By Ethan Shea

Maya Angelou in 1969 (Photo courtesy of NYT)

Yesterday, April 4, 2023, marked 95 years since the birth of poet, memoirist, civil rights, and women’s rights activist Maya Angelou.

Angelou passed away at the age of 86 in 2014, leaving behind a literary legacy like no other. She was born in 1928 in the city of St. Louis, Missouri. After several moves and a difficult upbringing, at the age of 16, Angelou became the first Black woman streetcar conductor in San Francisco. Soon after, at the age of 17, Angelou gave birth to her son, Guy Johnson.

At one point in her life, Maya Angelou was even a professional dancer, having worked with Alvin Ailey and moved to New York City to pursue a career in dance. After touring Europe and even recording an album in which she sang calypso music, Angelou eventually decided to focus on her writing career.

“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” – Maya Angelou

Angelou worked with civil rights activists such as James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr., even working to organize a march with King. Sadly, after postponing the event, King was assassinated on Angelou’s 40th birthday. A year later, Angelou published her breakout autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

In 1972, a screenplay written by Angelou, Georgia, Georgia, became the first known screenplay written by a Black woman to be produced. Angelou even wrote the soundtrack for the film!

Angelou was also a mentor of Oprah Winfrey, having met in the 1970s. After Angelou’s death, Winfrey went on to speak at her memorial service along with Michelle Obama.

In addition to her seven autobiographies, Angelou is also a celebrated poet. Although her poetry has not received as much critical attention as her prose, many believe Angelou’s poetry is understudied.

Angelou’s poetry readings, the public and performative aspects of them, are what made them special. Considering April is National Poetry Month, you should definitely consider reading some of Angelou’s poetry if you have not already!

If you have a few free minutes, you can also read this blog commemorating Angelou becoming the first Black woman to be minted on a quarter.

And finally, to celebrate Maya Angelou’s birthday, check out Falvey’s collection of her work.

Ethan Shea is a second-year graduate student in the English Department and Graduate Assistant at Falvey Library.

Happy Friday, Wildcats! Falvey Library is delivering you another semester of Weekend Recs, a blog dedicated to filling you in on what to read, listen to, and watch over the weekend. Annie, a graduate assistant from the Communication department, scours the internet, peruses the news, and digs through book stacks to find new, relevant, and thought-provoking content that will challenge you and prepare you for the upcoming week. 

Photo by Woubishet Z. Taffese on Unsplash

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is without a doubt the most remembered and revered Civil Rights activist in the United States. From his rise to prominence with his activism and work with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to his horrific assassination, and with an entire day dedicated to his life, his modern acclaim is unsurprising.

Consequently, as Civil rights and racial justice have progressed (although the progress is sometimes very meager and disappointing), the radical nature of Dr. King has largely been replaced with a liberalized image, a man seeking moderate change. Yet, in the 1950s and 60s, Dr. King was anything but a liberal or moderate figure, he was directly challenging the U.S. government, a government that very much needed to be challenged. Many of the choices he made were not just moral, but strategic and trailblazing. In honor of MLK Day this upcoming Monday, this weekend’s recs will hopefully shine a slightly different light on Martin Luther King Jr. and his philosophy, politics, and activism.

If you have 12 minutes…and want to focus less on the past and more on the future, read this article in Counter Punch. Meyer, Jeffers, and Ragland place an emphasis on learning from organizers and activists of the past to combat racial hate and violence today, and they push back against the modern oppositional dichotomization of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

If you have 13 minutes…and need to brush up on your Civil Rights history, watch this Crash Course video on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC.

If you have 17 minutes…and want to read one of his most famous works, read “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” available at Falvey. This open letter was written by Dr. King after he was arrested during the nonviolent Birmingham protest campaign in 1963 and offers his guiding beliefs, arguments, and principles.

Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash

If you have 20 minutes…and only plan to read one thing from this list, read “MLK Now” by Brandon Terry, available online through Falvey. This piece is truly a standout work that revisits and offers a reconsideration of Dr. King and his work in today’s age and what we can and should learn from him.

If you have 26 minutes…and want to hear from Dr. King himself, watch this NBC interview with Dr. King. This interview really sheds light on Dr. King’s perspective on his Civil Rights work and where he saw the movement heading 11 months before his assassination.

