“A free bird leaps/on the back of the wind/and floats downstream/till the current ends/and dips his wing/in the orange sun rays/and dares to claim the sky.” This famous stanza from Maya Angelou’s “Caged Bird” perfectly encompasses the accomplishments of her lifetime that still reverberate through modern America. Angelou was an African-American author, actress, screenwriter, dancer, poet, and civil rights, activist. She went on to receive awards and honors throughout her life including two NAACP Image Awards in the category of “outstanding literary work (nonfiction)” and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her legacy will now live on through the U.S. quarter.
Angelou will become the first Black woman to grace the quarter as a part of the American Women Quarters Program. This program attempts to celebrate the achievements of the women of American history by issuing five new designs of women each year from 2022 through 2025 on the backside of the quarter. The quarters will portray the diversity of the women who have furthered our history by featuring strides in a plethora of fields including suffrage, civil rights, abolition, government, humanities, science, space, the arts, etc. by women of ethnically, racially, and geographically diverse backgrounds. Maya Angelou will be the first woman to be featured as part of this program followed by Dr. Sally Ride (the first woman in space), Wilma Mankiller (the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation), Nina Otero-Warren (a leader in New Mexico’s suffrage movement), and Anna May Wong (the first Chinese-American Hollywood film star).
The quarter portrays Maya Angelou with uplifted arms in front of a flying bird and a rising sun. This imagery was designed as a tribute to her poetry and symbolic nature in life. The designer of the new U.S. quarter, Emily S. Damstra, states that showing Angelou in an uplifting manner was meant to convey how she presented herself while undergoing a performance: passionate. Damstra goes on to express the meaning behind the bird in her design. As referenced earlier, this bird represents the “free bird” depicted in Angelou’s “Caged Bird.” Maya Angelou was an instrumental figure in American history who “dared to claim the sky.” She was a woman who benefited the lives of generations of Americans after her. It is empowering to see her recognized by U.S. Mint as the first of many change-makers in the American Story.