Any resemblance to a boring history class is purely coincidental!
One of the famous Felix Nadar portraits taken shortly after she joined the Conservatoire. Circa 1864
Sarah Bernhardt was an actress, sculptress, writer, mother, celebrity…legendary global phenomenon. She was also a courtesan, a master self-promoter, and an all-around unique individual who lived her life on her terms and in her own way. (more…)
by Jean-Étienne Liotard 1756
We left Lady mary rolling her eyes as people found reason after reason to not immunize against smallpox. While she cared about people not contracting a deadly disease, what Mary really want to be was a writer. Those letters she wrote from the road? She edited them into a book that was the first to capture a woman’s perspective of the Ottoman Empire. It would not be published in her lifetime, she had other things to do…like garden, socialize, write more biting commentaries on political and court life, raise two kids, ditch her husband and run off with a n’er do well Count to Italy, tour Europe, then entwine her life with another unscrupulous noble. (more…)
Circa 1716 by Charles Jervas
For a woman who is not well known these days and who lived way back in the 1700s, it’s surprising that there’s enough of a story to fill two episodes…Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is such a woman! (more…)
Maya at Elon University, 2012, Elon Universtiy via Flickr
Maya Angelou was a writer, poet, memoirist, civil rights activist, entertainer, director, producer, mom, friend…but she was most masterful at sharing her life with the perfect collections of words. We use the best ones we can muster to share her remarkable life story.
We wrap up our three-part series on Dr. Angelou beginning as Maya leaves Africa to headed back to the US and work for civil rights leader, and friend, Malcolm X ‘s Organization of African American Unity. His assassination not long after her arrival sent her into both grief and a search for the next chapter in her life.
Writing. She felt led to be a writer, and the best place for that was back with her literary friends in New York. While there, she took an opportunity to work with her old friend, Martin Luther King, Jr…who was assassinated right before her first day.
But setbacks in life often lead to the perfect path. She threw herself into writing a 10-part PBS series, Blacks, Blues, Black! which lead, in 1969, the publication of her first autobiography, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.
For the rest of her (long) life, she combined all of her life experiences, her gifts, her skills, and her wisdom and shared it with the world. She was a memoirist, a poet, a playwright, a songwriter, a performer, a lecturer, an educator…a grandmother…she loved and lost, and all along the way she captured her words in the perfect order projected by her strong personality (and often her unique voice) to leave her mark on our world.
1993 Clinton inauguration Courtesy Clinton Presidential Library
President Obama bestowing the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010 Courtesy White House
Maya Angelou died on May 28th, 2014 at the age of 86. No one can tell her story like she did, so we’ll leave you with Maya herself sharing a little of her words and wisdom.
Not technically a book, but Maya Angelou: The Autobiographies from BBC is a six-part, audio dramatization of some of her work. Susan got it for one credit on Audible and had an amazing experience. You can learn more at THIS LINK TO BBC.
You can read every one of her perfectly chosen words in this massive tome: 
Not technically a book, but Maya Angelou: The Autobiographies from BBC is a six-part, audio dramatization of some of her work. Susan got it for one credit on Audible and had an amazing experience. You can learn more at THIS LINK TO BBC
The only detailed biography Susan could find but written before her death by Marcia Anne Gillespie, Rosa Johnson Butler, and Richard A. Long; foreword by Oprah Winfrey
Maya’s essays about memorable food in her life and the recipes- delightful! (And her fried chicken recipe is in here!)
More autobiographical essays with recipes for international dishes all based around her weight loss through portion control.
By Editors of Essence Magazine, essays about her.
Great series for kids, by Ellen LaBrecque
Here is a whole lot of information (and pictures) about the Rosenwald Schools like the one a young Maya Johnson attended: The Rosenwald Schools.
Short NPR interview in the last year of her life, and one where she talks about her time with Porgy and Bess.
There was some discussion about the pronunciation of her name, we went with Maya’s which we found here: Maya Angelou Explains Her Name.
Brain Pickings article about the daily routines of famous writers.
An article on the Quote Investigator site discussing the phrase “Churchillian Drift” coined by radio host, Nigel Rees of the BBC show Quote Unquote (so QI is fact-checking something the OG quote fact-checker said.)
