Maya Angelou at the 2nd Annual HRC National Dinner

Oh Lord I want to win to guide my feet oh Lord I want to lean to guide my hands oh Lord I want to me to hold my eyes so the world won't do me no harm I know what the Caged Bird feels are me when the Sun is bright on the upland slopes when the wind blows soft through the springing grass and the river floats like a sheet of glass when the first birds sing and the first bird oaks and the faint perfume from its chalice steal I know what the Caged Bird oh Lord I want to be to guide my mind Oh Lord I want to me to hold my back oh Lord I want to me to watch me watch oh Lord I want so the world won't do min over I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings on me when its wings of bruised in its bosom sore it beats its bogs and would be free it's not a carol of joy or Glee but a prayer that it sends from its heart too deep for but a plea that upward to heaven it flames I know why the caged bird a caged bird jumps on the back of the wind a free bird jumps on the back of the win floats downstream till the currents and them and dipped its wings in the bright sun rays and dares to claim the sky but a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams often shouting a nightmare scream its wings are clipped its feet are tied so it opens its mouth to sing the caged birds things with a fearful trail of things unknown but longed for still and it's song is heard on a distant Hill for the Caged Bird Sings of freedom a free bird thinks of another breeze and the trade winds salt through the sighing trees and fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lon and it names the sky its own but a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams shadows shouting a nightmare scream its wings are clipped its feet are tied so it opens its mouth to sing the caged bird sings with a fearful trail of things unknown but long far still and its voice is heard on the distant Hill throughout the Lions throughout the air across the oceans across centuries across centuries across in fact continents and across ignorant across eight because the Caged Bird Sings of freedom oh Lord I want to guide my feet oh Lord I want to me to guide my mind Oh Lord I want to ease to hold my arms so the world won't do Oh No we're well well back yeah hmm well it is such you please my heart when you invited me again I had such a good time down in Texas whoa I have thought of you ever since I had a wonderful time in Texas and when there was the chance that I could come to Washington DC where I really wanted to be I wanted to be here I wanted to bring all my stuff here yes yes I sure did and I wanted to get down on my knees here and pray here because I know there are too many people who get down on their knees here just to look and somebody else is key oh hello yes I wanted to know yes and I wanted to see say to my brothers and sisters my nephews and nieces my daughters and sons my beloved's who are here that fortunately we are not alone now let me just tell you this one little story I'm not even starting yet so wait some years ago I was invited to speak and in the Utah at Brigham Young University and I was so nervous when I I really I asked my sister Dolly McPherson I said sister she was teaching at Hunter in New York as his sister meet me please she met means in Salt Lake and I called my mom I said I don't know what these people they're paying me all this money they hate me why why do they want me to speak now my brothers and sisters and children and kin listen to this my mother said baby you are there for some reason don't worry about it just do what you think is right you are there for some reason that two men came to pick me and my sister up at the hotel and drove us from Salt Lake to Provo and they showed me the brochure for the year there were 12 speakers the other 11 were white middle-aged men no other woman and no black saved me so the person who had spoken the month before was Spiro T Agnew the people explained to me that there would be 11,000 folks in the stadium to hear me I was so concerned my heart thumped when we arrived at the stadium the the tiers were raped so steep so steeply that it seemed all those white folks were going to fall on top it was amazing there was only my sister and way up at the top was another black face there were 40 men in dark suits sitting on the on the platform someone gave a sort of quiet and and little invocation and someone else got offense it and here's Maya Angelou they didn't say I had tried and failed or I had succeeded or not nothing here's Maya Angelou so I got up with the with my speech and started to the podium and then I remembered a statement I had heard that I want you all to remember I remembered that statement I put the speech back on the on the chair and I went up to the podium I said I thank you so much for inviting me I am told that you are some 11,000 here and I also know you have some religious inclination however as I am told and I believe one person with God constitutes the majority hello oh my no my lord and so I commend you for coming here in your minority to face me this morning well I talked for about an hour and a half I asked pointedly how dare you try to deny me God you can't articulate my little finger you can't choose to put one money hair in my and a hair follicle and you dare to try to deny me God you have decided I will be a hue of wood and a draw of water world without in our men says who you are you come on get off it you may have lots of power you may have a names which make people tremble in the marketplace you may have large fortunes but I have yet to see one hearse with a hitch Oh so what so what now when I spoke I had such a good time I talked for about two hours I had said Lord