Maya Angelou - One On One (1983)

from ABC News this is one-on-one with Greg Jackson and his guest Maya she was raped at only seven years old and later as a teenager worked briefly in a whorehouse to support a son but she went on to become a performer a poet and a writer of remarkable books about her struggles our guest Maya Angelou what poetry do you associate with how you feel right now is there a poem that comes to you mm-hmm what if we ended up oh so many there's a poem it's a very there's a poem which is a good woman feeling bad because you almost made me weep on this thing two or three times I guess I did weep how does that phone go and good woman feeling bad the Blues may be the life you've led or midnight hours in an empty bed but persecuting blues I've known could stalk like Tigers and break like bone pinned like rope in a gallows tree make me curse my pedigree bitterness thick on a rankling tongue psalms to love left unsung rivers heading north but ending south funeral music and our going home now all riddles of blues and our blues are sad and I'm just talking about some blues I've had [Music] what will you like is a very young child when all of us are truly formed well for I was sent to Arkansas from California when I was three to a tiny tiny town named stamps Arkin stamps as in mail as in mail aptly named it was about that big of the size of a three cent postage stamp all small towns are provincial I lived there from the time I was three until I was 13 and as long as I lived there I was called by the black people mrs. Henderson's California granddaughter so I did not belong my dad you looked like what kind of kid were you well my eyes have a slant to them and the kids black kids told me that I was that my daddy was made was a [ __ ] and they used to tease me so I didn't know anything about that so I thought they meant that he was made out of China like a cup or a plate or something it was a terrible thing to say to somebody unknowing uh but I had no mother and father and limit who was taking care of my grandmother your mother and father sent you to your grandmother yes that's right from California they had separated when I was three my grandmother owned the only black owned store in the town and she lived with her younger son my uncle who was crippled and my brother and I we lived in the store in the back of the store that was really a world in itself it was a marvelous world in there could you paint for me just a picture for a moment those of us from these big cities what was it like of an afternoon or a morning who gathered wasn't the mood of the place but it would depend on what season in the summer season the people who picked cotton would come about 4:30 in the morning and my grandmother would get out of bed I slept with her my brother slept with my uncle she would get out of bed and immediately down to the floor to pray to thank God for letting her rise again that her bed had not become her cooling board that her blankets had not become her winding sheets and she had one more chance and I would lie in the bed while she prayed and then I would get out of there I wasn't obliged to say morning prayers only the righteous say morning prayers so I would get out of bed and she liked the lamp and we would go into the kitchen part of the store and wash and then go and open up the store and the people would come in in the morning in that light which was gray but not gray flat gray rich gray light which into this little country into the country store and they'd come in bragging you know about how much cotton they were gonna put pick that day in and they would buy large slabs of cheese if they had money or peanut Patties which are just the brown sugar and peanuts which are very high of course in sugar but also high in protein and sometimes people would buy sardines and a box of crackers and that would be for lunch you see in the evening the people would come home and the light would be different they would be driven back to the store and in flatbed trucks where everybody stood up and that all that gaiety and hope and promise of the morning which went with the morning light had seeped away through the day and their shoulders were down and over like that and they dragged out of the trucks and dragged across the yard and their voice is the the lightness that had been in the morning and the teasing which is so sweet among black people the teasing of the morning was gone and it would just be well sister Henderson I'm back yes they showed us that out there and it would seem as if not only had they lost the spirit but that they had lost texture texture was gone and during the years when I really noticed I was a mute I stopped talking when I was about seven and a half and didn't really talk again until I was about 12 and a half really what why did you stop talking well when I was about seven I was taken to st. Louis to visit my mother and I was there a few months and her and I was raped but Who I am my mother's then boyfriend and my brother came to me who was only it was just about 9:00 and he asked me who did it I wouldn't tell anyone else of course and I told him if I if I tell the man will kill you and he i believed anything he said you see he said he can't kill me I will not let him kill me so I believed him so I told him and of course he told mom my mommy and the man was found dead he'd been murdered yes I never said that word he had been killed I mean but I'm not trying to make that the point that there's a fine line between that but I'll never use that word and that there was bad enough that he had been killed and I thought that my voice itself had killed him not amazing as youngsters he'll again now think you're part of a Chinese porcelain and now that was your voice yeah kill this guy who in fact had raped you yeah but so I started the world if I spoke I could just kill anybody what a weight to carry so I just stopped talking for five years but I watched and of course my mother couldn't in time