♪ from a silence born of violence grew a mighty voice. >> lift up your heart. each new hour holds new chances for new beginnings. do not be waiting forever to

fear. >> reporter: tonight we remember, activist, poet maya angelou. president obama called angelou one of the biggest lights of our lives. reporter federico looks back at her life. >> reporter: maya angelou may have been speaking of herself on that day in 1965. born margerite johnson, the hell she lived through began at the age of 7 when she was

raped at her mother's boyfriend. when she spoke out against him, he was beaten to death by a mob. margerite blamed herself. >> deduced that my voice had killed him so i stopped speaking. for almost six years,. >> reporter: it was during those years of silence, that she discovered poetry. and her love of art. >> reporter: her poetry was first physical. winning a dance and drama scholarship in san francisco, then later touring europe in 1954. >> she was a trail blazer. i had no idea she was a pioneer when i was growing up. she wore her hair natural. and wore african outfits in 1955. no one else did that. >> reporter: but her growing love for the written word took her to egypt and ghana where she became a newspaper editor. in ghana she met malcolm x and returned to the u.s. to join

his fight in a civil rights movement. >> my mother was at the center of the african merit existence. she knew all the artists. all the writers, all the activists. >> reporter: after malcolm x's assassination, dr. martin luther king jr. asked her to join him. he was killed on her birthday 1968. on the following year, her first memoire was released. i know why the caged bird sings. she noted other struggles. like having her son as an unwed teenager. he would later become author guy johnson. angelou won three grammys and

in 2011 president obama presented her with the presidential medal of freedom. she called her maya which was her brother's nickname for her. angelou came from her first husband's name tosh angelous. she had created her own name just as she had created her poetry, from pieces of herself. >> i'm the hope and the dream of the slave. and so naturally, there i go rising. >> in her first book, i know why the caged bird sings. maya angelou described her young self-as too big with broad feet and a space between her teeth that could hold a number two pencil, yet when she wrote, the world would sit and listen. >> any people who say they want change really want exchange.

they want get your foot off my neck so i can put my foot on somebody elses neck. really. the price of freedom of liberation, of fair play, of justice, and even mercy is eternal vigilance. most people are really morally lazy. i'm sorry to say that. i'm sorry to believe that. but, a number of people say, why aren't our streets more safe. why doesn't our justice system really practice fair play? why, why am i alone? why am i so lonely? >> why am i a victim. >> why am i a victim. exactly. when in truth if people really wanted change, they would act upon that desire. >> you tell the truth. >> you didn't know i was going to preach. >> well no, because you tell the story in here of what mrs. annie johnson from arkansas who could have gone a couple of

different directions maybe the directions everybody told her she should go but you said she cut herself a new path and that's what we need to do. cut ourselves a new path. >> what we have to do it seems to me is look at the road we've been on. and look at the road that looms ahead. and if the one going back is not comfortable, and the one going ahead is ominous and dangerous, we've got to have enough courage to step off the road and cut a new path. cut a new path. and go along there and if it doesn't, if it's not tentable, step off the road. this is our life. i mean this is all we have. there ain't no more. as far as we can be absolutely certain it's given to us but live but once. >> you say each year a couple of times a year you give yourself a day. we should all do that. >> we should. >> explain how we give ourselves a day.

>> well i tried leaf once a year. sometimes two or three times a year to inform my house mate and my friends and family that i am gone. i will be gone tomorrow. i am not available. and i will go to sleep that night knowing that the next day is my day away. i will get up in the morning, put on the most comfortable clothes i've got, comfortable shoes, and i go walking. and i walk into buildings and i look at the buildings, at the lobby and i go in the park and i look at the ants. and i look at the tree tops. and i don't want to meet anybody who knows me. i mean my closest friends because i'm then reminded of all the responsibilities which i have decided are on my shoulders. i mumble through parks, i go

into the lobbies of theaters. movie houses, if i feel like sitting there for half an hour i do so. if not i go to a hot dog stand and get myself a wonderful hot dog. i am really good to myself. i don't try to work out any problem. what happens is so strange ross. i will return home and i will find that a problem which had really bugged me, has a very clear solution. still to come on a second look, maya angelou's deep roots in the bay area. her son's remembrances of her famous mother.

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tonight we're remembering maya angelou. when she was a teenager she moved to the bay area and it's here where she made history.