if you wanted said put it in my mouth I'll be glad to see it thank you so I finished the two men took me and my sister back to Salt Lake I called my mom in San Francisco I said ma it was all right she said I know it was all ready I stayed up all night friend about two hours later the telephone rang and a man phoned he said Miss Angelo I am the elder in the Mormon Church I was there this morning that's a tie he said we want to ask you to speak tonight in the temple I said I will have to say the same thing he said that's what we want I'm telling you this story for a particular reason so that I said can I ask him can you get people he said that's not journalist out that night two more fellows came and walked me and my sister round the corner and there were five thousand people and I said thank you for coming in your minority one person as I understand it with God constitutes from applause I commend you for your courage to come here when I finished there was very kind the one black fella way up there was there that evening and so we shook hands my sister and I got on the plane the next day she came out to California with me and I said sister it's not me the the church is ready to make a change and someone has told them get Maya Angelou she will lay a foundation for your change had nothing to do with me but somebody had been following me around this name that next week the elder died but in six months the new elder came in and he said God talked to him directly and told him that black people had worked out their salvation and that they now go directly to heaven you know that now they are black ministers in the Mormon Church you know that sometimes I tell you this story because it is important that each of us be aware of the power we have in our very being to come to be a federal supporter of HRC to actually come out to work to become present in our varying communities you have no idea who's watching you you have no idea who you will impress and inform and change and in hearten and in power you have no idea no idea who will take just something you said from your heart you said it are the way you want or the way you dress then some 14 year old who says I like the way it really I like that you know you always carries that little pace I like that I like the way she's you know she's got them she wears nothing and she's always smiling I like you have no idea who you will inform because all of us are caged bird have been and will be again caged by somebody else's ignorance cage because of someone else's small-mindedness case because of someone else's feel caged and sometimes caged by our own lack of courage and so when we have enough courage to come out I don't mean just out of a closet I mean out of your spirit out when you have enough courage to stand and say I came here to stay yes sir yes sir it's amazing you have no idea who you were then form so anyway I thought I would speak tell that story just to prepare you for the next three or four hours out you broke you broke now I'm not really no but I did after hearing our Vice President and mrs. Gore and your president I tell you I was so in heartened that in these times I was made to feel more secure and this is a time of such insecurity meant a great deal to me at the same time I had made my mind up that I was going to speak on some but then after hearing them I thought I'm going to talk about romance that people our person our community without romance risks being brutish and crass and superficial and brittle and cruel and even murderous without romance and I don't mean just romantic romance I don't mean just erotic romance I mean I got a romance I mean brotherly sisterly romance I mean the romance it allows us to soften our voices when we see each other hey honey how you doing let me hug my neck I mean that in a world where people are afraid that the watching police are photographing us shaking hands and hi I mean having enough romance to say come let's embrace I will not deny my humanity with you I don't care who's watching that's my man so hmm I also wanted to discuss um and do some points on human because I never trust people who say they love me if they don't love themselves or people who say I'm serious and act as if they put airplane glue on the back of the hands and stuck them to that for not really they didn't come to stay so I like to hear people laugh I love it I love to laugh I pray everyday that I will laugh at least as much as I cry because when people who say I love you and don't people who say I'm I'm serious and are not they remind me of the African saying which is be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt the the romance remains I note the obvious differences in the human family some of us are serious some thrive on comedy some declare their lives are lived as true profundity and others claim no they are living the real reality the variety of our skin tones can confuse bemused delight we are brown and pink and beige in purple and tan and blue and white I've said if I'm the seven seas and stopped in every land and seen the wonders of the world but not yet one common man I know 10,000 women called Jane or Mary Jane but I've never seen any two who really wear the same mirror twins are different although their features jived and lovers think quite different thoughts while lying sat side by side we love and losing we weep on England's Moors and life and Mon and Guinea and thrive on Spanish shores we seek success in Finland we are born and die in Maine in minor ways we differ in major we have the same I note the obvious differences in every sort and type but we are more like my friends than we are we are more alike my friends than we are well the the romantic poetry especially I would encourage you to think of these