Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Ann Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St Louis, Missouri. Her father Bailey Johnson was a doorman and naval nutritionist. Her mother Vivian Baxter Johnson is a nurse. Angelou received her nickname from her brother Bailey Jr., who couldn’t pronounce her name so he called her Maya, which he came from “my sister”. Angelou’s parents divorced when she was 3 years old. She and her brother were sent to live with their grandmother Anne Henderson in Tem, Arkansas. Within four years, Angelou and her brother were brought to live with their mother in St Louis. While living there, Angelou was raped before she turned 8 years old by her mother’s boyfriend. After she told her brother, the man was arrested and, after his release, was killed, probably by his uncle Angelou. His murder and the trauma surrounding it caused Angelou to be almost completely dumb for five years.
When Angelou was 14 years old, she moved with her mother to San Francisco, California. She studied dance and drama on a scholarship to the California Labor School and graduated from George Washington High School. That same year, at the age of 17, she gave birth to a son Guy. She worked to support herself and her children as a cocktail, a waitress, a kitchen, and a dancer.
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