Maya Angelou remembered on Democracy Now! May 29, 2014 with Juan Gonzàlez, Amy Goodman and Sonia Sanchez.
[Excerpt]
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Sonia Sanchez, I wanted to ask you, Maya Angelou was already an accomplished singer, dancer, actress, but then she gets involved in the civil rights movement. Could you talk about the relationship between her art and her activism? She worked with both Martin Luther King and then with Malcolm X later.
SONIA SANCHEZ: There was no separation for us between our art and activism at all. Sister Bernice Reagon talks about the blues singer Montgomery who said we all come here naked. Even though we all come here naked, one of the things we have to do is we have to make arrangements for other people beyond ourselves. This is what she did. Yes, and she raised so much money for the civil rights movement. People forget that. She and Brother Harry Belafonte raised money because the movement needed money. Yes, she marched and did all these things that other people did and she wrote and she knew brother Malcolm, she knew Brother Martin, she was in Africa, she knew Nkrumah. This is a woman who simply at some point moved constantly with her art and activism and saw no problem with the two of them.
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