Maya Angelou: first Black woman to be on a US quarter

A US quarter has been released with a picture of Maya Angelou, making her the first Black lady to be on a US coin.

The quarter includes a picture of Angelou with her arms inspired, a bird in flight and a rising sun behind her, with a representation of George Washington on the “heads” side. The US Mint said the picture of the activist was “motivated by her verse and representative of the manner in which she lived”.

Maya Angelou, who passed on in 2014, was the writer of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, where she expounded on the racial segregation she encountered growing up. The writer of 36 books – and the beneficiary of in excess of 20 privileged degrees – she read her sonnet On the Pulse of the Morning at Bill Clinton’s 1992 initiation, and was granted the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama in 2010.

“Each time we upgrade our money, we get the opportunity to offer something about our nation – what we worth, and how we’ve advanced as a general public. I’m extremely pleased that these coins praise the commitments of a portion of America’s most exceptional ladies, including Maya Angelou,” said Janet Yellen, US depository secretary.

The Angelou quarter is the first in the US Mint’s American Women Quarters program, which will incorporate the physicist and first female space traveler Dr. Sally Ride and Wilma Mankiller, the main female head of the Cherokee Nation, not long from now. The American public was welcome to submit names of notorious individuals for the program after a bill set forward by Democrat senator Barbara Lee.

“I will always love the private minutes I had the honor to impart to Maya, from talking in her lounge as sisters to her priceless direction all through the difficulties I looked as a Black lady in chosen office,” said Lee.

“I’m pleased to have driven this work to respect these extraordinary ladies, who generally are neglected in our nation’s recounting history. Assuming you wind up holding a Maya Angelou quarter, may you be helped to remember her words, ‘be sure that you don’t kick the bucket without having accomplished something awesome for mankind.'”

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