Prejudice And Racism Exposed In Maya Angelou's Poetry

Maya Angelou, named Marguerite Johnson by her mother, was born April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri (“Maya Angelou”). When she was three years old, she and her brother moved to Stamps, Arkansas with her grandmother because her parents divorced each other. Because of Stamps’ location in the racially divided South, she experienced both racism and a high level of cultural pride. She moved back in with her mother but was traumatized when her mother’s boyfriend molested and raped her. At the time, Angelou was seven years old and so afraid that she only told her brother about the horrific experience. Her uncle killed the man, and she stopped speaking for five years because she felt responsible for his death (“Maya Angelou Biography”). During her
The movement began during World War II when a large number of African Americans left the South to find work in the North. These workers joined together, giving them a sense of unity. Segregation was just as bad in the North as it was in the South, so they began to fight for equality with their words. Civil Rights poetry drew attention to segregation and the horrible inequalities, calling for African Americans to join together and end the injustice. Many of its ideas were drawn from the Harlem Renaissance, which had occurred a few decades prior (“African American Literature”). Poets during this movement stressed the hardships of African American life. Poems often included very detailed descriptions of horrific events to draw attention to the discrimination. Some had heavy, strong rhythms and vulgar diction. However, many others were uplifting and elegant. Many poets chose to reject the norms of western poetry, resulting in free verse. A common characteristic of poems was the use of the pronoun “we” to refer to the race as a whole, adding a sense that they were all united. Poems were often very spiritual, connecting to the literature during times of slavery. A main characteristic of Civil Rights Movement Poetry was that the topics poems were deeply rooted in the past, and history was mentioned often. (“African American
King, who inspired her to join the Civil Rights Movement. Her writing took on many characteristics shared by other African American authors. Her poems are extremely lyrical and elegant. Many of them involve free verse. Her diction is beautiful, and she uses it to gracefully fight for equality without sounding militant, even when she describes horrific scenes of injustice. Her spiritual poems reference slavery and her ancestors, and she ties past hardships to the present. She calls for the equality of African Americans with whites, describing the wonderful, beautiful characteristics that African Americans have (“Maya