NEW YORK (AP)- Like millions of others who watched, or read, Sen. Barack Obama’s speech on race, Maya Angelou was deeply moved, calling it “fantastic” and “historic.”
But she remains a supporter of Obama’s rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom Angelou has known since Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, in the 1980s.
“I promised myself that 20 years after seeing her passion and courage (as first lady of Arkansas) that if she ever runs for anything, I’m going to support her,” the author, who spent part of her childhood in Arkansas, told The Associated Press during a recent interview.
Angelou has a long history of political activism, dating back to the civil rights era when she worked with Malcolm X and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and she has contributed money to numerous campaigns, including Hillary Clinton’s first run for the Senate in New York in 2000, and former President Clinton’s re-election race in 1996.
Angelou, who turns 80 on April 4, played a brief, but memorable role in Bill Clinton’s first presidential run. The poem she read at his 1993 inauguration, “On the Pulse of the Morning,” was an instant sensation that became a million seller when published in book form.
She was already widely known as the author of “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” a coming-of-age memoir that is standard reading at schools.
Although committed to Hillary Clinton, Angelou says she would be happy to see Obama become president-the country’s first black president-especially after the March 18 speech prompted by his former pastor’s racial statements.
Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, called upon the nation to break “a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years.”’
“It was fantastic. It was historic,” she says. “I have had people calling me from all over, some of whom said that it’s going to be compared to (King’s) ‘I Have a Dream,’ because of what it says about race in the United States.
“The truth is, if Sen. Clinton didn’t have such a worthy adversary, she wouldn’t be challenged.”