A Conversation with Maya Angelou on Her Extraordinary Muni Ties Maya Angelou. Three-time Grammy winner. Pulitzer Prize nominee for poetry. Actress. Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient. San Francisco’s first female African American streetcar conductor. If nothing else, Dr. Angelou’s story is a testament that greatness can spring from anywhere, travels a varied path, and is a sum of its parts. The SFMTA’s Mark De Anda spoke recently with one of America’s most celebrated storytellers about yet another groundbreaking moment in her distinguished life, as the Market Street Railway’s first female African American streetcar conductor. Hear her take on life in the city during wartime, and her thoughts on Muni’s “Peace” campaign, featuring her own words. During a recent Oprah Winfrey interview, Dr. Angelou reintroduced a fact originally chronicled in her first autobiography, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” In 1942, a 16year-old Maya Angelou became, arguably, the first female streetcar conductor of African American descent to work for the Market Street Railway, eventually acquired by Muni in 1944. Where did you live here in San Francisco? I lived at 1661 Post Street. I finished George Washington High School there. I then received a scholarship at the California Labor School where I studied drama and dance. How did you decide you wanted to be a Conductor? Well, I had left San Francisco to spend time with my father in San Diego. Due to unfortunate circumstances, I was about a month late getting back to school, to George Washington High in San Francisco. So my mother said, since I was already ahead of myself there, that I could stay home for the semester. The only thing I had to do was get a job, and being a streetcar conductor was the only thing that looked exciting to me. I noticed that the conductors were women and they wore snappy uniforms and they looked cute. They had money belts and caps with bills on them and their uniforms were fitted—they were so smart, so chic. And it was your mother who encouraged you to apply for the job. Yes. I told my mother, Vivian Baxter, that I wanted that job and she told me to go out and get it. That’s when I found out they didn’t want me. What was her advice to you when you informed her of that? She said if you want it, get it. I told her the secretaries at the employment office wouldn’t even give me an application. She told me to go to the employment office and get there before the secretaries and stay there until after they leave until they gave me an
application. I did that for two weeks. By the third day, I was sick of it. The secretaries were not kind. But you continued to persevere. Mostly because I didn’t want my mother to know that I wasn’t as clever and decisive as she thought I should be. What was the turning point? Finally after two weeks, a man came out and asked me why I wanted to be a conductor. I lied like a fiend (laughs). I said because I had been a chauffeurette, driving my grandmother, Annie Henderson, around, which wasn’t true. Which streetcar line did you work? I can’t remember. I do remember that I took the streetcar from out by the beach. I know that we came down McAllister, then down Market Street to the Ferry Building. What did you learn from your conductor experience? My mother asked me that. I told her that I learned, among other things, that I like to work. She said, no, you learned something else. She said that I learned that with determination and intelligence I could do anything. What are your fondest memories of San Francisco? I could walk around the city and hear languages and in time I learned to speak a number of them. I love San Francisco because, in a way, it prepared me to live in the world. We recently ran an advertising campaign using a number of quotes including one of yours to combat a hate campaign directed at Muslims. I read about that. There was nothing you could do stop them. Fighting them in court would have only given them more attention. The quote we used was perhaps one of your most well-known: “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.” Beautiful. That’s it. I love that quote, too. I was very pleased, too. I like being useful; people who aren’t useful are useless. I was also pleased when years ago during the earthquake, either the Examiner or the Chronicle used a poem of mine, “And Still I Rise.” It’s a wonderful thing to be of use.
You persevered through what many would call a horrible childhood. Where did you find the faith that told you that you could be whoever you wanted to be, that you were useful? Truly, I can’t honestly say. What I can say is that I have been put into this place for a reason. It may be that I have a calling. Some people have careers, some have professions and some have callings, and I think that I may just be one of those.