Rest in peace, Marguerite Johnson.
1. Maya Angelou was born April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Mo.
2. Her actual birth name is Marguerite Johnson.
3. Maya's older brother, Bailey Jr., nicknamed her "Maya," meaning "my sister."
4. She grew up in Stamps, Ark., (the state where she recently had to cancel a reading because of "an unexpected ailment").
5. She then wrote this really lovely letter as an apology.
6. When she was a teenager, Maya won a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco's Labor School.
7. But when she was 14 years old she dropped out of school to become San Francisco's first African-American female cable car conductor.
8. She gave birth to her first and only child — her son, Guy — when she was 16 years old.
9. She never went to college but has received more than 50 honorary degrees.
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10. She recorded an album in 1957 titled Calypso.
11. She moved to New York in 1958 and joined the Harlem Writers Guild.
12. She acted in the Off-Broadway show, The Blacks.
13. She wrote and performed in Cabaret for Freedom.
14. She moved to Cairo, Egypt, and was the editor of The Arab Observer.
15. After one year in Cairo, she moved to Ghana and taught at the University of Ghana's School of Music and Drama.
16. She befriended Malcolm X — and planned on helping him build his new Organization of Afro-American Unity — before he was killed.
17. She worked as feature editor for The African Review and wrote for The Ghanaian Times.
18. She helped Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Civil Rights movement as the Northern Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
19. King died on her birthday in 1968, and she didn't celebrate her birthday in the years that followed.
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