An Evening With Maya Poet Angelou wows LeMoyne-Owen crowd, but eludes the media. by Jacqueline Marino make a terrible paparazzo. I’ve never been particularly fond of staking out parking lots and backstages looking for quotes from stars the way lovesick groupies look for autographs. Only the adrenaline makes it bearable – this looming with the notebook opened, the pen poised, the one (you only get one, if that) carefully constructed question knocking around in the brain. PHOTO BY ROY CAJERO Angelou urged her audience to keep tearing down the walls. Last week at the LeMoyne-Owen College/United Negro College Fund Gala Banquet, as I followed poet Maya Angelou and her entourage of security down the escalator in the Adam’s Mark Hotel, the right question just wouldn’t surface. In fact, as soon as I saw Angelou’s elegant, 6-foot form trodding softly through the hallway, her lace-trimmed black gown swishing just inches from the floor, I realized that one question would never do. Angelou moved slowly, almost infirmly. Despite the cluster of escorts who made approaching her a near impossibility, there was no guarding her gaze. Angelou made eye contact and smiled at the few reporters, photographers, and adoring fans who were lucky enough to row themselves into her wake. The 70-year-old woman glided by us with a strength that isn’t seen so much as felt. I knew all about her personal and professional accomplishments: poet, author, rape survivor, teacher, dancer, activist, mother, filmmaker, actress. I had read her autobiographical novel, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Her poetry had stirred me, especially And Still I Rise. And I still couldn’t devise just one brilliant question. Not that I would have had much of an opportunity to ask it anyway. Angelou spent most of the evening in a private room not taking interviews. At some point, while I was busy leaning against the wall in the banquet hall obsessing over The Question, Angelou was whisked through the kitchen and up to the platform. She approached the microphone just as I was retracing her steps through the narrow walkway lined with carts and dish racks. As soon as the slightly muffled sound of her deep, rich voice permeated the kitchen, all movement ceased. For the first few minutes, no dishes were stacked in that steamy, cluttered place that smelled of salad dressing. No silverware was rolled. No one talked or cleaned or moved. The bussers, mostly young African Americans, stopped and listened. The only thing I heard besides the throaty music of Angelou’s voice was the embarrassingly distracting sound of my heels hitting the linoleum as I clambered up to the double doors of the banquet hall. There, in front of an audience of about 930 people, including actor Morgan Freeman, Mayor Willie Herenton, and U.S. Congressman Harold Ford Jr., Angelou was talking about how African Americans must keep tearing the walls down. “We have come through conditions so bizarre they could not be included in the literature because no one would believe them, and we’re still here,” she said. “We’re still the last hired. We’re still the first fired and still the butts of white liberals’ jokes.… “How is it that a LeMoyne-Owen remains? There is something so wonderful about a decision made by one person or two or 10 or a nation or a race that says I will pay for those who have yet to come. I will remind you each of us has already been paid for.” Whether the ancestors came from Scandinavia or Ireland or Africa on slave ships packed together in each others’ urine, excrement, and menstrual blood, she said, “They paid for each of us already.” Poised and relaxed, Angelou recited poetry, recalled memories from her childhood, and sang songs to the captivated crowd. She stressed the importance of activism, but also of not taking yourself too seriously. Right before launching into an Arsenio Hall-style whoop, whoop, she said, “I never trust people who don’t laugh. Laugh as much as possible.” Despite Angelou’s openness in front of the audience, to the media she was quite unaccommodating. Requests for telephone interviews before her appearance were flatly denied. Television crews found out when they arrived that they could not film her while she spoke. And the gloating print photographers were quickly humbled halfway through her speech when she said to them, “That’s enough. Thank you.” After the speech, she was hurried to a waiting limousine as security guards shut the doors on the throng of fans trailing behind her. That didn’t faze LeMoyne-Owen student Erika Nichols, the editor of the LeMoyne-Owen student newspaper. Nichols happened to be celebrating her birthday that night. “It’s been one of my greatest dreams to meet her,” she said. “This is the best birthday present ever!” Similar sentiments were expressed by Greta Lewis, an eighth-grader from St. Mary’s, who was one of the youngest people in the audience. “I’ve read her poems with my white and black friends, and we all love her,” she said. After the limousine was gone and the banquet hall nearly emptied, I finally thought of the question I would ask Angelou if I could. I wouldn’t ask her about growing up a poor black girl in the segregated South or about what it was like to be the first black and the first woman poet to read at a presidential inauguration. I would ask her about inspiration, not hers, but the inspiration she brings to others. Just how, I would ask, do you do it?