in st. Louis she couldn't talk me out of not talking she did everything she could she tried to entertain me and amuse me and she's very pretty and very funny and cheerful and all that but I couldn't so she didn't know what to do with me so she sent me back to my grandmother and the people in the town of course no one knew what had happen but my grandmother my uncle and they said that I was crazy and that I was [ __ ] poor thing just Anderson's grandchild just went crazy she's mental you know and my grandmother would braid my hair and she'd say sister I know they think you're crazy that you'll never talk but when you get ready and the Lord gets ready you can't talk sister you gonna be a preacher mama knows when we left off now you've been returned to your grandmother your mute yes but you obviously spoke again yeah how'd that happened well I started to read of course and really to read when I was about I mean I was reading early and helping in the store and all that but I started to read books I guess at about 8:00 and there was a woman in my town mrs. flowers she was black she was so beautiful so is that color black whether it's red under the black so that it looks purple you know when if the Sun touches it effecting away it's so good the black folks call that a certain color well that could be blue black our plum black in describing the person's color we call people cinnamon toast pomegranate somebody maybe called ginger honey colored really oh yeah what do they call you flabby honey color oh they call me brown skin all right anyway the missus flowers said this beautiful skin and beautiful teeth as the black poet 19th century poet says her teeth were like flags of truth I didn't just talk white oh god she was lovely and she wore voya which was a fabric in the 30s there was like a cotton chiffon and she'd walk in this little tote and it's a tiny little tonnage when I fear coming up the road I just thought she was the prettiest thing God had made so far and she took me to the library in the segregated school and told me I want you to read from A to C H by the time I come back and she'd go to the exotic metropolis of Pine Bluff and I would read everything I would understand you know whatever I could but I would read and I found poetry I loved it so what poem what phone call everybody I I love Paul Einstein Garth so much this is still strictly oh yeah Dumbo I took the title of my first book from sympathy a poem of mr. Dunbar's he says I know what the Caged Bird feels alas when the wind when this time is bright on the upland slopes when the wind blows soft to the springing grass and the river floats like a stream of glass when the first bird sings and the first bird oops and the faint perfume from its chalice steal I know what the Caged Bird feels Oh mister I loved him and I love Shakespeare now this is a eight nine year old child at this point but you know that mute mu obviously going into your own so yes and the world's been refashioned from those silent eyes yes I was just eat up sound in my eyes just listen to everybody I loved Edgar Allen Poe who I called eat to myself and I memorized now mrs. flowers got you into this you're still not speaking to it what about what about brother yes I could speak to Bailey okay Bette and brothers named Bailey but we're not even speaking to grandma no no and that's what's her I mean shows how great she was hmm but mrs. flowers after about two years I guess him she started telling me that I would never love poetry she said until I heard it over felt it across my tongue do my teeth cross my lips I would never love poetry and It was as if my best friend was being threatened you know you know in behind site how truly sophisticated psychiatrically what's going on here I mean these folks really knew that sorry that this poor young abused black girl needed and they found a way yeah you ended up leaving the town yes you you're on your way into the grown-up world and now I guess I was quite surprised to discover that you had a child when I was about 15 I was six foot tall I I was amazed student and I was very skinny and I would seem never to it seemed as if I would never develop breasts so any curves or anything when I looked at myself in the mirror eyelet I just had bumps like a long brown cucumber with bumps did it was so awful and I thought um maybe I'm going to be a lesbian my how how these things get in her mind but they do you know yeah you were a china teacup speak and now we're gonna be a listview well I was through I had this heavy voice and I wasn't developing like other girls so um there's a fella who has only a few years older than I she boys yeah who else often you know stopped in the street or tried to stop me and I walked as my grandmother walk straight straight ahead and I thought well maybe I will find out all the girls I knew in the school uh they're much more sophisticated than I and much more adventurous and they would talk about this and that so I decided to try it chosen to see here my good man anything like that really almost yeah and I thought is that all I'm sure you're not the first teenager that ever asked that do you think I don't think sad but from that one occasion you had a son yes the most magnificent our adventure accomplishment of my life is my son I had said in the introduction which which you didn't hear for awhile briefly work in the house of prostitution - right then I didn't I mean I had one your old foot yeah red one ran line is that 18 one yeah well what does Manuel matter yes when I was 18 for about two months I had been on the Stratton it had been on the street yes I was 18 I also was the first black team black person at all on the streetcars in San Francisco me as a conductor conductorette was the name please thank you I had my own money changer had a cap with a bib on it that was a big deal oh that was hard I mean the white folks didn't want to even let you have that job yeah but anyway I got it did that thinking about it now how