The great American poet and memoirist Maya Angelou has passed away. The New York Times has posted an obituary that includes a video of Angelou delivering the inaugural poem at the 1993 swearing-in of President Bill Clinton.
According to the Times, Angelou had been in poor health for some time, but she appeared here in Washington last month at the unveiling of her portrait at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. We covered the event on this blog.
Maya Angelou speaking in 2007
Photo credit: NPS via Wikimedia Commons
Angelou recorded an interview for the 1993 documentary entitled The Great Depression in which she described growing up under Jim Crow in rural Arkansas. One of the bright spots she talks about was the Rosenwald School she attended (the Lafayette County Training School in Stamps, Arkansas) where she began her love of reading. We are using parts of this marvelous interview in The Rosenwald Schools documentary.