Remembering Dr. Maya Angelou

May 28, 2014 (WABC) -- I interviewed Maya Angelou once, right before she spoke at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton. It was via satellite, her from her home in North Carolina, me from the old Good Morning America set.

During a break I was told in my ear to make sure she could hear me. "Maya," I said, "It's Bill Ritter in the GMA studios in New York. Thanks for getting up early. We are just doing a mike check to make sure we ear each other."

I was expecting something to the effect that she heard me well.

I didn't get it. Instead she said without missing a beat and in that deep, wise and rich voice of hers, "Young man, I am an old black woman from the South. It is best to address me as Ms. Angelou. Not Maya."

And in that instant, Maya Angelou did, quickly, what she had done for most of her life: Speak the truth.

We are all thinking about this brilliant writer tonight, on the day of her death at the age of 86 in her home in North Carolina. She was a Southerner who also had a house in Harlem. But her legacy is for the place she occupies in millions of hearts.

Angelou was unflappable about using her powerful words to give voice to the powerless. She spoke truth to power, and she spoke truth about race, confronting the ugly face of hatred and discrimination in this country. Her words were both personal and political.

"Out of the huts of history's shame," she wrote, "Up from a past that's rooted in pain." A powerful line that can from her own life.

She was raised by her grandmother, in Arkansas, about 25 miles away from Bill Clinton's hometown of Hope. She was raped when she was 7, by her mom's boyfriend. She didn't hide, she spoke the truth, and told on him. He was killed. But after that, this magnificent speaker, didn't speak, for more than 5 years.

It was poetry that helped silence her muteness. And when Angelou finally did speak her words and wisdom, in her books and short stories and, most powerfully, poetry, lifted so many people in this country, giving voice especially to those who fought for civil rights and for justice.

Pres. Clinton asked Angelou to write a poem for his first Inauguration.

"Lift up your eyes upon this day, breaking for you, give birth again to the dream, women, children, men, take it into the palms of your hands."

Reaction coming in from around the world about this wonderful wordsmith and educator and activist. We'll have the latest, tonight at 11.

And for some of the other wonderful things she wrote, visit our collection of stories on 7online.

We'll also have any breaking news of the night, plus Meteorologist Lee Goldberg's AccuWeather and Rob Powers with the night's sports.
I hope you can join Sade Baderinwa and me, tonight at 11.

BILL RITTER

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