May,1995
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CD-ROM Provides Portraits of Black Women
By Crystal Morris
Recently I learned to operate the CD-ROM in the Central Library. In addition to Pro-Quest which is frequently used for research papers, the library has a CD hook-up on a Mac and currently stocks the Grolier Encyclopedia CD and the Time Almanac CD. The Time Almanac has the ability to show videos on the Mac of historical figures such as FDR and M.L. King giving famous speeches. I used the CD to learn more about two famous black women, Whoopi Goldberg and Maya Angelou.
Whoopi Goldberg, was born Caryn Johnson, and got her stage name from fooling around with a whoopi cushion. Her story is inspirational because rose above many problems before she made it big on Broadway with her one woman play. She was on welfare for a number of years, divorced, and a single parent. She had encounters with drugs as she grew up in a racially mixed neighborhood in Manhattan. As she struggled to make it as a performing artist, she worked on and off as a cosmetologist in a mortuary.
Goldberg went from comic to film star when Steven Spielberg saw her show on Broadway and asked her to play Celie in the movie, The Color Purple . Her strong performance launched a big film career which has included box office hits Sister Act, Back in the Habit, Clara's Heart, Jumpin Jack Flash, and Ghost , which earned her an a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as a medium.
One of her most powerful roles came in the film, The Long Walk Home, which depicts the bus boycott during the civil rights era.
Born Marguerite Johnson on April 4,1928 in St. Louis, Missouri, Maya Angelou was sent to live with her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas after her mother, Vivian Bibbie Baxter, was divorced. She has a brother named Bailey Johnson a year older than her . During the time she lived with her grandmother her father came from California to bring Maya and Bailey to see their mother. They were kind of scared to see their mother because she was vain and selfish. Maya felt her mother had abandoned her and here brother. Vivian felt she was too pretty to have children.
Maya's mother was raised by a German family, so in the city of St. Louis people looked up to her. In St. Louis there was a lot of illegal activity such as number runners , gamblers and dealers in various illicit products which impacted the family.
Maya rose out of her difficult circumstance to write the acclaimed novel, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She became a frequent guest on The Arsenio Hall Show and PBS' Charlie Rose Show. Angelou reached her greatest celebrity when she was chosen by President Clinton to write and present a poem for his inauguration, which led to her writing On the Pulse of Morning.
