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skin color, features, and the Ghana cloth I wore made me look
like any young Ghanaian woman, she later wrote. I could
pass if I didn t talk too much.
She learned the Ghanaian traditional handshake finger
snap. She studied Fanti, Ghana s language, just as she had
studied the languages of Italy, France, and Yugoslavia. The
music of the Fanti language was becoming singable to me,
she wrote, and its vocabulary was moving orderly into
my brain.
Angelou was paid $200 a month for keeping records of stu-
dent absences and requests for transfers, selling tickets for the-
ater shows, filing, and typing. It was difficult to make ends
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Maya Angelou Make: African
meet, so she found a second job, writing commentaries on
black American issues for the Ghanaian Times.
She settled into the life of Accra, Ghana s capital. She hired
a small boy to do household chores. She attended a baby s
outdooring, an African tradition that invited family and
friends to see the new arrival. Just as everyone else did during
a harvest festival, she bounced up and down and waved a white
handkerchief above her head as the royal chieftains passed.
They were black beyond ebony, clothed in gold and rich
cloth, and were carried in hammocks before the thousands of
spectators.
One weekend, Angelou drove her Fiat into the bush outside
Accra. When she stopped in Dunkwa to rent a room for the
night, she was thoroughly inspected. Dressed in her Ghana
cloth and speaking Fanti, she was accepted by the townspeople
as an African from Liberia. They welcomed her into their
home as an honored guest. She sat in the yard, outside their
thatched-roofed house while stew cooked over an open fire. To
Angelou, the feeling was wonderful. For the first time since
my arrival, I was very nearly home. Not a Ghanaian, but at
least accepted as an African.
CONNECTED TO AMERICA
Still, despite the kinship of color in Ghana, Angelou could
never quite give up her American culture. She dated an attrac-
tive man from Mali, but she refused his proposal to be his sec-
ond wife and move her family to Mali to live with him.
As a Black American woman, I could not sit with easy
hands and an impassive face and have my future planned,
Angelou later wrote. Life in my country had demanded that I
act for myself or face terrible consequences.
Something as small as a package from the United States pro-
vided excuse enough for Angelou and her black American
friends to meet. No one would admit to being homesick for
the country they had left because of its prejudice and hate. But
60
MAYA ANGELOU
they loved reading American newspapers and devoured Amer-
ican food that friends and family sent.
Word reached the black Americans that Martin Luther
King, Jr., was planning The March for Jobs and Freedom in
Washington, D.C. They decided to support the march, sched-
uled for August 28, 1963, by organizing a similar demonstra-
tion in Ghana. They marched to the American Embassy to
deliver a letter of protest to the American ambassador. A few
carried sticks with oil rags for light as they walked and sang
throughout the night. A thunderstorm drenched the marchers,
who included Peace Corps volunteers and black Americans
visiting Accra. Guy and other university students showed up.
They had no way of knowing that the more than 200,000
demonstrators gathered at the Lincoln Memorial were listen-
ing to King deliver one of history s greatest speeches:
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up
and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold
these truths to be self-evident: that all men are cre-
ated equal. I have a dream that one day on the red
hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the
sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down
together at a table of brotherhood.
At dawn, two soldiers raised the flag over the U.S. Embassy
in Ghana. The protesters shouted insults from across the street.
But the truth could not be denied. Despite the wrongs done to
black Americans in the United States, Angelou realized that she
was not only African, she was an American as well. Having
delivered the marchers letter of protest, Angelou wrote, I went
home alone, emptied of passion and too exhausted to cry.
MEETING WITH MALCOLM X
Angelou again met Malcolm X in 1964, when he stopped in
Ghana on his way back to the United States. He had gone to
Mecca, the most holy city in Islam, and visited other African
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Maya Angelou Make: African
nations. His goal, he told Angelou and her friends, was to
bring U.S. racism before the United Nations, much like South
Africa s freedom fighters had done with apartheid. He urged
Angelou and her other black American friends to come back to
the United States. The country needs you. Our people need
you, he told her. You have seen Africa, bring it home and
teach our people about the homeland.
After Malcolm X s departure, Angelou looked carefully at
her life. Although she enjoyed watching Ghanaian children
Malcolm X
Malcolm X was a controversial African-American activist during the 1950s and
1960s. While serving a 10-year jail sentence for burglary in the late 1940s,
he became interested in the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the
Nation of Islam (or Black Muslims). Muhammad preached that white society
was evil. He wanted African Americans to live separate from whites.
After Malcolm was paroled in 1952, he worked for Elijah Muhammad. He
replaced his last name, Little, with an X, like the brand that slave owners
burned in the forearms of their new slaves. Malcolm X quickly made headlines,
calling white people devils and talking about vengeance against them. Mem-
bership in the Nation of Islam grew from 500 to 30,000 over the next decade.
He left the Nation of Islam after learning of his leader s many affairs with
women. Malcolm X formed the Muslim Mosque, Inc., and the Organization of
Afro-American Unity (OAAU). Nation of Islam members hated Malcolm.
Malcolm X reversed his beliefs after taking a pilgrimage to Mecca, the
holy city of Islam. There, he saw people of all races worshipping together.
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