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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings : African American Literary Tradition and the Civil Rights Era Amy Sickels Maya Angelou wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings at the end of the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, one of the most turbulent times in modern American history. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education outlawed school segregation in 1954, the Civil Rights movement gained power as increasing numbers of people rose up against bigotry and racism. As the movement gained momentum with sit-ins and marches, African Americans were also viciously attacked. Across the South, there were beatings, church bombings, and lynchings. The violence continued when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, sending the nation into a state of grief and anxiety about the future; two years later, on February 21, black nationalist Malcolm X, whose fiery views had transformed to be more accepting of whites, was assassinated. Despite these tremendous losses and the terror many African Americans faced, the hope for change and equality prevailed. The momentous March on Washington in 1963 helped lead to the passage of the most important pieces of legislation in the 1960s: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In addition, the success and energy of the Civil Rights movement inspired other movements, including the women’s movement and the gay and lesbian movement. Tragically, with hope for the future in the air, on April 4, 1968 (coincidentally Maya Angelou’s fortieth birthday), civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. The nation was stunned and saddened, and his death set off a series of riots across the country. Maya Angelou, active in the Civil Rights movement and friends with both Malcolm X and King, was, like so many others around the world, devastated by their deaths, yet she did not give up her hope for a African American Literary Tradition

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better, more just world or her belief in the power of art to create change. Throughout the era, the Black Arts movement, the cultural wing of the Black Power movement that was started by the poet Amiri Baraka in 1965, was extremely influential in the work and development of many writers, including Angelou. Activist, poet, and performer, Angelou did not start writing until she was in her thirties, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was not published until she was forty-one. Angelou did not set out to write her autobiography, but some of her friends—the famous writer James Baldwin, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, and Feiffer’s wife Judy—were convinced that Angelou should write about her childhood after they heard her stories about growing up in Stamps, Arkansas. When Judy Feiffer connected Angelou with Robert Loomis, an editor at Random House, Angelou at first refused Loomis’s request that she write her autobiography: Loomis called me two or three times, but I continued to say that I was not interested. Then, I am sure, he talked to Baldwin because he used a ploy which I am not proud to say I haven’t gained control of yet. He called and said, “Miss Angelou, it’s been nice talking to you. But I’m rather glad that you decided not to write an autobiography because to write an autobiography as literature is a most difficult task.” I said, “Then I’ll do it.” (quoted in McPherson 22)

By the time Caged Bird was published, the Black Arts movement was essentially over, but the work appeared at the beginning of a prolific period for African American authors, especially women—it is often referred to as the “renaissance” of black women writers. Toni Morrison, Nikki Giovanni, Angela Davis, Alice Walker, June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara, Sonia Sanchez, and Lucille Clifton all began their careers around the same time. When Caged Bird appeared, many saw it as a turning point in African American and women’s literature. Popular with both white and black audiences, the book received glowing reviews in The New York Times, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal 20

Critical Insights