Dr. Maya Angelou's Tribute Page In Her Honor!

“I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.” –from Letter to My Daughter TO TURN OFF MUSIC PLAYER, SCROLL DOWN TO BOTTOM OF PAGE...ON THE LEFT. THEN YOU WILL BE ABLE TO ENJOY THE VIDEO'S, ETC. THANKS MUCH!

Young women, young men of color, we add our voices to the voices of your ancestors who speak to you over ancient seas and across impossible mountain tops.

Come up from the gloom of national neglect, you have already been paid for.

Come out of the shadow of irrational prejudice, you owe no racial debt to history.

The blood of our bodies and the prayers of our souls have bought you a future free from shame and bright beyond the telling of it.

We pledge ourselves and our resources to seek for you clean and well furnished schools, safe and non-threatening streets, employment which makes use of your talents, but does not degrade your dignity.

You are the best we have.

You are all we have.

You are what we have become.

We pledge you our whole hearts from this day forward.

Written by Maya Angelou (2006)

"It is my desire to be a great writer. I know that I still have a mountain to climb to achieve that. With this first novel, I am just above the foothills, but I see the path to the top, and it is my desire to write compelling stories about everything that I find of interest. I hope to be with you as a writer for a very long time, and I hope that you will enjoy reading my work, because readers are the highest form of life on this planet."

"Truthfully, while I have been writing since I was 18, I didn't know that I wanted to be a writer. I thought I was going to be a painter and sketcher. Then I thought I was going to be a photographer. I tried a hand at darkroom technician. I played in a band. It took me quite some time to discover that I wanted to write. The great thing about being the son of Maya Angelou is that I had the good fortune to grow up around some of the greatest black artists, dancers, singers, musicians, and actors of our time.

My mother was in "The Blacks" in 1960, and in that cast were Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, James Earl Jones, Godfrey Cambridge, Roscoe Lee Brown, Lou Gossett Jr., and there were so many more I can't even remember. In terms of musicians, Billie Holiday, Clifford Brown, Eric Dolphy, et cetera. And on the political side she headed Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, so of course I met Martin Luther King. Muhammad Ali met Malcolm X for the time at my mother's house. So I would say I had the great fortune of living with one of the most inspiring creative people, and she was my mother."

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

“While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God's creation.”

“love life, engage in it, give it all you've got. love it with a passion, because life truly does give back, many times over, what you put into it”

“The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.”

“I’ve learned that making a "living" is not the same thing as making a "life."”

“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible

“I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.”

“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again"

“You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise.”

Maya on religion: “I’m amazed when people come up to me and say ‘I’m a Christian.’ I say, ‘Already? I’m still trying to be one.’

How to abolish racism: “Look into anyone’s face and see yourself.”

“I don’t trust people who say, ‘I don’t like myself but I love you.’ Not.”

"What is strengthening—heartening—is to hear a younger person, a woman or a man, white or black, to say 'Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Angelou.' There is nothing greater." — Maya Angelou, author, poet and teacher.

"Some folks think that you have to be very educated to be eloquent, extremely blessed and talented to be eloquent. There's nothing more eloquent than a parent saying to a child, 'I love you.' That's eloquent. Or a lover saying to a lover, 'I love you.' That is pure eloquence."

One of the most widely read memoirists, Maya Angelou writes in The Heart of a Woman, her fourth volume of her autobiography, of the triumphs and disappointments of her public and private life. She recalls her times as a singer-dancer and budding writer in New York City, becoming northern coordinator for Martin Luther King, her encounters with the likes of Billie Holiday and Malcom X, as well as her betrothal and its aftermath and her dramatically tender relationship with her rebellious teenage son.

BECAUSE we have forgotten our ancestors, our children no longer give us honor.

BECAUSE we have lost the path our ancestors cleared kneeling in perilous undergrowth, our children cannot find their way.

BECAUSE we have banished the God of our ancestors, our children cannot pray.

BECAUSE the old wails of our ancestors have faded beyond our hearing, our children cannot hear us crying.

BECAUSE we have abandoned our wisdom of mothering and fathering, our befuddled children give birth to children they neither want nor understand.

BECAUSE we have forgotten how to love, the adversary is within our gates, an holds us up to the mirror of the world shouting, "Regard the loveless"

Therefore we pledge to bind ourselves to one another, to embrace our lowliest, to keep company with our loneliest, to educate our illiterate, to feed our starving, to clothe our ragged, to do all good things, knowing that we are more than keepers of our brothers and sisters.

We ARE our brothers and sisters.

IN HONOR of those who toiled and implored God with golden tongues, and in gratitude to the same God who brought us out of hopeless desolation, we make this pledge.

By Dr. Maya Angelou