On this day in 1928 Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis, as Marguerite Johnson. As a child she got the nickname "maya" ("mine") from her brother; she chose the "Angelou" later, an adaptation of her first husband's name, taken at the beginning of her stage career. The title of the first and most famous volume of her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she took from a Paul Laurence Dunbar poem ... FULL STORY »
