WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Award winning poet and author, Dr. Maya Angelo, has died.
A police car and ambulance were seen outside her North Carolina home early Tuesday, but no word yet on her cause of death. Angelo was a major figure in the civil rights movement and received many accolades for her work, including the Presidential Medal of Arts.
She gained widespread acclaim from her first book, her autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”
Angelo made several trips to Mississippi; and in 1998, she directed the film “Down in the Delta” about a drug wrecked woman who returned to the home of her ancestors in the Mississippi Delta.
In 2004, she served addressed an audience at Delta State University in Cleveland as part of the Repaying Our Ancestors Respectfully (ROAR) celebration of the life and works of Fannie Lou Hamer.
Angelo was 86.