If you have 30 minutes…and are interested in learning about King’s dedication to strategic nonviolence, read Karuna Mantena’s essay, “Showdown for Nonviolence: The Theory and Practice of Nonviolent Politics” by Karuna Mantena, available (in the 4th chapter of To Shape a New World) at Falvey.

If you have 2 hours and 8 minutes…and still haven’t seen it, watch Ava DuVernay’s Selma, available in Falvey’s DVD Collection. Although the film’s sole focus is not on Dr. King, it shows his efforts to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed and puts his courage and the violence with which he and other Civil Rights activists were met into perspective.

If you have 11 hours…and want to read essays exploring Dr. King and his work from a variety of different perspectives, read Shelby and Terry’s To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr, available in Falvey. This book has some great essays that look at King through diverse and interesting lenses.

Annie Stockmal is a graduate student in the Communication Department and graduate assistant in Falvey Library.

Happy Friday, Wildcats! Falvey Library is delivering you another semester of Weekend Recs, a blog dedicated to filling you in on what to read, listen to, and watch over the weekend. Annie, a graduate assistant from the Communication department, scours the internet, peruses the news, and digs through book stacks to find new, relevant, and thought-provoking content that will challenge you and prepare you for the upcoming week.

The 2022 Pennsylvania midterm elections are coming up this November, and regardless of your political affiliation, voting in them is important (especially if you have a bone to pick with any of the recent Supreme Court rulings or state legislation). This upcoming election will determine Pennsylvania’s next U.S. Senator and Governor, among other important positions. In celebration of National Voter Registration Day this upcoming Tuesday, this weekend’s recs will help you prep for the PA midterm elections, whether it’s your first time voting or your 40th.

If you have 5 minutes…and don’t know if you’re registered to vote in PA, check your voter registration status.

If you have another 5 minutes…and are not registered to vote in PA (or moved dorms since the last time you voted), submit an online voter registration application. There are a few voting districts that cover Villanova’s campus, so if you moved dorms this year, you may need to update your registration by submitting a new application.

If you have 10 minutes…and want to know all of the important deadlines for the PA midterm elections, read this NBC article. The election isn’t until Nov. 8, but there may be other important deadlines to be aware of before you can cast your ballot.

If you have another 10 minutes…and want to request a PA mail-in or absentee ballot, visit this page to find the right application for you (available in English, Spanish, and Traditional Chinese). You can submit these applications online or print one out and mail it.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Bonus: if you don’t know the difference between a mail-in ballot and an absentee ballot or have questions about the two, check out this website. It explains the differences and answers some other key questions you may have.

If you have 15 minutes…and want to hear about the high profile Senate race in PA, read this New York Times article. Even for those who are not heavily tuned into politics, the race between Dr. Oz (R) and John Fetterman (D) is garnering national attention.

If you have another 15 minutes…and are an out-of-state resident planning to vote in your home state’s election, find out your state’s important dates and information for the midterms through NBC‘s 2022 midterm calendar.

If you have 20 minutes…are not sure who will be on your ballot, visit Vote411. Just put in your home address (or your Villanova dorm address), and it will show you some of the important candidates on your ballot. It also includes responses from candidates answering various questions about their campaigns and positions.

If you have 25 minutes…and want to learn more about voting rights, watch this Netflix docu-series episode. It really shines a light on some of the issues that voters in the U.S. face and offers some hope for change.

If you have 2 hours and 8 minutes…and want to watch a film that highlights the people who helped secure and protect the voting rights of many BIPOC Americans, watch Selma. The film provides a gritty look at a brutal event in the Civil Rights Movement, and, bonus, it was directed by a black woman, Ava DuVernay.

Annie Stockmal is a graduate student in the Communication Department and graduate assistant in Falvey Library.

Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I have a dream” speech on August 28, 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial as part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. To this day the speech is a key piece of oration for the Civil Rights movement. Like every great orator, MLK had some prepared speech notes for his address—notes that actually did not include the famous “I have a dream” section (which was spun on the spot from the heart)—but he did not keep them. What happened to those notes, you ask?

They came into the possession of Villanova alum and College Basketball Hall of Famer George Raveling, class of 1960.

