Renowned poet speaks on hope

"When it looked like the cloud wasn't gonna shine anymore, God put a rainbow in the cloud," Maya Angelou said to the full capacity audience of students and faculty who welcomed her with a standing ovation Saturday evening at the Plex.

Angelou has authored 12 best-selling books including I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, won a Grammy Award for best spoken word, and received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for her volume of poetry Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Die.

In addition to being a poet and author, she is also an educator, civil rights activist, playwright, producer, and director.

Angelou, 76, spoke, sang, and recited poetry to the audience about courage. She explained that courage, the most important of all the virtues, is a prerequisite to all other virtues.

"Because without [courage] you cannot practice any other virtue consistently. You can't be consistently fair, consistently kind, consistently generous, consistently just, and certainly not consistently loving without courage," she said.

Angelou used African-American poetry to illustrate courage. "It's so rich, so beautiful, so powerful. I think it can be credited with at least one whole people surviving," she said.

"I know I don't need to remind you - being in New England and all - but the first Africans were brought to what was to become the United States in 1619. Now, I don't mean to cast aspersions on my white brothers and sisters in the audience and faculty, or in the administrations in the audience, or my white nephews or nieces in the audience, but 1619 was one year before the Mayflower docked.

"And yet, here we are, still here. Still the last hired, still the first fired. Still the butts of many white liberal jokes, but still here," she said. "How could the people survive?" she continued.

Angelou offered an answer to this question by suggesting that the survival of the 50 million African-Americans in the United States is attributed to courage.

Regardless of ancestral origins everyone has been "paid for," said Angelou. She challenged the audience to look at themselves to recognize that they have been "paid for" by the ancestors that came before them who had enough courage to survive.

"So when you look at yourself and see yourself as already paid for and as a rainbow in the cloud because the truth is nobody can survive without rainbows in the clouds," she said.

She went on to recount childhood memories of her Uncle Willy, who was crippled as a result of a neurological mammary that left his whole right side paralyzed.

"Uncle Willy would grab me behind my clothes with his strong left hand and with a slur attendant due to his condition he would say 'sister do your foursies,'" Angelou recalled.

It was not until Angelou returned to Arkansas for her Uncle Willy's funeral and learned that he had also taught a boy who had grown up to become the first black mayor of Little Rock, Ark. that she realized the magnitude of a "rainbow in the cloud."

"I looked at Willy, black, poor during the lynching years, and crippled. My Lord, I had no idea of the power of that rainbow in the cloud," she said. "Who had any idea that this man would have such an influence?"

Angelou spoke directly to the students in the audience by encouraging them to think about someone who has paid for them when they prepare for an exam or an interview and "to go to the poetry."

"Don't narrow your lives down by reading only the poetry of people who look like you.

"When you leave this institution of higher education, which is already itself a rainbow in the cloud, when you leave here don't be embarrassed by saying 'I have studied American literature' and you know nothing about Paul Laurence Dunbar or James Weldon Johnson or Countee Culleen or George Dudley Johnson. Don't make that mistake," Angelou said.

Angelou read the audience several samples of African-American poetry including Dunbar's "Sympathy," which is the source from which the title of her book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is derived.

Before concluding her lecture, Angelou told the audience that when she was 7-years-old she was raped by her mother's boyfriend, who was later found murdered.

These incidents left her mute for five years as a child. She now stands as one of the most outspoken creative voices.

"If had I not had a rainbow, I would be just another molested, poor, black girl in the South, but I had a rainbow, just as you have rainbows," she said.

She ended by reading a poem she read at the United Nations.

Many students who were familiar with her poetry felt seeing her in person added to her appeal and respect.

"I've read her poetry before and from just reading a few poems, I was already taken by her. In person she is just as amazing. Just as she touched me in her poetry, she moved me even more in person," said Priti Gautam, A&S '07.