things I know that I'm supposed to come here and entertain you and be brief and succinct and I will really but but that there are some things I want and pray that you will hear and that will be of use to you in time to come one of course is that one person with the right idea constitutes a majority that's one I think that and so you don't have to be do in apologia just because you may be different or appear to be different the other is that we are more alike than we are analyzed I want you to hear some some romantic poetry and African American poetry just in few little snippets and mainly because you know that the first Africans were brought to this country in 1619 this is not trying to be sadiddy' or anything but 1619 was one year before the Mayflower docked we've undergone experiences too bizarre to have been included in Alex Haley's phenomenon the book roots are in the television phenomenon roots in which I played Kunta kinte's grandmother to bizarre and yet here we are still here still the last hard still the first fired still the butts of even some white liberals jokes but still here today upwards of fifty million and I know that that's a conservative estimate because some people swear they're more than 50 million black people in the Baptist Church they're not even coming back sliders in AME and CME and the three black atheists in the world so we're on earth I mean really how how did the people survive well I think a part of their survival can be credited to the romance in the poetry when a larger society when the mighty are telling the week or the few you don't count you get you don't even cut them down just the way you look the way you think the way you talk the way you walk I don't know I don't have to consider you so when you have the Kurt that the poetry which tells you you are fabulous you are wonderful you're just right dear the way God made you honey you're just fine I didn't make it I don't have anything to say about it that's the way God made I'm so glad to know that bless your heart now when you understand that it means that you have no apology to make you don't have to prove yourself right and right in your body and right in your space and right in your city to anyone just to do that now as some years ago I spoke in Minneapolis at the University and I had a wonderful time and I was invited back three years later I can't but know I was invited back and I enjoyed myself again and then I went backstage and there was a financial of security and a woman came backstage she reminded me of myself say that she's white she was six foot I'm six foot she had an heir I claimed she was about my age which is what the French call a certain age you know she came she came right here she said hello I put my hand up she said I want to hug you I said fine even embrace she said I want to thank you for my daughter's life she started to cry I started to cry we embraced we both she said her daughter had attempted suicide any number of times at that time someone had brought her three years earlier to hear me speak and I had spoken on the courage to live and the young woman called her mother and said forget that I have tried suicide I will never try it again I believe my life may hold such promise I will not the mother cried I cried we loved it when we broke our embrace a young woman came looking very much like the mother and the mother said Cynthia what are you doing here the young woman who lives in Eau Claire Wisconsin said that she had read that I was speaking and she drove over to hear me so the girl opposed me she cried I cried the mother cry we had a wonderful time and when when it was finished the mother said I want you to have this letter my daughter wrote to me after having heard you speak they left I was on the road I didn't return home for two weeks when I returned home and read the letter it broke my heart it was full of so much ignorance so much racism so much that I started to read the letter said in effect mother I went to hear Maya Angela and she was wonderful I'll tell you about what she said but let me tell you about what she looked like mother she came on the stage she was so big and so ugly and so black mother she terrified me I started to weep here this girl has said I have been instrumental in saving her life we have all lived together in varying degrees of intimacy over these 300 plus years and this time could say I was ugly I started but I just started just small tears and then big tears and then and then baton before I knew it I was sobbing and I thought let me get her to myself soon I will start thinking about suicide I wouldn't go alone I'd find her oh yes oh yes we would jump together oh yes we would but then I thought of this poem of Langston Hughes called Harlem sweeties now you all know that black people range in color from blump plum blue to midwife well gay people are obvious and not in subtle and cool and really out there and you and you'd have to some you say are you are you sure have you does this feel of sugar he'll cast your gems on this sepia prayer brown sugar last a caramel treat a honey gold baby sweet enough to eat peach skin fella coffee and cream chocolate darling out of a dream walnut tinted cocoa brown Oh pomegranate pride in time rich cream-colored plum tinted black feminine sweetness and man's handsomest are not Harlem slag from the glue of the Clint's to the blush of the Rose persimmon bronze cinnamon toes chocolate cinnamon let me repeat caramel brown sugar a chocolate treat ginger wine gold persimmon blackberry licorice clove cinnamon all through the spectrum Harlem folks vary so if you want to know beauty's rainbow sweet thrill stroll with me down luscious hey delicious hey Shirl well well hmm well I would encourage you all to find a