does one that came from that beginning which anyone could hide behind forever and say given that disadvantage how could you expect me to succeed what made you well now mind you it must be said that when I was 14 I got a scholarship to college so I went to high school in the day and to college at night and I took dance and drama so when I started I guess about 20 I started to teach dance and started to sing for a living I had a job once as a shake dancing shake dancer that's the subject all go dance oh yes but long you know long before and there I worked in a strip joint there were four of us three strippers and me and the strippers were white and I didn't strip I was too nice to strip I were a costume that if you balled it up you could put it in a penny matchbox you know that to spangled vana and a twirl allegedly nice ripple but I and the four of us dance from 8:00 until 2:00 every hour 15 minutes and I so the other ladies with God and they go okay but I haven't hit it I was glad and danced and the black the band was black all the musicians were black and they'd been used to cutting could think of thing come to think of it so I came in and asked for Caravan and all sorts of excited exotic songs which meant that they had to work so it was a while before they really liked me but after a while I would try to cut them that is I would try to do you know some double rhythms and and which would make them have to you know try to cut me and they double up and triple up and play five full words and things like that and so we you began to enjoy it I really liked it what poetry do you associate with how you feel right now is there a poem that comes to you mmm what if we ended up oh so many there's a poem it's a fade there's a poem which is a good woman feeling bad because you almost made me weep on this thing to three times I guess I did weep how does that phone go and good woman feeling bad the Blues may be the life you've led or midnight hours in an empty bed but persecuting blues I've known could stalk like Tigers and break like bone pinned like rope in a gallows tree make me curse my pedigree bitterness thick on a rankling tongue Psalms to love left unsung rivers heading north but ending South funeral music and our going home all riddles are blues and all blues are sad and I'm just talking about some blues I've had I made you feel that way thinking about all those things all those people when and and when I think about the girl I was you know I'm amazed that I made it you asked me how did I do it I have no idea I can't believe it if you're so sorry for that little girl yeah little Marguerite yeah when you started yeah no no bigger around than you baby finger yeah do you ever see her in your mind's eye you ever feel like her again oh yeah yeah some men can make me feel like that I'm Greg Jackson there seems so much to the story that we've only begun to scratch the proverbial surface so for our next program we've asked our guests to return an encore with Maya Angelou this has been one on one a pre-recorded presentation of ABC News from ABC News this is one-on-one with Greg Jackson and his guest Maya Angelou we continue with Maya Angelou earlier she told us about growing up in a small southern town about being raped at the age of seven and later as a teenager working briefly in a brothel but she went on to become a performer a poet and a world-famous writer how did she do it we go on with our conversation doing a holiday told to me that I was going to be famous she said I wouldn't be famous for singing but she said you're going to be famous but remember you can't get so high somebody won't try to bring you down so what my great aspiration my greatest ambition is to be so good now in that way I'm tiresome as I supposed to live with because I want to be a fantastic human being [Music] but let let me come back to a question you asked about about getting over a Ray a rape no one ever as far as I know it didn't sound that foolish I didn't get over you I know what you mean okay I do know what you mean and many people who have not gone through it even if someone in their families have had this violation they cannot know how desolate the the affront leaves the victim absolutely desolate and now at this age which is what the French call a certain age you're currently my current aides I have I am I'd suppose the most red black female writer in the world my books are required reading at every university or college in this country I speak seven languages I'm a chopped fellow at Yale University and I think at present I have about 17 honorary doctorates I have the Reynolds chair at Wake Forest University as a professor I'm a professor at wake forest the range ironically enough is in the South yes correct go on with all that saying that and I'm financially secure saying that there isn't one day of my life that I haven't thought about it not one I have had to use an incredible amount of energy to keep balance in my life incredible amount if I hadn't had to do that I might have written ten more books or five more films I don't know so okay next going next question it's such a leak to be fluent in seven languages to be a university professor to be the most widely read black woman writer in the world and at this problem I suppose we're asking God how'd she do it when I told you I hadn't stopped reading I think that is lots of people keep reading so now wait you're not listening when one reads if you do you can truly begin the process of educating yourself not just about the who's and where's and at what time and the sights but really to understand well who one is that is a value I suppose we're so accomplishment oriented one has to make that first step that where you said I am NOT anybody's Lackey I am Maya who is going to go on to the what you've accomplished yes I didn't think that I know I was going to become a very successful real estate broker I really did I I wanted to have a suit gaberdine snakeskin shoes a snakeskin person