Editor’s note: In 1975, legendary poet and activist Maya Angelou was awarded an honorary degree from Smith. Five years later, she was asked to speak to Smith\u2019s graduating class of 1980. Sprinkling her address with verses from hers and others\u2019 poetry, Angelou inspired the graduates to be courageous, to love and seek love, and to \u201cmake this country more than it is today.\u201d In tribute to Angelou, who died yesterday, we reprint the renowned poet\u2019s commencement address here.\u00a0 <\/b><\/p>\n
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Address to the Class of 1980<\/b><\/p>\n
By Maya Angelou<\/b><\/p>\n
I am honored that you have asked me to participate with you in such an important rite of passage\u2014your most important rite of passage\u2014and certainly your first as an adult. I am honored because I know that this particular ceremony will furnish you with friends and memories that you will carry through the rest of your lives. You will be influenced later on, you will go on to get another degree and another, and many of you will be honored by kings and presidents\u2014and queens I pray. But this one will remain a precious ceremony and I thank you for inviting me to share it with you.<\/p>\n
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She does not know<\/p>\n
Her beauty,<\/p>\n
She thinks her brown body<\/p>\n
Has no glory.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
If she could dance<\/p>\n
Naked,<\/p>\n
Under palm trees,<\/p>\n
And see her image in the river<\/p>\n
She would know.<\/p>\n
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But there are no palm trees<\/p>\n
On the street,<\/p>\n
And dishwater gives back no images.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A perfect piece of poetry written in the 1930s by a black American male poet which has to do with the identity and the courage to identify one\u2019s self for one\u2019s self and later for one\u2019s community. I\u2019m going to speak to you about love and the courage to love, indeed, about courage itself. It is the most important of all the virtues because without courage you cannot be sure that you can practice any other virtue with consistency. So it is important to develop courage, the courage to love in an era, in a time, when love is almost synonymous with distrust, abuse, misuse and, in fact, negligence. In order to love, I mean erotic love, agape love, familial love, platonic love, consistently, you must care first about yourselves because in order to say one loves someone else and act upon that love, one must really love one\u2019s self. There\u2019s an African statement, \u201cBe careful, when a naked person offers you a piece of cloth.\u201d In the 19th century there was a black woman poet, Miss Georgia Johnson, who wrote about love. Now mind you when many write about blacks and love, they would have us believe that white people make love and black people just have sex. Miss Georgia Johnson in the 19th century wrote:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I want to die while you love me.<\/p>\n While yet your hold me fair,<\/p>\n While laughter lies upon my lips<\/p>\n And lights are in my hair.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I want to die while you love me<\/p>\n And bear to that still bed<\/p>\n Your kisses\u2014turbulent, unspent,<\/p>\n To warm me when I\u2019m dead.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I want to die while you love me<\/p>\n Oh, who would care to live,<\/p>\n \u2019Til love has nothing more to ask<\/p>\n And nothing more to give.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Miss Anne Spencer, 19th-century black lady poet, with a lot of courage, wrote:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n LETTER TO MY SISTER<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It is dangerous for a woman to defy the gods;<\/p>\n To taunt them with the tongue\u2019s thin tip,<\/p>\n Or strut in the weakness of mere humanity,<\/p>\n Or draw a line daring them to cross;<\/p>\n The gods own the searing lightening,<\/p>\n The drowning waters, tormenting fears<\/p>\n And the anger of red sins.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Oh, but worse still if you mince timidly\u2014<\/p>\n Dodge this way or that, or kneel or pray,<\/p>\n Be kind, or sweat agony drops<\/p>\n Or lay your quick body over your feeble young;<\/p>\n If you have beauty or none, if celibate<\/p>\n Or vowed\u2014the gods are Juggernaut,<\/p>\n Passing over\u2026 over\u2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This you may do:<\/p>\n Lock your heart, then, quietly,<\/p>\n And lest they peer within,<\/p>\n Light no lamp when dark comes down<\/p>\n Raise no shade for sun;<\/p>\n Breathless must your breath come through<\/p>\n If you\u2019d die and dare deny<\/p>\n The gods their god-like fun.