The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin's-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body collective.

As Gillespie states "If 1968 was a year of great pain loss and sadness it was also the year when America first witnessed the breadth and depth of Maya Angelou's spirit and creative genius". As of 2008 Maya Angelou owned two homes in Winston-Salem North Carolina and one in Harlem full of her "growing library" of books Maya Angelou has collected throughout her life artwork collected over the span of many decades and well-stocked kitchens. Angelou has one son Guy whose birth was described in her first autobiography one grandson and two young great-grandchildren and according to Gillespie a large group of friends and extended family.

She is respected as a spokesperson of Black people and women and her works have been considered a defense of Black culture. : /ˈmaɪ. Maya Angelou (pron.