CAIR-Chicago remembers Dr. Maya Angelou
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
It is with great sadness that we learned of the passing of Dr. Maya Angelou this morning. Dr. Angelou was an author, poet, civil rights activist and acted as a great source of inspiration for millions of Americans.
"Dr. Angelou helped me find a voice as a writer, and inspired me as an activist. Her words will live on forever as will her legacy. I hope that future generations continue to read her many works and follow in her footsteps as a fearless woman who always spoke truth to power," said CAIR-Chicago's Senior Communications Coordinator Agnieszka Karoluk.
Below is a brief description of Dr. Angelou's work, from the New York Times article, "Maya Angelou, Lyrical Witness of the Jim Crow South, Dies at 86":
"Throughout her writing, Ms. Angelou explored the concepts of personal identity and resilience through the multifaceted lens of race, sex, family, community and the collective past. As a whole, her work offered a cleareyed examination of the ways in which the socially marginalizing forces of racism and sexism played out at the level of the individual.
“If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat,” Ms. Angelou wrote in 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.'"
'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.' -Maya Angelou