Historic Films Stock Footage Archive: NT-6204

01:00:09 129.47	Bill Moyers A few years ago at a dinner in New York, I met Maya Angelou, we had grown up in the South, only 100 miles apart as the Greyhound bus goes. But world beyond worlds the inner experiences that shaped my childhood, I lived in a general and neighborly white world that open generously to ambition and luck. She moved in the tide and hounded other world of the South whose boundaries black children crossed only in their imagination, if at all, and even then at intolerable risk, but Maya Angelou broke free. And when finally we met, and another time and far beyond those once immutable boundaries, we hardly stop talking for hours two strangers from the same but different place. For three years I didn't see her again, but I heard of her accomplishments, read her books, and continue to nourish the memory of that first encounter. On a recent trip to San Francisco. I sought her out at her cottage in Berkeley across the bay to share with you the spirit and insights of this gifted and very human woman. I'm Bill Moyers.
01:01:40 220.9	Bill Moyers Singer, teacher, dancer, poet, authoress, actress, editor, songwriter, playwright, someone who said Maya Angelou's career has touched more bases than Henry Aaron, had all these categories failed to do justice to the scope of her life. She was raised in Stamps, Arkansas by her grandmother, and came as a teenager to join her mother in San Francisco, where by the way, she became the first black fare collector on the Market Street railway. In the early 1950s. She studied dancing with Pearl Primus in New York, and later appeared as a singer in San Francisco's Purple Onion. She toured Europe and Africa with Porgy and Bess, taught modern dance in Rome and Tel Aviv, played the female lead off Broadway in The Blacks worked with Godfrey Cambridge on Cabaret for Freedom, and spent a year helping to raise funds for Martin Luther King in the North. She lived in Africa for three years, editing an English language magazine in Cairo. She speaks six languages, and teaching music and drama in Ghana. She came back to America to write among several works. The screenplay for the film, Georgia, Georgia, and two powerful books, a best selling autobiography and a collection of pointers. Just Give Me A Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Die.
01:02:57 297.93	Bill Moyers Blacks and women are both trying to get free of cliches and stereotypes, how does a person who's both black and female come to grips with a society that doesn't know who you are? Maya Angelou Well, when we're excited, certainly, being free, is as difficult and as perpetual, or rather, rather, fighting for one's freedom, struggling to it being free is like struggling to be a poet, or good Christian or good Jew or good Muslim, good, Zen Buddhist, you work all day long, and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall. Go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again. I don't know if the society doesn't know who I am. And I mean, I, woman, I, Black, I, human. I don't know if I quite believe that. I think it knows and doesn't itself want to cope. And that is the society's problem, not mine. What do you mean, it doesn't want to cope? It doesn't want to deal with the human quality of me.
01:04:07 367.93	Bill Moyers Stereotypes are easy categories are more Maya Angelou Oh yeah, exactly. All you have to do is put a label on somebody. And then you'd have don't have to deal with the physical fact. You don't have to wonder if they are waiting for the Easter Bunny or love Christmas. So, you know, love their parents and hate small kids and are fearful of dogs. If you say, Oh, that's a junkie. That's a nigger. That's a kite. That's a Jew. That's a monkey. That's a- you just that's the end of it. Bill Moyers Are black women still wearing these myths, these labels these categories?
01:04:40 400.93	Maya Angelou Well, black women wear them only in white people's eyes, in the white society's eyes. You see, black women have been incredibly free to struggle for hundreds of years. And the story of the black woman is that the most noble story I know of mankind in the history of man. We came, we were brought here from societies which had matrilineal inheritance in West Africa, which matrilineal inheritance still obtains in West Africa, that is, children inherit from their mother's family. So the things stay in the mother's bloodline. But at in Africa, there's patrilineal control. So the father can decide where he wants his children to go to school, who he wants them to marry, and things are really important things. Well, slavery obviously ruled out any chance of patrilineal control. But there was the matrilineal dominance, which went underground. And after slavery, the black woman until 1940, was the one in the family who was able to make a living because the black men couldn't get jobs. And I'm,
01:05:55 475.93	Bill Moyers Yeah, that didn't that give rise to this image of matriarchal ogres? Maya Angelou No, it's just it's in. It's not fair. It's not the total picture. But it would be very valuable. I think, if the people who would use the pejorative, use matriarchy as a pejorative would do some, some homework and see where it came from, and why the black woman at one some point begins to believe her own publicity. You see, she's asked to be strong, so she's strong, and she sees how strong she is, she becomes a little bit stronger, she becomes a bit and start larger than life. The white woman on the other hand, is has agreed to, to being a victim. And a woman named Bill Richards, a great poet, a great actress, wrote a poem, the black woman speaks to white womanhood, in which she says that white women who were brought here many times almost as much slaves as black women, you know, to marry. So he says, if they did appraise my teeth, they checked out your thigh and so do to the highest bidder the same as I and yet she's goes on in her poem to say, yet you settled down and when you saw my children sage sold, you gave no reproach, but for an added roads, settled down in your pink slavery, and thought that enduring my slavery are allowing it to happen with make yours less. She said, You never noticed that the bracelet you took was really a chain and the necklace you accept it throttled your speech. Now, there's a great difference in the white American woman and the black American woman.