George Raveling, 10th on Villanova’s all-time rebounding list and the second ever black basketball player at Villanova, was inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013 and the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015. He was not only a talented college basketball player, but also went on to be an inspiring coach. He got his coaching start as a part-time assistant to Villanova coach Jack Kraft and later went on to coach full-time for Washington State, the University of Iowa, and the University of Southern California. Since retiring from coaching, Raveling has worked as Director for International Basketball for Nike.

So how did Raveling become the proud keeper of MLK’s speech notes? Raveling and his good friend Warren Wilson were only young men when they decided to go to Washington D.C. for the march in 1963. They were approached by one of the march’s organizers and asked to provide security—and they agreed. Raveling wound up just a few feet from MLK on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. He was enthralled by MLK and his message of equality and civil rights. After the speech concluded and the crowd on the steps moved to disperse, he simply asked King, “Can I have that?”

And so they became his.

The notes have since been museum-treated and framed and are stored in a vault for safe-keeping. Raveling does not want to ever sell them, but is interested in their public display; he is currently in talks with various educational and museum groups.

You can read the full Sports Illustrated article on George Raveling and the MLK speech notes here. USA Today also covered the story. To learn more about Raveling’s induction to the College Basketball Hall of Fame, check out this article via VU Hoops.

This article by Michelle Callaghan, former graduate assistant on the Communication and Marketing team, was originally published January 15, 2018. 

Whenever a public figure passes away, I can expect that for the next few days my social media will be abuzz with articles, remembrances and general mentions of said person. So it has come as no surprise that since Maya Angelou’s death on Thursday May 28 my Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr feeds, as well as many other websites and blogs that I frequent, have been brimming with content on the life, works and death of Angelou. However, as I have scrolled through the many posts and tweets in response to Angelou’s life and death over the past few days I have been struck by the genuine outpouring of emotions people are expressing. It felt somehow unique, somehow more personal than the usual “rest in peace” and “they will be missed” messages I usually see.

I was particularly moved by a Facebook post by a good friend of mine who teaches high school English who posted late in the day on the 28th long after all of the initial posts of surprise and sadness had flooded my news feed, she said:

“I spent some time today thinking about what I love so much about Maya Angelou, and I’ve decided it’s the fact that she made me feel powerful, in all the positive connotations of that word.”

Go to Angelou’s Wikipedia page or any site detailing her biography and you can learn that “she published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, and several books of poetry, and was credited with a list of plays, movies and television shows spanning more than 50 years” (Wikipedia). And Angelou’s resume was as varied and interesting as her writing. In her lifetime she was a poet, civil rights activist, dancer, film producer, television producer, playwright, film director, author, actress and professor, just to name a few of the occupations she held in her 86 years of life.

But put all of that aside; remove the titles, labels, accomplishments and honors, and consider a simple sentence: “She made others feel powerful.”

It’s hard to think of a better epitaph for a woman who once said “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Dig Deeper: Maya Angelou

If you’re interested in learning more about Maya Angelou, we have some resources to recommend:

Books in our catalog written by Maya Angelou

Books about Maya Angelou and critical companions to her works:

• · Maya Angelou : the poetry of living
• · Maya Angelou : a critical companion:
• · Critical companion to Maya Angelou : a literary reference to her life and work
• · Conversations with Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou’s official website (pretty bogged down right now, may not open due to heavy traffic)

Dictionary of Literary Biography (Available through Databases A-Z) has the following entry on Maya Angelou:

Maya Angelou (4 April 1928-). Lynn Z. Bloom

Afro-American Writers After 1955: Dramatists and Prose Writers. Ed. Thadious M. Davis and Trudier Harris-Lopez. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 38. Detroit: Gale Research, 1985. p3-12.

JStor:

Remembering Maya Angelou: a 1977 interview in The Black Scholar.

YouTube:

• Maya Angelou reciting her poem “Phenomenal Woman.”
• Maya Angelou reciting her poem, “And Still I Rise” reflecting on the sufferings of Africans and the denial of African history, published in 1978
• 10 video clips from the National Visionary Leadership Project oral history interview with Maya Angelou recorded in 2002 (these are really nice.)

Article by Sarah Wingo, team leader- Humanities II, subject librarian for English, literature and theatre.