In a country store in the dusty town of Stamps, Arkansas, a young girl sits near the candy counter. Outside, a sharp wind rustles through the shingles, but inside a potbellied stove warms the small store. Between customers she often writes poetry or reads from her beloved books.¹ These pursuits take her mind off the pain of growing up in the segregated South of the 1930s, where opportunities are denied to her because she is African American. On this day she memorizes the Presidents of the United States in chronological order.²

A tap on the counter disturbs her concentration. She never intended to ignore the customer who came to patronize her grandmother's store.³ With a sigh, she closes the book. She accurately scoops up a half-pound of flour, and gently places it into a thin paper sack.⁴

Years later, after she journeyed far away from this Arkansas town, and overcame many hardships, a special opportunity was presented to this child who grew up to be Maya Angelou—author, playwright, professional stage and screen producer, director, performer, and singer. On a November day in 1992, the future forty-second President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton, invited Angelou to compose and deliver a poem for his Inauguration Day ceremony. Her talent earned her the distinction of being the first African American and the first woman in the history of our nation to do so.

Maya Angelou felt grateful.⁵ No poet had participated in a presidential inauguration swearing-in ceremony since 1961, when Robert Frost read his work at President Kennedy's inauguration. But Angelou was terrified, too.⁶ Creating a poem that must touch the hearts of millions is a difficult task. Throughout her sixty-four years, Angelou had encountered many difficult tasks, and each time she embraced the challenge as an opportunity.

In preparation, Angelou spent weeks reading the works of scholar W. E. B. DuBois, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, poet Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and sermons of African-American preachers. Often she left her beautiful home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and checked into a quiet hotel room to write. With her Bible, dictionary, and thesaurus by her side, she wrote and rewrote the poem on yellow legal pads, soon filling two hundred pages. As she searched for more ideas and reflected upon what she had already written, she played a game of solitaire.

Between her writing sessions, people asked about her progress and suggested topics she should address. Angelou remembers, “Even on an airplane, people would pass by my seat and say: ‘Mornin,’ finish your poem yet?’”⁷

Angelou kept writing. The themes she longed to impress upon the nation—that we human beings “are more alike than unalike”⁸ and that “we may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated,”⁹ flowed through the 668 well-chosen words of the poem she called “On the Pulse of Morning.”

The delivery of the poem was crucial, too. Bertha Flowers, a special woman from Angelou's past, had once told Angelou, “Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.”¹⁰ And on that cold Inauguration Day of January 20, 1993, Angelou took her carefully crafted poem and eloquently gave meaning to her written words.

After being introduced to the audience as a “noted educator, historian, and author,” Maya Angelou began with images that would speak throughout the poem:

A Rock, a River, a Tree
Hosts to species long since departed(11)

The January sun reflected off her hoop earrings and the metal buttons of her navy blue coat. Her deep, rich voice, once described as “the sound of summer evening thunder rumbling somewhere off in the distance,”¹² gave power to the alliterations of “distant destiny,” “Marked the mastodon,” and “wall of the world.”¹³ Maya Angelou's vision of each of us as a “descendant of some passed-on traveler”¹⁴ reminded many of the suffering of those who came to this country, “arriving on a nightmare, / Praying for a dream.”¹⁵

She encouraged us to have hope for the future even though our past has been troubled.

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.(16)

Millions across the nation listened to their radios or watched as TV cameras focused on the faces in the crowd whose differences in race, color, creed, profession, and persuasion make up our nation. Tears filled some eyes. To each listener, Angelou seemed to speak personally.

Lift up your eyes
Upon this day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.(17)

The television camera captured President Clinton smiling and nodding approvingly at these lines:

Here, on the pulse of this fine day,
You may have the courage
To look up and out and upon me,
The Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.(18)

Novelist Louise Erdrich praised Angelou's forceful delivery. “Her presence was so powerful and momentous, she made a statement that I was personally longing to see and hear.”¹⁹

Here, on the pulse of this new day,
You may have the grace to look up and out
and into your sister's eyes,
And into your brother's face,
Your country,
And say simply
Very simply
With hope—
Good morning.(20)

As Maya Angelou concluded her poem, loud cheers, enthusiastic applause, a standing ovation, and a hug by the new President greeted her. “I loved your poem,” President Clinton remarked, and he promised to hang a copy in the White House.²¹ Television news correspondent Peter Jennings referred to Maya Angelou's poem as her “vision of America.”²²

This poem that “electrified the nation”²³ symbolized the hope President Clinton wanted to instill in the country—the hope that one person can overcome hardships and injustices and still look at the world with love and forgiveness.

She once told television journalist Bill Moyers, “You can never leave home. You take it with you wherever you go.”²⁴ Maya Angelou's vision of America, first formed in Stamps, Arkansas, had come with her to Washington, D.C., in the form of a poem.

Many who listened to her eloquence that historic day did not realize that she had endured a long and often painful journey to arrive at this shining moment.

Notes

1. Esther Hill, “Maya Angelou: Resolving the Past, Embracing the Future,” The Student (student literary magazine, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina), Spring 1981, p. 8.

2. Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (New York: Random House, 1969), p. 168.

3. Jeffrey M. Elliot, Conversations with Maya Angelou (Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 1989), p. 112.

4. Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, p. 15.

5. Howard G. Chau-Eoan and Nina Burleigh, “Moment of Creation,” People Magazine, January 18, 1993, p. 62.

6. Ibid.

7. Karima Haynes, “Maya Angelou: Prime Time Poet,” Ebony, April 1993, p. 72.

8. Susan Cahill, ed., Writing Women's Lives: An Anthology of Autobiographical Narratives by Twentieth-Century American Women Writers (New York: Harper Perennial, 1994), p. 210.

9. Elliot, p. 192.

10. Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, p. 95.

11. Maya Angelou, The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (New York: Random House, 1994), p. 270.

12. Haynes, p. 68.

13. Angelou, Collected Poems, p. 270.

14. Ibid., p. 271.

15. Ibid., p. 272.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid., p. 273.

19. Judith Graham, ed., Current Biography (New York: H. W. Wilson), February 1994, Vol. 55, no. 2, p. 10.

20. Angelou, Collected Poems, p. 273.

21. Haynes, p. 70.

22. ABC News live broadcast of President William Jefferson Clinton's inauguration, January 20, 1993.

23. “Oprah Throws a Party,” Ebony, June 1993, p. 120.

24. Creativity with Bill Moyers: Maya Angelou. Corporation for Entertainment and Learning, WNET Theater, 1982. Videotape.