01:07:48 588.93	Bill Moyers What do you think that women's liberation is a white woman's fantasy? Maya Angelou No, certainly not a fan Bill Moyers not a fantasy Maya Angelou A necessity and so they definitely need it. Bill Moyers Does it say anything to black women? Maya Angelou Very little, I'm afraid. You see, white women had been made to feel in this society that they are superfluous. A white man can run his society. Bill Moyers Not superfluous in bed, not superfluous in the home, not superfluous in,
01:08:08 607.93	Maya Angelou No, excuse me Bill I didn't mean that I mean to run his world, he can send his rockets to the moon. And that little woman can sit at home, he can keep that camera rolling. And it's I love seeing you bring in some women in the crew, it just made me love you more, because. But generally, he makes the the white American man makes the white American woman, maybe not superfluous, but distant, a little kind of decoration, as not really important to the turning around of the wheels of state. Well, the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn't need that black woman right against him shoulder to shoulder, in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever that black woman is an integral, if not the most important part of a family unit. There is a kind of strand that is almost frightening in black women, and says if a steel rod runs right through the head down to the feet, and I believe that we have to thank black women, not only for keeping the black family alive, but the white family was because black women have nursed a nation of strangers. For hundreds of years, they literally nursed babies at their breast, who they knew when they grew up, would rape their daughters and kill their sons.
01:09:57 717.93	Bill Moyers That's Maya Angelou That's a fact. Bill Moyers That's strong. Maya Angelou I know. But it's the truth, Bill. It's the truth. Bill Moyers You have done almost anything you wanted to. You've traveled a lot. You've tasted many languages, in many lifestyles. You've written, you've acted ,you've sung, you've scored movies, you've really been a mobile no Baddeck, free person, what price have you paid for that freedom? Maya Angelou Well, at some point, you only are free when you realize you belong no place, you belong every place, no place around. You The price is high, the reward is great. I feel that I've really have felt almost all my life that I wouldn't live long. And now I'm doing a pretty good job, you know that Bill Moyers You've lived. A prophet- somebody said of prophet is a person whose predictions have been proven wrong known after they're forgotten. Maybe that self prophecy will prove to be forgotten.
01:11:17 797.93	Maya Angelou I hope. Bill Moyers Anyway, but do you belong anywhere? Maya Angelou I haven't yet. Bill Moyers Do you belong to anyone? Maya Angelou More and more. I mean, I belong to myself. I'm very proud of that. I am very concerned about how I look at Maya. I like Maya very much. I like the humor and the courage very much. And when I find myself acting in a way that isn't, that doesn't please me, then I have to deal with that. But But I the first time I ever felt I belonged anyplace was in in in West Africa. In Ghana when I went to live in Ghana. Bill Moyers Why Ghana, do you think? Maya Angelou Well, the little towns in Ghana bill you thank you in Texas. Bill Moyers Really? Maya Angelou The little towns are just like our towns in yours in Texas and mine in Arkansas, except that the people wear different clothes and have another language but the same mores obtained. So I could have been in Stamps, Arkansas fall in tension.
01:12:31 871.93	Bill Moyers We lived through the era of civil rights. You've lived through the violent confrontations of the last 10 years. What do you see happening now in in race relations and what's going on right now behind the curtain? Maya Angelou Well, let me talk about what's going on out in front of the curtain first. And I'm quoting Cecil Williams Reverend Cecil Williams at glide. This past Sunday at Glide Memorial Church, said that he was asked by a non black, what's happening with the black movement? Why don't I see you doing anything? And his response was, what's happening to the white movement? The most positive thing that is happening in this country is Watergate. Bill Moyers Watergate?