light beige or white gloves but you never really put on you just sort of held him in a briefcase and the famoust idea real estate but I saw myself as this executive who said something else once that one needs noble heroes is that you heroes and she knows and she rose up yeah was that your grandmother yes I'm not grandmother can one succeed without I don't know I don't know if the hero is Shiro has to be a human being it can be a great idea it can be a gesture can be a literature which is a hero's evil it can be music it can be art painting there must be the other side of you we've seen that highly accomplished one who overcame obvious setbacks I still am overcoming on the other hand my instincts would tell me you'd be a tough person to live with I think you know you'd I suspect that you're strong-willed would be an understatement I don't think so I don't think how many husbands are gay enough for the time being either gonna be a bore are you asking well I don't mean to be cheeky but I mean yes I am I think are you asking me directly I guess I was asking not so that just voyeuristic good but but how it would affect can one live like yourself with all the professors what happens when you write for example do you I read somewhere you just I was it your mother who said when Maya starts to write she becomes obsessed with it yeah and I suppose I do and I don't know if that about obsessed I don't think my mother would say that but I go away I keep a hotel room really mm-hmm I give her a tell room and I leave for it about six o'clock in the morning and I go into it I tried to be at work by 7:00 I keep a dictionary Roget's thesaurus a Bible and cigarettes bottle of sherry and playing cards and I stay in there until 12:30 writing longhand if the work is going well not stay longer but if it's going horribly I don't leave now it's mostly about your own life you're passed by and large well whatever I'm writing I mean I may be writing a screenplay but I go to work Hawthorne says easy reading is damned hard writing so I go to work I realize it is work that I'm going to this is not I'm waiting for the light bulb to go off over my head so dig like I can feel where I'm coming I don't do that I go to work now when I'm when I was married I would get home and wash because when you write you sweat it's hard work and see that the house is lovely and fresh flowers and I'm a cook that is my hobby so I would prepare for dinner change and be looking nice I hope when I as an urge to return and try to be present with him try to be existential now it is true that a part of our - you know pulling off that way but I don't think I'm hard to live live your book in caged birds you always described as Negro you don't say black well but that was talking about a time when Negro was fashionable we have gone through many color I mean many entitles Negro colored afro-american you know so I was writing about a time and when black people were called Negro and winklevosses flowers black in the curious in our discussion revolves so much around white and black you named all of those degrees of color that but in fact in terms of accomplishment it doesn't have anything to do if it isn't the mind and there's no talent nothing means anything well I tell you if you take two people if they both start at the same place and elevate ascend then you can say mmm that's all the same thing but if you take a person who has been here and one who has started here there's a difference there's a world of difference because you say think to yourself listen had you come at from as far as I've come you should be President of the world my dear I'm not so sure you're not going to be you see what I mean though that's what makes one has to see the relative uh you sit down there you're female you're black and from the rural South that's I can't start much lower is that what you're saying it's hard to you know gee I might have been spanish-speaking in there the slightest possibility the white folks myself can truly understand the black experience oh I think to the degree that it's necessary to understand we once said that black folks should play white folks in plays and what could because you've been studying yeah white folks for hundreds a year yeah [ __ ] but that the white folks don't understand you know very seldom have had to you see it's like the cotton is in Britain in England in particular the aristocrats and the upper class and the upper middle class controlled so much of life that the cockney developed a way of watching that person and can imitate him to a fine degree one has only to see the current look at Finney or some of the current of actors who can imitate the upper class and upper middle class to a degree so finely honed that they can't even they can put it over for blacks in this country for centuries the wave of a white woman's hand might reveal that she is getting ready to sell one's children or frown on a white man's face could mean in a moment you're about to be flogged so people learn to watch there's a poem about facing always with a grin oh when I think about myself is that the story of the blacks the face that well people laughed had to learn to laugh when they weren't tickled and to scratch when they didn't ditch black folks dick black rocks dead have you ever considered its pain just some looters ludicrously simple but why did white folks where you grew up I could they and why would they hate somebody like your grandmother why would they hate but because they're frightened why you have done I know but people afraid for one thing that basically people are afraid to die that is basic I'm coming to it let me explain basically people are afraid to die so they clutch to something which they think will preserve their lives so they try to guarantee happiness to themselves by something dirt and misery off on someone else that sterling Brown at Sterling Brown's poem the strong man people feel if I can keep them out of this building them off this street them