Maya Angelou - American autobiographer and poet, professor

Maya Angelou is one of the American autobiographer and poet who has been called "America's most visible black female autobiographer" by scholar Joanne M. Braxton. She is well known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focus on her childhood and early on adult experiences. The first and most greatly acclaimed, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her first seventeen years. It brought her international respect, and was nominated for a National Book Award. She has been awarded over 30 honorary degree and was selected for a Pulitzer Prize for her 1971 volume of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Diiie.

Angelou was a member of the Harlem Writers Guild in the late 1950s, was active in the Civil Rights movement, and served as Northern Coordinator of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. A Tony Award nomination for her position in the 1973 play Look Away, and three Grammys for her spoken word albums. In 1995, Angelou's publishing company, Bantam Books, known her for having the longest running record on The New York Times Paperback factual Bestseller List. In 1998, she was induct into the National Women's Hall of Fame. She has provide on two presidential committees, and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2000 and the Lincoln Medal in 2008. Musician Ben Harper has privileged Angelou with his song "I'll Rise", which include words from her poem, "And Still I Rise." She has been awarded above thirty honorary degrees.

Born	Marguerite Ann Johnson
Date Of Birth	April 4, 1928
Place Of Birth	Saint Louis, Missouri, United States
Occupation	Poet, civil rights activist, dancer, film producer, television producer, playwright, film director, author, actress, professor
Ethnicity	African American
Literary movement	Civil rights

Rosa Parks

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was born February 4, 1913. He was an African American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress later called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement". Parks' act of defiance became a main symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement and Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr., serving to launch him to national prominence in the civil rights movement.

Parks was secretary of the Montgomery section of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for workers' rights and racial parity. Nonetheless, she takes her action as a private citizen "tired of giving in". Although broadly honored in later years for her action, she suffered for it, lose her job as a seamstress in a local department store. Eventually, she moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she found comparable work. From 1965 to 1988 she serves as secretary and receptionist to African-American U.S.

Representative John Conyers. After retirement from this position, she wrote an autobiography and lived a mostly private life in Detroit. In her final years she suffered from dementia and became concerned in a lawsuit filed on her behalf next to American hip-hop duo OutKast. Parks finally received many honors ranging from the 1979 Spingarn Medal to the Congressional Gold Medal, a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. Her death in October 24, 2005 was a major story in the United States' leading newspapers. She was granted the posthumous honor of lying in state at the Capitol Rotunda.

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Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African American civil rights group. His main legacy was to secure progress on civil rights in the United States, and he has become a human rights King is recognized as a martyr by two Christian churches. A Baptist minister, King became a civil rights protester early in his career.

He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, serving as its first president. King's efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech. There, he raised public consciousness of the civil rights movement and recognized himself as one of the greatest orators in U.S. history. In 1964, King became the youngest person to get the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means.

By the time of his death in 1968, he had refocused his efforts on ending scarcity and the Vietnam War, both from a religious perspective. King was assassinate on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously award the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004; Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was recognized as a U.S. national holiday in 1986.

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