01:13:18 918.93	Maya Angelou I believe so, because white Americans, you see, there was a period when white Americans were marching in Selma and marching to Washington for the blacks, they thought is easy. But the struggle through the Watergate is for the whites. It's for their morality, for their integrity. It's the first time since the early part of the 19th century, that a great mass of whites have really been concerned about their own morality. In the early part of the 19th century, there were white, who became abolitionist and supported the Underground Railroad, not because they love blacks, but because they love truth. And not since that time. I mean, all the the World War Two business where we all got together and bold up straying, and so forth, and for it was for somebody else was for the Jews and Europe, but suddenly, or not so suddenly, in the United States. The people are concerned about their own morality, their own continuation, and it's very, very, and that I believe, will reflect in turn, and in time on the black American struggle. Bill Moyers Oh.
01:14:38 998.93	Maya Angelou Well, I think that white Americans will freely once they clear up their own backyard will be able to have that is to say their own internal selves about integrity and honesty, we'll have no out no recourse except to deal with the race question, which is Dr. Dubois said at the turn of the century, the problem for the 20th century will be the problem of of the color line. And that will be dealt with, not from a paternalistic point of view, I hope, and this is what I expect, not at the sufferance of their their time, their energy of when they have or at somebody's whim, but because it is right to do and if the country is to continue. If it is to continue to grow to be the what it hopes to be, then certainly people will move, because it is right to do so.
01:15:40 1060.93	Bill Moyers Alright, so this is going on, in front of the curtain. Maya Angelou Yeah. Bill Moyers What's going on behind the curtain? Maya Angelou Well, I think that we've come to a place, black Americans, have come to a place where they are taking a long, deep breath. And one sees that in history, it does happen like that, every so many years, there's a surge forward. Herbert Aptheker, has a great book called Black American Slave Revolts, which he starts from the 17th century, the slave revolts, protest movements and actual riots and, and that sort of thing. And when sees that there's a kind of rhythm to a movement. And I think we're at a pause now people, take deep breaths and try to decide
01:16:36 1116.93	Bill Moyers You had a son, who's now 27 Maya Angelou Fantastic son. Bill Moyers If you had a daughter 10 or 12 years of age, what would you say to her about growing up in this society? Maya Angelou Oh, well, first, if I had a daughter that's flat out I, I made the point of adopting a child now since I have no child in the home, and I love them. I respect all of them. White and black. My child I hope would be black. Because I have so much I can teach her and pull out of her. I would say you might encounter many defeats which must never be defeated, ever. In fact, it might even be necessary to confront defeat. It might be necessary to get over it, all the way through it and go on. I would teach her to laugh a lot. Laugh a lot at the silliest things and be very serious. I'd teach her to love life, I'd bet you that.
01:17:55 1195.93	Bill Moyers When you were growing up in Stamps, Arkansas. Let's go home. Maya Angelou Yeah, where were you growing up at the same time? Bill Moyers Just 98 miles away. Maya Angelou That's Bill Moyers Same pine trees. What did whites look like to an eight year old? Maya Angelou I didn't see them. I mean, I didn't think that they were people. That's why whites were like ghosts. That if you put your hand on one your finger would go all the way. I didn't think Bill Moyers You know what? That's what we thought blacks were like. Maya Angelou I thought, you know that real people were black people. And the others were white folks. And they weren't. You didn't have they didn't have kidneys and heart and things like that. They didn't cry. You knew that. You know, black people, I used to see black people weep. So I knew they didn't cry because people cried, and white folks just stayed white and kind of floated around like that.
01:18:58 1258.93	Bill Moyers Did you dream? Maya Angelou Yes. Bill Moyers What? Maya Angelou Well, at eight, I dreamed once that I've refined in the number of years. Once I found I'd go to the movies, and I saw people like Shirley Temple and Judy- somebody. Bill Moyers Garland. Oh, gee whiz, yes. Maya Angelo And the Bill Moyers The Wizard of Oz. Maya Angelou Yes. Now that- not Judy Garland. Bill Moyers Oh. Maya Angelou But anyways, those young girls who were in the movies at the time, one is not a plumber on television. She does a plumbing kind of Bill Moyers Upward, downward mobility. Maya Angelou Anyway, I saw them and I thought, you know, they live such rich lives. Maybe what'll happen is maybe I'm really a white girl. And what's going to happen is I'm going to wake up, I'm going to have long blonde hair. And everybody's gonna just go around loving me and sending me off to school. And I would wait at the at the ranch gate for Johnny Mack Brown. And with a little bonnet on. Tragic.
01:20:11 1331.93	Bill Moyers When did you realize it was only a dream? Maya Angelou Oh, I thought when I realized that I realized how lucky I was. By the time I was 14, and I lived with my mother, and she's so full of joy in life, and I was her baby. So then that became better than being anything else in the world. Bill Moyers That world wasn't at all open to you. How did you manage to stay open to the world, open to hope?