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The ability to develop courage is an ability that is in your hands\u2014it is in your mind\u2014you can do anything you like. The only freedom you will probably ever know, you have begun to know now, here, the freedom to think, to imagine, to reform, to change\u2014to start by changing yourselves and those areas around you with which you do not agree. You may do that and you must do that; it is an unfortunate, and maybe a fortunate affair, that we are giving you, people of my generation, are giving you a charge which is a desperate one. You are obliged to try to make this country more than it is today which is these yet-to-be-United States. It is a serious matter, a very serious matter. And you women have a wonderful chance now, as women and as people who will move into what is lightly and probably seriously called the White Women\u2019s Movement, liberation movement. You have a chance to eradicate racism now. You have that chance because it is new, it is early, you can bend the branches now if you have the courage. Mind you, you may say you have the will, and that\u2019s marvelous, but to have the courage to do so and to develop the courage as one develops any other muscle; you have that chance and I pray you will continue and show us what this incredible graduating class of 1980 is about.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There is a kind of love that is shown by older black women and courage for which I\u2019ve written a poem. Black people in this country were obliged for centuries to laugh when they weren\u2019t tickled and scratch when they didn\u2019t itch. And those gestures have come down to us as Uncle Tomming and Aunt Jemimaing. I suggest to you that people live in direct relationship to the heroes and sheroes they have, in all ways and always and those people who laughed and scratched and carried on were very successful or I would not have the privilege to have been asked to speak to you here today. This woman [in my poem] who is a maid in New York City sits on a bus if the bus stops too fast, she laughs, if it stops too slowly, she laughs, if it misses somebody, she laughs, if it picks someone up, she laughs. But after watching her I realized the woman wasn\u2019t really laughing\u2014if you don\u2019t know black features you may think she\u2019s laughing\u2014she was just extending her lips and making a sound. She was using that old survival apparatus, and I want you to see that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When I think about myself,<\/p>\n I almost laugh myself to death.\u2026<\/p>\n My folks can make me split my side,<\/p>\n I laughed so hard I nearly died.\u2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sixty years in these folks\u2019 world<\/p>\n The child I works for calls me girl<\/p>\n I say \u201cYes ma\u2019am\u201d for working\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n Too proud to bend<\/p>\n Too poor to break,<\/p>\n I laugh until my stomach ache,<\/p>\n When I think about myself.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now that\u2019s a great deal of love to care enough about a people to debase one\u2019s self so that a whole people can survive. That\u2019s a great deal of love. However, the last, greatest kind of love is to love yourself so much that you want to see the species continue.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not cute or built to suit a fashion model\u2019s size<\/p>\n But when I start to tell them,<\/p>\n They think I\u2019m telling lies.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It\u2019s in the reach of my arms,<\/p>\n The span of my hips,<\/p>\n The stride of my step,<\/p>\n The curl of my lips.<\/p>\n I\u2019m a woman<\/p>\n Phenomenally.<\/p>\n Phenomenal woman,<\/p>\n That\u2019s me.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Men themselves have wondered<\/p>\n what they see in me.<\/p>\n They try so much<\/p>\n But they can\u2019t touch<\/p>\n My inner mystery.<\/p>\n When I try to show them<\/p>\n They say they still can\u2019t see.<\/p>\n I say,<\/p>\n It\u2019s the fire in my eyes,<\/p>\n And the flash of my teeth,<\/p>\n The swing of my waist,<\/p>\n And the joy of my feet.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now you understand<\/p>\n Just why my head\u2019s not bowed.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t shout or jump about<\/p>\n Or have to talk real loud<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When you see my passing<\/p>\n It ought to make you proud.<\/p>\n I say,<\/p>\n It\u2019s in the click of my heels,<\/p>\n The swing of my waist<\/p>\n The ride of my breasts<\/p>\n The palm of my hand<\/p>\n \u2018Cause I\u2019m a woman<\/p>\n Phenomenally.<\/p>\n Phenomenal woman,<\/p>\n That\u2019s all of you\u2014and me.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ladies, there is an African statement which is, \u201cThe trouble for the thief is not how to steal the chief\u2019s bugle, but where to blow it.\u201d The issue for you obviously has been how to stay at Smith for these years and discharge yourselves wonderfully so that your parents and friends and you yourselves and your teachers and all will be pleased. Ladies, it was a wonderful charge and you have obviously done marvelously. I ask you now, When will you commence? What will you do? It is the question that you must ask yourselves. What will you do about your lives? What will you really, really, really do? Thank you.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Waring Cuney, \u201cNo Images,\u201d American Negro Poetry, <\/i>Arna Bontemps, ed, Hill and Wang, N.Y. 1963, p. 98<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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