Maya Angelou & Ron McNair
Maya Angelou
(born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014)
Maya Angelou became a poet and writer after a string of odd jobs during her young adulthood. These included fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, Porgy and Bess cast member, Southern Christian Leadership Conference coordinator, and correspondent in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa. She was also an actor, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was active in the Civil Rights Movement and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties.
With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou publicly discussed aspects of her personal life. She was respected as a spokesperson for black people and women, and her works have been considered a defence of black culture. Her works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to ban her books from some U.S. libraries. Angelou’s most celebrated works have been labelled as autobiographical fiction, but many critics consider them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt to challenge the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Her books centre on themes such as racism, identity, family, and travel.
”Develop enough courage so that you can stand up for yourself, and then stand up for somebody else.”
Ronald Erwin McNair
(October 21, 1950 – January 28, 1986)
As a child in the summer of 1959, Ron McNair refused to leave the segregated Lake City Public Library without being allowed to check out his books. After the police and his mother were called, he was allowed to borrow books from the library, which is now named after him. A children’s book, Ron’s Big Mission, offers a fictionalized account of this event.
McNair graduated as valedictorian of Carver High School in 1967, earned his Bachelor of Science in engineering physics, magna cum laude, from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and his Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) under Michael Feld.
After graduation from MIT (receiving four honorary doctorates, a score of fellowships and commendations while achieving a 6th-degree black belt in taekwondo), McNair became a staff physicist at the Hughes Research Lab in Malibu, California. He also qualified to be an American NASA astronaut and the second African American to fly into space. He was a member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity and of the Bahá’í Faith.
Following the STS-41-B mission, McNair was selected for STS-51-L as one of three mission specialists in a crew of seven. The mission launched on January 28, 1986. He was killed when Challenger disintegrated nine miles above the Atlantic Ocean 73 seconds after lift-off.
”The true courage of space flight is not sitting aboard 6 million pounds of fire and thunder as one rockets away from this planet. True courage comes in enduring, persevering, the preparation and believing in oneself.”
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