Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson, was an American memoirist, essayist, poet and civil rights activist who published seven autobiographies, three books of essays and several books of poetry over a career spanning more than fifty years. The first of her autobiographies, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), told of her life up to age seventeen and brought her international recognition. Active in the Civil Rights Movement alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, she became the first poet since Robert Frost to deliver an inaugural recitation, reading On the Pulse of Morning at Bill Clinton's first inauguration in 1993.