"Maya Angelou, Lyrical Witness of the Jim Crow South, Dies at 86"

Farewell, Dr. Angelou. From the New York Times:

Maya Angelou, the memoirist and poet whose landmark book of 1969, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” — which describes in lyrical, unsparing prose her childhood in the Jim Crow South — was among the first autobiographies by a 20th-century black woman to reach a wide general readership, died on Wednesday in her home. She was 86 and lived in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Watch Dr. Angelou talk about love as liberator: Here, she delivers the poem, "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Bill Clinton's first inauguration (video courtesy of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library)