BADASS WOMEN IN HISTORY SERIES
The Epiphany of Maya Angelou
Exploration into the Life of Maya Angelou, Part 2
By the time she reached high school, Maya Angelou came to the realization that the country of her birth did not value her or care if she succeeded in life. The white society she would exist in as a young woman was determined to do everything in its power to show her that she was inferior and that advancement beyond her current station was futile. It would be easier to accept this as a given and it was pointless to fight it. This changed how she read and understood the poems and essays of the classic authors she grew up reading. “To be or not to be,” that scathing mockery was no longer a question that pertained to her and that became even more clear as she matured and time went on. White society had gone out of its way to set up roadblocks and obstacles in her way to ensure that she didn’t succeed. White society didn’t hide this fact. The sooner white society could convince her of its inevitable power and dominance, the better, so its racism was kept out in the open.
What does a young girl approaching womanhood do when society has gone out of its way to devalue her? How is she to process the idea that the American dream she read about in literature was just that: a dream? Her life was to be one of predictable drudgery instead of self determination. There were only a few jobs available to her and those jobs were made available by white society.
The wake up call
The day of graduation had finally come. Maya had finally reached the point where she was able to move her horrific experience in St. Louis (where she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend Freeman) to the deepest recesses of her mind and she found herself smiling more. The horrific events in St. Louis became almost a bad dream that fades from memory. She had been put on the stand to name her abuser. Half the town had showed up for the trial and tongues were wagging. Her uncles, who had their own organized crime syndicate, most assuredly arranged to have Freeman killed a couple of days after he was released from jail on bail. After that, Maya had gone silent for five years. The way she saw it, her voice was what got Freeman killed so she stopped speaking all together.
She and her brother Bailey never spoke of this point in time. Maya had willed herself to graduate among the top of her class, no absences, no tardiness, and her academic work was among the best. It was time to showcase their achievements and show the older generations what an education can do for you.
The children and graduates had drilled and drilled in their respective projects of recital of poems, plays, scripture or book excerpts. It was 1940 and the nobility of the graduating classes of Stamps Arkansas trembled with anticipation. The valedictorian had titled his speech, “To Be or Not to Be” and had drilled himself on the dramatic stresses for months.
The principal got up to address the student body and parents but his voice was unusually weak and reedy which caused Maya to sit up straighter with rapt attention. To her, his voice was one that commanded attention, for it spoke of a wisdom one did not want to miss. After his voice melted into the crowd, a special guest was announced and approached the lectern to address the assembly, a Mr Edward DonLeavy who was running for public office.
He went on to congratulate the achievements of the black student body and eventually began to talk about all of the new scientific and art equipment the whites only Central High was to expect the following fall and all of the used sports equipment the black kids were going to get. Disappointment seemed to waft over the crowd as it fell silent with each following word he spoke. What was the point of this?
It dawned on Maya that white society had no interest in a highly educated black demographic. This poses a threat to white society who wanted their children at the front of the line. Even their mediocre students could excel by leaps and bounds in such a society. Underfunding black schools would be a guaranty of no competition from black society.
They would be happy if the privileged few would excel in sports and then move on to professional leagues but where did that leave the scholars, those interested in art, the sciences, and music?
How did they fit in this equation?
Arkansas was making it quite clear that they had no interest various black communities improving themselves and climbing out of poverty. They were doomed to be the maids, farmers, handymen, washerwomen, porters, cabbies and anything higher was considered uppity and presumptuous. What was the point of learning lines like “I am the master of my soul and the captain of my fate” from Invictus?
None of it rang with any truth for Maya. A suspicious cynicism started to settle into her soul. Each phrase from the literarature she drew strength from rang like a mocking obscenity.
Years prior in her youth, she was reminded of this inequality and total disdain of her existence when her brother came from outside into the store her grandmother ran. He was visibly shaken and pale. He couldn’t speak for hours. When he finally did speak, he told the family they had witnessed a couple of white people recover a body from a lake that had been wrapped in a heavy tarp. It was the body of an unidentified black person. They joked and laughed as they displayed the body to a group of curious black people who stood shocked. Bailey saw the disrespect first hand as they joked about it being “one less n***er to worry about” and what was curious was that they seemed to know exactly where to look for the body. The value of black lives was almost nonexistent.
It was then that Granny started making plans to send the two on over to their dad and mom who were now living in California.
Escaping to California had its own pitfalls and displays of disdain. While a teenager of fifteen, Maya saw an ad in the San Francisco Chronicle placed by Market Street Railway for “motorettes and conductorettes” and took a fancy to the smartly dressed uniforms of the streetcar conductors and decided that she too was going to be one. Her mother pointed out that the pay for conductors was abysmally low and that there were many more high paying jobs out there for her but she was not to be deterred. She would wear that uniform. She walked in to apply and immediately, the white clerk who ran the office told her that they were only accepting applicants from referrals from staffing agencies. There were custodial jobs galore but no conductor positions.
Right.
Was the ad in the paper nothing more than a dream, a figment of the imagination? The ad in the paper said not a word about having to go through any agency. This was during WWII so many men had left multiple jobs open for the taking.
Maya was not to be deterred. She eventually solicited the help of the NAACP which fought on her behalf. After weeks of back and forth, and scheduled meetings with lawyers, she was as finally given applications for the job. Given how little it paid, there wasn’t a line of white applicants to consider. After blood tests, aptitude tests, Rorschachs (good lord!), she was hired as the first black conductorette in San Francisco.
Prejudice and bigotry had both been ingrained so deep that Maya compared her attempt at getting a job as a streetcar conductor to the last duel between Hamlet and Laertes. She saw them both as victims of the same puppeteer destined to reenact the age old play of events set into motion by the shortsightedness of white supremacy that had reared its ugly head once again.
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