out of this employment line I live a little longer they don't think it consciously but that is fundamental people are afraid to be pried loose from their ignorance because they know they're ignorant so well they know it better than they know their body odors and if you say come on give me up yet give up your ignorance they get into that terrible position terrifying position which Shakespeare talks about at the end of the soliloquy hamlet soliloquy they'd rather bear the ills they have then fly to others that they knew not all this content that make cowards of us all so their cowardly there's a eight or nine ten-year-old mute black man you know Arkansaw he surely didn't know all that what did you think of black and white at the time would you think of white folks I didn't think they were real I didn't think they were real people really huh I thought they were white folks what I thought they were white wouldn't mean you didn't think they're real you don't think that arms and legs oh no they had arms and legs but they didn't have innards like other people I thought if you put your hand on on a five person it would go right through it's good I promise you they're white folks we were people you are that distance from I mean absolutely I mean you live scarcely 300 yards apart and in some respects oh and my grandmother owned the land most of them live down but they weren't real I mean there was a rude nice people like us I mean we were clear the real vote people said evening how you doing fine thank you I sure appreciate it yes ma'am but not wife oh no they'd come into the store and act as if they had credit and order my crippled uncle around you know sir I'm you did if they were real people they'd be nice you returned after all of this time you've returned to the south I presumed to live there yes forever back to North Carolina I mean you've gone to North Carolina you see Wake Forest I would think where are you and obviously I don't understand anything that at the last place I'd go back to is the south yeah well you wrote of it as such pain and heaping such indignities on blacks in general and you in particular yes but there's very little difference really I mean between Atlanta and New York John killing says Atlanta's down south New York is up south you know it wasn't a big step to go home to the south for you it was big but it I'd I have not exchanged anything I've bought a really lovely house with about 40 dogwood trees and pecan trees and oaks and do you ever think you'd be living like that in the South in your wildest imagination early on it was a major as a teenager I was going to be this successful real estate broker of course I would live like that my mother grew I grew up in a 14 room house so why I shouldn't die once I mean once I understood that unfortunately rooming house where she rented out some rooms upstairs but it was her house 14 rooms this isn't some Franciscan Franciscan um I've long believed that the best there is to have is the best for me and I believe that the best there is to be is the best for me I'd like to be the very best somewhere I read that you mentioned I think was Billie Holiday even when she said don't get too high to be brought down what was look do you remember what that was about yes Billie Holiday told me that I was going to be famous she said I wouldn't be famous for singing but she said you're going to be famous but remember you can't get so high somebody won't try to bring you down so what my great aspiration my greatest ambition is to be so good now in that way I'm tiresome as that's opposed to live with because I want to be a fantastic human being you ever done that so far inside myself inside so that it is more than talk it is really reflex action it is truly instinct paraphrasing mr Hayden but that's my dream so far offer you from the dream well I'm on the road I blow it you know I blow it damn it I blow it but I really I want to be a Christian what I want to be a Christian in my heart that's the truth you grew up in that is it that we don't really understand the role of the church and stamps Arkansas I'll bet you I mean that wasn't just something you went to on Sunday don't know it is that you dressed up as a little girl and it's an all day it's not over trying to be a Christian is like trying to be a good Jew a good Muslim a good friend I love her it it's not a condition you achieve and then you sit back there well I got that I'm cool now you know it's just back at it and trying to be it internally what was it like you know one of the problems of times when when whites imitate blacks in a religious setting it's all external it's all hate they think that now the black person who does the same gesture looks differently because it is from inside out it is it's the spirit moving it is really the spirit itself being moving outside of moving the body itself so what I want to be is not I want my gestures my actions to display what I am inside that's what I want it's so rooted what you've described as part of America in the rural cell but you spend some time in Egypt you spend some time in Africa and in Europe yeah what was it like being an American black woman in Africa and in those Arab countries is there a sense of going home at all no I forgot that yes in Ghana yes but not in Egypt no but in Ghana did you feel comfortable yes this home yes it was the first time I've ever felt at home I was in Ghana and curiously note the second time in my life I've ever felt at home is in winston-salem North Carolina where you are right now where I am right now I'm no way of explaining it I have never had family to live there I have no connection with North Carolina but I feel myself at home well my Angela perhaps you've gone home maybe thank you for being with us thank you this has been one on one a pre-recorded presentation of ABC news [Music]

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Length: 43min 57sec (2637 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2019