Maya Angelou called Loyola a rainbow in the clouds. She said that without Loyola, several students would not have the opportunity to study at a higher education institution.
“You are here because you have a rainbow,” she told the audience Sunday night.
Angelou was the 10th speaker in the Father Carter Lecture Series. After this year, the series will switch from an annual event to sponsoring speakers every other year.
University Police officer Lt. Angela Honora said that the 650 seats in Roussel Hall were filled and about 200 people watched a live video feed in the St. Charles Room in the Danna Center. Honora also said another 30-40 people decided to stay and listen to the speech from the hallway outside the auditorium.
Daniel Green, political science sophomore and University Programming Board member, had the opportunity to meet Angelou backstage Angelou when she gave the students on the welcoming committee words of wisdom before her speech.
“Someone made the comment that we are lifelong learners,” Green said. “[Maya Angelou] responded, ‘We are all lifelong learners. Once you leave here your training may be done, but your learning has just begun.'”
The author, poet, playwright and civil rights activist said in her speech that there is a big difference between being trained and getting an education.
Between singing and reciting poetry, Angelou shared anecdotes of what she called “some of my rainbows.” She spoke about her Uncle Willie who taught her the multiplication tables. Uncle Willie was one of the major characters in her novel “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” one of Angelou’s 12 bestselling books.
Angelou said everyone has had an Uncle Willie figure in his life who has paved the way for him. She said that those who have had rainbows in their clouds must dare to become rainbows themselves.
“Please remember the charge you have,” Angelou said. “Even if you forget everything I have said.”
She pointed into the audience and said someone listening to her at that moment would “obliterate the blight of racism,” “find a cure to breast cancer” and “teach us to be good neighbors.”
Davina McClain, chairperson and associate professor of classical studies said after Angelou’s speech, “There are a few really wise voices these days, and she’s one of them. She can remind you of what you can be [even though] you don’t know it at the time.”
Angelou said she never trusts people who do not laugh and for the little more than an hour that she spoke she made certain that the audience was laughing. She would add a tinge of humor to her serious stories.
When Angelou was five she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend who, after she testified against him in court, only spent one day in jail. After he was released, the police came to her house to tell her mother’s mother that he had been kicked to death.
Angelou told the audience that she thought that her voice had so much power that it killed him and stopped talking.
Her complete refusal to speak was the reason that her mother’s side of the family sent back to Stamps, Ark., to live with Momma, her father’s mother.
She called Momma another one of her rainbows and said her grandmother told her in her mute stage “when the good Lord is ready, you are going to be a teacher.”
Now she lectures all over the world in French, Spanish and English about theology and drama and was recently awarded her 55th doctorate. But she wasn’t bragging about herself, she said.
“I am bragging about the presence of a rainbow,” Angelou said.
Maggie Crawford contributed to this report.
Gigi Alford can be reached at [email protected].
