Maya Angelou’s inspiring journey from a waitress and dancer to a legendary writer

At 15, Maya Angelou changed the course of her life by becoming San Francisco’s first Black streetcar conductor.

Cover Image Source: Dr. Maya Angelou speaks on stage during the 34th Annual AWRT Gracie Awards Gala at The New York Marriott Marquis on June 3, 2009 in New York City. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for AWRT)

“Pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you,” Maya Angelou wrote in “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” True to her quote, she lived her life with utmost passion and verve. Yet, the highlight of her life story lies in the fact that she worked in diverse fields of jobs before becoming the celebrated poet, memoirist and writer as she is known today.

Image Source: American poet and author Maya Angelou gestures while speaking in a chair during an interview at her home. (Photo by Jack Sotomayor/New York Times Co./Getty Images)
Throughout her career, Maya worked as a fry cook, streetcar conductor, cabin car conductor, cocktail waitress, singer, dancer, newspaper editor, teacher, civil rights activist and actress, spinning verses and tales that led her to live a life that was no less than beautiful poetry.
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Born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, Maya had a troubled childhood. Her parents divorced when she was only three and she was sent to her grandmother’s house in Stamps, Arkansas. Here, her perception of the world drastically altered as she experienced racial discrimination. At 7, while Maya was visiting her mother in Chicago, she was sexually molested by her mother’s boyfriend. She kept quiet, but the flame of fury smoldered inside her.

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At 15, she applied for the job of a streetcar conductor in a railway office, until she bagged the job offer, becoming San Francisco’s first Black streetcar conductor. “Sometimes the employees in the office would harass her,” says Del Sandeen, the author of her 2019 biography “Maya Angelou: Writer and Activist”, per History.

“Sometimes they would ignore her, but she kept going back until they finally gave her the job. She was very determined,” he added. She, however, quit the job to complete her high-school diploma from George Washington High School, which she did in 1945.

Shortly after graduating, she gave birth to a son named Clyde “Guy” Johnson. As a 17-year-old mother, she worked as a fry cook. According to Girl Boss, Maya applied for this job after stumbling upon an advertisement. She applied for the position of a Creole cook on a pay of $75 a week. She proclaimed that she was an expert Creole chef despite having no experience. However, till her very last day on the planet, she was a woman who loved cooking. In 2004, she even penned her first cookbook, “Hallelujah! The Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories with Recipes,” which detailed recounting recipes, as per New York Times.

Later, Maya moved to Los Angeles and worked as a cocktail waitress. “She had to figure out a way to support herself and her child,” Sandeen says. At the nightclub where she worked as a waitress, she came across some prostitutes and started working in the trade to earn more income. “She admitted in her book that she wasn’t proud of that,” Sandeen says. “I guess she felt like, ‘This is what I’m doing for the time being to make money.’ But when she was able to leave, she did.”

In 1951, Maya married Tosh Angelos, a Greek electrician, former sailor, and aspiring musician. She took modern dance classes during that time and met dancers and choreographers Alvin Ailey and Ruth Beckford. Thereupon, Maya migrated to New York City with her family to study African dance with Trinidadian dancer Pearl Primus.

While learning dance, she auditioned to be the dance partner of a Chicago visitor named R.L. Poole. However, when Poole reunited with his girlfriend, Maya was shunned. So, she moved back to San Francisco, once again working in different odd jobs. Eventually, she was hired as a dancer and calypso singer for the nightclub “The Purple Onion.” Her job as a dancer landed her in the theatrical act, “Porgy and Bess.” This was also when she first met James Baldwin.

According to Sandeen, dance was the sole medium of her creative and emotional expression, before she moved into her writing career. In 1959, Maya again shifted to New York City with her son, connecting with the groups of writers and authors. She continued practicing with her sketches, poems, writings and scripts. In 1960, a Cuban magazine published a short story she’d written.

As she became aware of the civil rights movement, she began organizing a show called “Cabaret for Freedom” to raise money for Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The show ran for five weeks and amassed a huge appreciation for Maya. She worked at SCLC, writing letters, managing volunteers, and fundraising, which is when she met King.

In 1961, Maya traveled to Cairo, Egypt, where she became the editor of “The Arab Observer” newspaper, working there for a year. “She had no journalism experience when she accepted the job,” Sandeen says. “But, again, she was like, ‘Okay, well, I guess I’ll learn on the job.’ And like with all the other jobs that she had, all of that shaped her into who she would become.” In Egypt, she met a civil rights activist named Vusumzi Make. She fell in love with him and the two married.
Image Source: Dr. Maya Angelou speaks to a sold out crowd at the Paramount Theater on April 25, 2009 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Gary Miller/FilmMagic)

When King passed away in 1968, Angelou was crushed. This was the sparkling moment when “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” was born. The book chronicles her childhood, the trauma she experienced and also how she rose and emerged through it.

Her writing career took off. In 1959, she joined the Harlem Writers Guild, encountering major African American authors, including John Henrik Clarke, Rosa Guy, Paule Marshall and Julian Mayfield, among others. “One of the things that made her such a good writer was that she knew how to tell stories, and I think just the fact that she had so many experiences gave her so many stories to tell and helped her to be entertaining as she told them,” says Sandeen.

In an interview with Harvard Business Review, Maya described her writing process, “Although I live in a huge house, I keep a hotel room and go there at about 6:30 in the morning. I have a Roget’s Thesaurus, a dictionary, a Bible, a yellow pad, and pens, and I go to work. I encourage housekeeping not to go in, since I leave at about one in the afternoon and never use the bed. And I step away from the world somehow.”
Image Source: Maya Angelou addresses audience members during a book signing for her book, “Maya Angelou: Letter to My Daughter” at Barnes & Noble in Union Square on October 30, 2008 in New York City. (Photo by Jemal Countess/WireImage)
At 85, Maya was working as a professor at Wake Forest University. Her success as a storyteller stemmed from “seeing us as more alike than we are unalike,” she told HBR. No wonder, her colorful career is both an epitome and inspiration for the youth for years to come.