poem memorize it fine if it's just two verses memorize it stock it in this fabulous computer socket so that when you walk into an office and and there the Snickers you can just stand there and think have you does the spill of sugar here something not necessarily I mean think of Edna st. Vincent Millay okay look at this little woman little white woman very popular as a poet about to become the recluse she did become one nice word one in North Carolina we call it puny feeling about to become this recluse she wrote and not this is one to memorize I shall die but that is all I will do for death oh I hear his horse's hooves on the stall he has business this morning business in Cuba business in the Balkans but he must mount by himself I will not give him a leg up I'm not in his employ I will die but that is all I will do for death with his horse's hooves on my chest I will not tell him where the black boy lies hidden in the swamp brothers and sisters the keys and the plans to the city are safe with me through me you will never be overthrown for I shall die but that is all I will do for them now so I'm a well my encouragement to you is to find something and put it remember one person with God to do some and I'm ok that and then and we are more like than we are analyte and find something that will serve you and amazingly save you for these moments when you come together when we come together once a year are so valuable they're not frequent enough each one of us is out here alone sadly alone too many times whether gay or straight FATA them prettier plain richer poor vowed or celibate each one of us spends almost too much time in aloneness and loneliness I don't mean the beautiful solitude where you can really think great thoughts or nothing which is even better but I mean those times so when we have these times of such insecurity and question and doubt and we can say if we are religious I believe Lord forgive my disbelief when we are in those moments of utter doubt we can find something which pulls us we can pull up which will in turn kalasa mr. Hamilton read a few lines from this poem and I'm going to read this it's very brief I was asked to write this poem after writing the have inaugural poem I was asked by United Nations to write a poem for the world I give you this boy HIC if you want if your administration would like to have the right to make it into posters to sell it and give it to you three yeah okay thanks we we this people own a small and lonely planet traveling through casual space past aloof stars across the way of indifferent Suns to a destination where all signs tell us it is possible and imperative that we learn a brave and startling truth and when we come to it to the day of peacemaking when we release our fingers from fists of hostilities when we come to it when the curtain falls on the minstrel show of eight and faces suited with scorn our scrubbed clean when battlefields and Coliseum no longer rake are unique in particular sons and daughters up with the bruised and bloody grass to lie in identical plots and foreign soil when we come to it when the rapacious storming of the churches the screaming racket and the temples of ceased when the pennants are waving gaily when the bamas of the world trembles stoutly in a good clean breeze when we come to it when we let the rifles fall from our shoulders and our children can dress their dolls and truce in flags of truth when landmines of death have been removed and our ages can walk into evenings of peace when religious ritual is not perfumed by the incense of burning flesh and childhood dreams are not kicked awake by nightmares of abuse when we come to it then we will confess that not the pyramids with their stones set in mysterious perfection now the Gardens of Babylon hanging as eternal beauty in our collective memory not the Grand Canyon kindled into delicious color by Western sunsets not the Danube flowing it's blue into Europe not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji stretching to the Rising Sun needs a father Amazon or mother Mississippi who without favor nurture all creatures in the depths and on their Shores these are not the only wonders of the world when we come to it we this people on this minuscule and kissless globe who reach daily for the bomb the blade and the dagger yet who petitioned in the dust for tokens of peace we this people on this mote of matter in whose mouths a bad cankerous words which challenge our very existence yet out of those same mouths can come songs of such exquisite sweetness that the heart falters in it the lever and the body is quieted into own we diss people on this small and drifting planet whose hands can strike with such abandon that in a twinkling life is set from the living yet those same hands can touch with such healing irresistible tenderness that the haughty neck is happy to bow and the proud back is glad to be out of such chaos of such confusion we learn we are neither Devils nor divine when we come to it we this people on this wayward floating body created on this earth of this earth have the power to fashion far this earth a climate where every man and every woman can live freely without sanctimonious piety without crippling fear when we come to it we must confess that we are the possible we are the miraculous we are the true wonder of this world that is when and only when we come you

Channel: Human Rights Campaign

Views: 83,814

Rating: 4.8820863 out of 5

Keywords: Human Rights Campaign, HRC, Equality, GLBT, LGBT, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Same-sex, And Still I Rise, I know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Phenomenal Woman, Maya Angelou

Id: BybZZM881Tw

Length: 42min 16sec (2536 seconds)

Published: Wed May 28 2014