There is a Maya Barbie…do we know what to think about this? 
Her estate maintains a website, there is some information, pictures, and a link to the Dr. Maya Angelou Foundation if you would like to get involved in her life’s work.
Some information (read: the opening of the hole Beckett fell down) the Hawaiian Jazz scene.
Maya’s obituary through a Caribbean lens.
Lift Every Voice and Sing lyrics and essay (from the Library of Congress, no less!)
“Summertime” from Porgy and Bess, Metropolitan Opera:
This makes sense if you listened to the episode, but we simply can not leave it out!
Caged Bird Songs, Maya’s own words with a beat, it may be an acquired taste.
Maya’s first adventure in television occurred in 1968 when she wrote, produced, and hosted a 10-part PBS series Blacks, Blues, Black! The whole series is online HERE!
If you would like to learn about the incredible discovery that made our viewing (here in the future) possible, here’s an article about it: From The Archive
I know why the Caged Bird Sings with Diahann Carroll (movie)
There are so very many interviews with her, if you start with this one, with her dear friend, Oprah, YouTube will connect you with maaaaany more.
PBS has an American experience about Dr. Angelou, it’s streaming on Prime through the PBS Documentaries subscription, but you may be able to find it elsewhere, here’s more information about that Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise.
And, finally, we want you to listen to Maya read and speak her own words, she left so many treasures for us.
We’re going to be in London in August and would love for you to join us for a Thames River Dinner cruise on August 7th, 2021! Get more info and sign-up here at Like Minds Travel
The first break song was A Fork Where a Fork Don’t Fit by James Harper, the second was Sonata Pathétique in C minor by Mario Ajero
End music: Press On by Loot
music used with permission by both iLicenseMusic and James Harper
We have been talking with our friends Greg Young and Tom Meyers, The Bowery Boys, for years about doing a project together. This isn’t that, but it is a subject that a lot (A LOT) of people have requested of us. Because it’s a bit out of our focus, we thought there’s no one better than Greg and Tom, experts in New York City history, to tell you about the city’s early 1900s women’s protest movements and how they are tragically tied to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. (more…)
First up: Calamity Jane
Belle Starr
And we end with end with Kansas City’s own, Annie Chambers
After spending so much time talking about the Harvey Girls and Fred Harvey, we got to thinking of their contemporaries (more…)
A familiar portrait of Charlotte, a chalk drawing by George Richmond in 1850. wikicommons
This week we’re revisiting our discussion of the life of Charlotte Brontë (entirely because we made a gamble and lost–explanation in the first minute of the episode.) Charlotte didn’t let her circumstances and the discouragement of others stand in the way of her goal of becoming a published author; she got knocked down over and over before she was able to present the world with one of the most beloved heroines in literary history. Along the way, we have a chance to talk about the lives of her literary sisters: Emily and Anne. (more…)
We step back from reality (sorta) to talk about the many lives of Wonder Woman, her original creator William Moulton Marston, the women who originally inspired the superhero, and the creators who recrafted her to suit their own visions. It’s a heck of a ride. And there is a Little Ears warning–you know how cartoons often have adult themes and jokes that go right over the heads of little kids? We talk about some of Wonder Woman’s in these two episodes–oh yeah, two! There’s A LOT to talk about, her story begins in the early 1900s and hasn’t ended yet! (more…)
Belva Lockwood was the first qualified woman to run for President of the United States and she did it while suffragists were still battling for the vote in 1884 and 1888.
Shirley Chisholm was the first black woman to run for POTUS in 1972 and the first female nominee for the Democratic party.
This week we divide and conquer to give you a remastered two-fer of glass-ceiling crashing women in US politics. Beckett shares the life of Belva Lockwood and Susan talks about Shirley Chisholm in this mini-series of women who ran for the office of POTUS. (more…)
It’s been over four years since we last stepped from behind the curtain to answer questions from the other end of the mic. We put out a call in our private Facebook group, The History Chicks Lounge for questions not answered in either of our two previous Q&A episodes…and the response was fast and overwhelming! Unless you like six-hour podcasts, there isn’t time to answer all those questions in one episode, but we narrowed down the list, combined some similar ones, and then threw some of our own into the discussion after we hit RECORD. (more…)
