Everyone saw Roots. Now you may put your hands down. I played in Roots. Does anybody in here know who I played? Kunta Kinte's grandmother. Do you remember? In the first one in Africa?

So sometimes. I do act, but most of the time what I do is write, and I write poems about people like you, about your size. So I'm going to say one of those. This is calle4 "Harlem Hopscotch." Okay, now, you know hopscotch. It's always jump-jump-jump, right? lump≠ jump-jump, jump-jump-jump. That's the time. I mean, when you hop you go jump-jump≠ jump, right? Okay, that's the rhythm. But anywhere where a group of black children are jumping hopscotch [jazzes up the triplet] Right? You can laugh, but you know itís true. So my poem says:

One foot down, then hop, if itís hot

Good things for the ones that's got

Another jump now to the left

Everybody for hisself.

In the air, now both feet down

Since you're black don't stick around

Food is gone, rent is due

Cuss and cry and then jump two.

Everybody's out of work

Hold for three and then twist and jerk

Cross the line they count you out

But thatís what humpinís all about

Both feet down, the game is done

They said you lost, I believe you won.

Thank you very much for listening to me. I would love to be an encouragement, really

I would love that. Youíre at a curious time now in your age. You will remember certain things and some things you will forget forever, but I hope youíll remember me. Get your work done, study, study, put in in the brain. This machine will do anything for you, anything. It will take you to China if you want to go. It will take you to New York if you want to go. It will make you principle of this school if you want it to. Do you understand? Somebody is going to make laws for this entire land. IS it going to be you? Is it going to be you? The chance is there. Itís so exciting. You have a chance. I have you in my heart. I see myself in you as a young person in Stamps. I hope you see yourselves in me. Thanks you for your hospitality.

BILL MOYERS:

Since 1981 Maya Angelou has been the Reynoldís Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She will be gathering some of the countryís leading creative talent there this August for the National Black Theater Festival. Maya recently wrote a one-hour television drama for Oprah Winfrey and is starting to work on the sixth book of her autobiographical series. I never return to that film without wondering how many others there are like Maya Angelou in schools everywhere, the urge to create lying in each like a new seed in the spring soil. And I also wonder in how many, unlike her experience, the ground will never be broken the promise never touched by the season's warmth, so that the ideas of longing to be released, the dream germinating in the dark earth of frustration, dies there or erupts one day destructively. The suppression of this inner life, I'm convinced, lies at the base of so much of today's waste, violence and mindless cruelty. For the artist is not necessarily the most gifted among us, but the most fortunate; for the inner life to flourish the child has to be touched. With Maya Angelou it was a grandmother who loved her vastly and a radiant black angel who read Dickens to a little girl not quite eight They signified her worth. They said, "You matter." They turned her suffering rage upward and brought the poet to life. I'm Bill Moyers.