ABSTRACT
Near the middle of her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), Maya Angelou tells the story of her eighth-grade graduation. At the start of the ceremony, young Maya feels she is “the center” (144), as if she is “bound for higher ground” (143) or already “nobility” (142); halfway through, she and her classmates have been made to feel marginalized and humiliated by the white guest speaker. Afterwards, when the speaker has gone, Henry Reed, the class valedictorian, rises to give his address, “To Be or Not To Be.” He breaks off, however, to turn from the audience to his classmates, to sing the Negro national anthem, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” with words and music by James Weldon Johnson and J.Rosamund Johnson (155). This is the song of the caged bird, and this incident, Angelou suggests, is one that has taught her why the song is sung. It lifts her up, puts her and her classmates “on top again,” restoring pride in “the wonderful, beautiful Negro race.” The song addresses (and seeks to activate, figuratively) resurrection, its “shiver[ing]” “echoes” (156) shaking off the white speaker’s “dead words” (152) and also posing themselves-as the product of the “auctioned pains” of “Black poets”— against the Shakespearean text Henry had chosen as his valedictory theme.