01:20:48 1368.93	Maya Angelou Well, I think you get to a place where you realize you have nothing to lose nothing at all. Then then you have no reason to bind yourself. I had no reason to hold on, I found it stupid, to hold on too close myself up and hold within me nothing to protect nothing. So I decided to try everything, to keep myself wide open, to human beings, all human beings, seeing them as I understand them to be not as they wish they were. But as I understand them to be very truthfully, not idealistically, realistically. And seeing that if this person knew better, he would do better. That doesn't mean that I don't protect myself from his action. You know, and dislike him for example, but certainly to accept that that's a human being that too is human. I think that that when we lose the prejudices, fighting prejudices that say, a person like a multiple rapist, murderer, that's inhuman when we lose that and accept that that's human. That's human. Hopefully I'll never do it. But obviously if a human being did it, I have the potential, as human. And then conversely, one can say, oh, there's a great masterpiece written as a marvelous composition written by human being a human being only real debt. Then I'm a human being. I have that potential.
01:22:38 1478.93	Bill Moyers What are you working on now, Maya Angelou, human being? Maya Angelou Well, I have a new book out now. I mean, the out will come out in the spring called Gather Together In My Name. It's a continuation of Caged Bird. It takes the next four years, at but I've just got a new assignment. yesterday to do an adaptation of Sophocles' Ajax for the Los Angeles Mark Taper Forum. So I've got to work on that. Bill Moyers Truly not rhyme. Maya Angelou Yes, partly in rhyme, I decided I'm going to keep the course and rhyme so that there'll be a downbeat. So that people can be able to say, Wow, that's, that's that? Bill Moyers Well, as I say, if Sophocles were alive today, he'd be turning in his grave. Maya Angelou Never had it so good, so grateful. Bill Moyers Do you think that white critics have a right to judge black artists?
01:23:42 1542.93	Maya Angelou Well, certainly, I think they have a right and we would help if they understood what they were talking about. Quite often, there are allusions made in black American writing, there are rhythms set in the writing, and counter rhythms, which mean a great deal to blacks. A white American can come in and he'll hear he'll understand, hopefully, the gist. And that's what one is talking about. The other is sort of in talk. I think that it's dangerous if we start setting up. White critics as the end all be all of a piece of work by a black writer, a black musician. Because there's a poem in, in a book of mine, called Harlem Hopscotch. Now hopscotch, anywhere it's done is that down, down, down, down, down, down, as we know, but in Harlem, that's basic, but there are other counter rhythms that are going on so that the kids don't get a jam. chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter BA. See, so the poem says that road says, one foot down and hop is hard good things for the ones it's got another jump not to the left everybody for himself in the air at both feet down since you black don't stick around. Food is gone, rent is due, you curse and jump and then you don't to every bad is out of work, you go off for three and then twist and jerk, count the land, they count you out. But that's what hoppin's all about both feet down, the game is done. They think you lost and I think you won. When when a when a and nonblack critic approaches the word, he's going to see the social implications in the lines, which are out there hopefully, because the kids who are jumping hopscotch and Harlem are thinking different thoughts, and those who are jumping hopscotch on Park Avenue, or in the Pacific Heights or whatever. But he will not hear what cracks up a black American audience when they hear it because it's such it habitat, I think that thing. So he misses a great deal of
01:25:56 1676.93	Bill Moyers Well here we may get to the last immutable boundary. That might prove to be it seems to me the final frustration of people like us, how do you cross that boundary and get inside the skin Maya Angelou You don't have to. You don't have to. They really being free is being able to accept people where they are, and not try to understand all they are or be what they are. But if you are Italian, and you have a certain amount of family kind of feeling and understanding and love and love to sing and love to be and all that. Why can't I, if I were a Jew, simply accept that and you respect what mine is, and we respect Mr. Chan over here, and Mr. Morris Saki over there. And Mrs. Brown down the street, Mr. Jones up the street and say all of them are good. Not changed them. Not at all, Bill. I think one of the most dangerous statements made in the United States or descriptive phrases is that it's a melting pot. And look at the goo it's produced.
01:27:15 1755.93	Bill Moyers Well, there isn't anywhere to go from there. So I thank you for spending this time with public television. And I wish your new segment of your autobiography great success. Maya Angelou Thanks. Bill Moyers And I hope Sophocles comes alive. Maya Angelou I do too! Thank you, Bill. Bill Moyers I've been talking to Maya Angelou, who no longer needs any introduction. I'm Bill Moyers. Good night.

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