On August 28, 1963, a group of activists gathered across from the U.S. Embassy in the Ghanaian capital of Accra. Inspired by the March on Washington taking place 5,000 miles away, the protesters carried signs calling on the U.S. government to “eradicate” racism and claimed that the United States now faced a choice between “civil rights and civil war.”
In the front row of the demonstration stood a face that would later become famous: the American author and poet Maya Angelou.
The march in Accra reflected Angelou’s growing commitment to radical politics. Frustrated by American racism and fascinated by African decolonization, she moved to Egypt in 1961 and then to Ghana in 1963. In both countries she found work as a journalist in the state-controlled media.
While Angelou’s memoirs provide few details about this political work, I have spent the last three years tracking down surviving copies of her writings from Egypt and Ghana. These newly discovered texts attest to Angelou’s efforts to link the struggle for civil rights in the United States with global campaigns against racism and imperialism.
However, they also suggest that she faced censorship and discrimination that tested her abilities as a writer and may have ultimately led her to return to the United States.
Today, Angelou – who was born on April 4, 1928 – is best known for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), a vivid account of her childhood in Arkansas. In 1993, she recited one of her most famous poems, On the Pulse of Morning, at the inauguration of U.S. President Bill Clinton.
In contrast, Angelou’s anti-colonial journalism reveals a new and more radical side of her career in the 1960s.
Escape from New York
Angelou’s political writing began in New York. She moved to the city to work as a nightclub singer and soon became friends with left-wing groups such as the Harlem Writers’ Guild and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
These connections encouraged Angelou to submit written works to Moons of Revolution (The Revolution on Monday) – a literary magazine of the Fidel Castro government in Cuba. By searching the magazine’s digital archives, I was able to track down Angelou’s very first publication, Between Memphis and Cleveland (Between Memphis and Cleveland).
This gripping short story is about an African-American who narrowly escapes a racist attack and was published in a special edition of Monday dedicated to the fight for civil rights.
In late 1960, Angelou met South African anti-apartheid activist Vusumzi Make at a Harlem Writers Guild party. The two fell in love immediately and moved to Cairo together in late 1961 to support Make’s work with the African Association, a network of anti-colonial activists sponsored by the Egyptian government.
To pay off Make’s considerable debts, Angelou took a job as Africa editor at the Arab Observer, a news magazine with close ties to the Egyptian regime. She also began writing for Radio Cairo, Egypt’s international broadcaster, and received extra pay for every manuscript she read herself.
This work encouraged Angelou to develop her skills as a political writer. At the Arab Observer, Angelou recalled in her memoirs, she learned to produce propaganda “with such subtlety that the reader believes it to be his own opinion.”
Extant issues of the magazine show that its work was radical and anti-colonial, advocating “real militancy” in the fight against apartheid and imperial rule. Radio Cairo, meanwhile, competed with British, French, Soviet and Israeli stations for listeners across Africa.
The Egyptian broadcasts undoubtedly helped to intimidate the imperial authorities, who were increasingly concerned about the influence of “hateful anti-colonial propaganda” in their own territories. In response, broadcasters such as the BBC began to establish and develop their own radio stations to “counteract the impact of Radio Cairo”.
Censors and collaborators
When her relationship with Make fell apart, Angelou moved again – this time to Ghana, which was then led by the charismatic socialist Kwame Nkrumah. In Accra, she found a supportive community of African-American radicals who, like her, had emigrated to Africa in the hope of contributing to progressive anti-colonial causes. She also began working as a journalist for government-funded newspapers such as the Ghanaian Times and The African Review.
By cross-referencing texts from Angelou’s personal archive and BBC radio transcripts, I discovered that she continued to write for the radio, this time on the African Service of the Ghana Broadcasting System, another international broadcaster that British officials believed was “detrimental to their interests” in Africa.
In her writings, she continued to attack racism and imperialism, and called on Africans and African Americans to unite against the “common enemy” of white supremacy. In her articles and radio addresses, Angelou argued that the liberation of Africa from colonial rule could pave the way for the liberation of African Americans from the violence of segregation.
However, a comparison of Angelou’s original scripts with broadcast transcripts suggests that her writing was also subject to political censorship by the Nkrumah regime. In a 1964 broadcast, for example, her references to Ghana’s “symbolic military machine” were replaced with praises of its “military might,” while a critical reference to Africa’s “self-proclaimed saviors” was omitted entirely.
Angelou also faced increasing political discrimination. After the failed assassination attempt on Nkrumah in 1964, paranoid Ghanaian authorities accused the African-American community of acting as agents for the United States.
In her memoir, Angelou claims she kept her head down to “escape the flaming tongues”—yet she also wrote an article in the Ghanaian Times denouncing moderate African Americans as “Uncle Toms” and “slave sellers” who did not recognize their own bondage. When the Nkrumah government began expelling prominent American activists, Angelou may have felt obligated to exploit these widespread prejudices to avoid becoming embroiled in them herself.
Africa in retrospect
Angelou returned to the United States in February 1965, hoping to work for the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Inspired by Malcolm X’s trips to Africa in 1964, the group sought to support black liberation by adopting the tactics of African anti-colonial parties.
However, Angelou’s plans fell apart after the shocking assassination of Malcolm X. Although she continued to write for The African Review, she gradually turned away from journalism and devoted herself to the poetry and memoirs that would later make her famous.
Overall, Angelou’s political writings shed light on a fascinating moment of solidarity. At the height of the civil rights movement, she and other African-American radicals turned away from the United States and toward Africa. To do so, however, she had to navigate complicated systems of paternalism, discrimination, and censorship.
Ultimately, Angelou’s early writings paint a complex, compelling, and all too human picture of her career as an anti-colonial activist.
Looking for something good? Cut through the noise and get a curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions delivered straight to your inbox every two weeks on Fridays. Sign up here.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
This research was supported by a Trinity Hall Graduate Fellowship and a travel fellowship from the Prince Consort and Thirlwall Fund, University of Cambridge.
