She also says,

Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise.

While what the word huts means is not entirely clear, from the context of the poem, we can surmise that the speaker is referring to her ancestors' history as slaves. Slaves were often housed in rough huts on a plantation, and the huts would, as the speaker notes, become a symbol of the shame of slavery.

In the same stanza, the speaker calls herself "a black ocean, leaping and wide." This is a positive image describing her current sense of power, but it also brings to mind the Atlantic Ocean, which Black people were forced to cross in captivity, another of the shameful events of history she alludes to.

In the last stanza, the speaker is more explicit about her roots, saying she is the "dream" and "hope" of the "slave."

The poem as a whole celebrates the renewed sense of liberation Black women were experiencing in the 1970s as both the civil rights movement and the rise of the womanist movement based on Black female liberation gave Black woman a voice they had never had before to speak their truths. Angelou is celebrating how far Black women have come from a truly horrific situation rooted in slavery. The poem works on the basis of contrast, showing how the present differs from the past.