I Will Miss Maya Angelou

I didn't always understand Ms. Angelou; but I had a tremendous admiration for her. Whenever she spoke about an issue, she said something thought-provoking which made perfect sense whether or not one agreed with her.
I couldn't understand why in 2008 she wanted to vote her sex instead of her race when she advocated
for Hillary Clinton. I understood the sentiment, the inclination, but not the actual choice.
As the racist said on the Oprah show years earlier, ' I tell my kids there are three kind of people in this world- men, women, and niggers." And he was at least honest enough to say the truth about how
very many people in America do think.
One of my children worked as an operator at a cell phone company. Black people asking for directions
or business placements were simply looking for service in service-seeking language. Voices she identified as white found occasion at least once per day, to use the "N" word.
Operators used adopted names, and many white customers objected to names which didn't sound
European to them. Others wanted no confusion about the contempt they felt for any location black
people might frequent, but they saw no need to call people "black". They had naming options
themselves they preferred.
So when a black man asks for the support of black people, the choice to help him may be a difficult
one, but not a controversial one.
In the intervening years since the 2008 election, Ms. Angelou's political tones changed when she spoke in public. She remained kind and generous, but she did speak as though she had seen the foolish make fools of themselves time and time again. That was new for her. I was almost sorry to see
how the American election of the first black president had seemed to open her eyes to the residual
ugliness left in this country. She was a warm, caring person who had seen enough ugliness in her life.
I myself had seen even in the north how when people were separated into two or more groups, for purposes of travel, white leaders put black women in groups of black men, even if there happened to be one woman and six men.
There may be nothing inherently wrong with that. However, if a young woman felt uncomfortable with the described situation, she was still out of luck. White women had more choices.
So many in this country feel dichotomous regarding their persons and their race. In many American
spaces, that dichotomy is in the person's mind only.
But politics and race aside, Maya Angelou was a literary genius. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings,
and Ms. Angelou's poetry and other works seemed so inspired as to be other worldly. She was truly
one of a kind.
I believe she was also extremely well-read, even as a young person.
I always loved the poem by Georgia Douglas Johnson (who passed away in 1966) called
The Heart Of A Woman. I wondered often whether the title of Ms. Angelou's famous book was inspired by that poem, a poem I think of when I think of the gracious graceful philosophy and life
of  Maya Angelou.
                                               The Heart Of A Woman by Georgia Douglas Johnson (1886-1966)
                              The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
                              As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
                              Afar o'er life's turrets and vales does it roam
                              In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.

                              The heart of a woman falls back with the night,
                              And enters some alien cage in its plight.
                              And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars,
                              While it breaks, breaks, breaks, on the sheltering bars.