>> reporter: at the regal airing, maya angelou was an author and poet. perhaps the most famous moment is when president clinton asked her to recite a home at his inauguration. >> give birth again to the dream. >> reporter: she had come a long way as a teenager she moved to san francisco from arkansas. that's her in the back row in this 1945 washington high school yearbook picture. her name then was margerite johnson. one of her first jobs was with market street rail way where she became the first african american railroad worker. >> i had a bell and a can for coins and i would say, come in pleads. >> as a person who has any

conscious do something like this? she learned from human beings and from everyone. while she didn't have a college education, she had a world education. she could tell you the polish poets. i've never heard of them. >> reporter: reverend cecil williams of glide church and wife know her well. >> i married her. >> a couple of times. >> about two or three times. >> just kept marrying. it wasn't until she said i'm ready. >> reporter: davis was a friend of maya angelous for more than 40 years. >> she was just so phenomenal. you just wanted her to be here always as an advisor. as a friend. it was nothing you could not ask her. and expect her to give you a serious answer. if she knew you. and you would sometimes when she didn't know you. >> maya angelou's life is the basis of much of her writing

but she did not shy away from talking about her death. saying she wanted to be remembered as someone who dared to love not just one person but all of humanity. in 2002, angelou made her visit to ktvu and spoke about love. >> you met a man in ghana. look at you your face lights up. you said was your great love. he had absolutely everything. yet you had to say goodbye to him. i think a lot of women could relate to your story. >> well he was wonderful in every way. so women know what i mean. he-- >> i even know what you mean. >> he was fine and kind and all that. except that he insisted upon being not just loved but worshiped. which meant that he wanted me to be his slave not his mate.

that imprisons a person. if a woman does that to a man or a man to a man or woman to a woman, it does not do what love is supposed to do, ross. love liberates. that's possession. >> and you had to leave the possession because you wanted the love. >> yes. >> certainly makes sense. you also were a singer for a time in a small club over in hawaii. >> yes. >> you thought you were doing pretty good. >> i was doing pretty well. >> you were packing them in? >> yes, i was. >> all of a sudden. >> they stopped coming. >> what happened? >> somebody told me a real singer was performing down the road. and i thought let me go over here and see this real singer. i went there and this tall woman came out. beautiful. huge voice like that. it was della reese. the woman could sing. she's magnificent. >> you went to talk to her?

what did she say? did you learn something from her? >> well i learned from her performance and the way the audience responded to her that i wasn't a singer. i also learned that i knew instinctively that i would never become great. because i didn't love it. in order to love -- to become great in anything, you have to love it. you must be willing to make sacrifices. you must be willing to say i can't come to this party, and i can't go on that weekend i've got to work. well i didn't love singing like that. i had a pretty good voice. and i could sometimes stay on pitch. but i thought i better start back to writing. i might have something to say. when we come back on a second look. bay area pioneering news woman belva davis remembers her friend maya angelou. heat shields are compromised. we have multiple failures.

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welcome back to a second look. today we remember the life and work of maya angelou. she led an incredible life that took her to a world of power. among those she called her friends nelson mandela and president clinton and obama. >> she thought at some of the most prestigious campuses in the country. she was friends with presidents and kings and all kind of people at the highest levels. never in need of language to express because whatever you got from her was honest. >> her start was in the segregated south. from her own pain she would find universal hope. a hope she shared in her writers and teachings. >> love. tolerance, acceptance, she didn't want to change who you were. as long as you were a good

person it didn't matter what your sexual orientation was. what your attitudes were, if you cared and loved human beings, that was sufficient. >> courage is the most important of all the virtuing because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. you can be every attribute but to be that thing time after time you have to have courage. >> as a writer, maya angelou understood the rhythm of literacy. >> what can you say in a poem that you can't really say in probes. >> you can catch the reader and the listener because of the repetition. the end of phenomenal woman for instance. it continues to go back i'm a

woman phenomenally, phenomenal woman. that's me. so it has a chance. you have a chance to do what the blues can do. and sometimes what a gospel song can do or what an irish ballad does or scotch ballad. it goes back again and again and again. so repetition in a piece of poetry is not a bad thing. but it would be kind of boring in probes. >> with all this talk about anti affirmative action, do you perceive it at all as a backlash against women? >> yes, i think oh i think it's a backlash against all of us. women and men. i think it's a terrible thing. i think that we've stepped outside of our roles as guiders and lookers and careers and nurturers of the species. of our folks and we've stepped aside from that and it's very dangerous. it suggests that the haves are not the descendants of the have

notes and that's really terrible. when we come back we will hear maya angelou's most famous poem. as she makes history at president clinton's inauguration. i do got this. from the shelf, and to your home. starting at $99.

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their best self. but it was president clinton that credited maya angelou. her son says that his mother worked on that poem 18 hours a day for two months. and it reminds people that we're a child of the planet. >> a rock, a river, a tree, posts to species long departed marks the masedon, the dinosaur who left dried tokens of their on our planet floor. any haste is lost in the gloom of dust and ages. but today, the rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully. come, you may stand upon my back and face your distant destiny.

but seek no haven in my shadow. i will give you no hiding place down here. you created only a little lower than the angels have crouched too long in the bruising darkness. have lain too long face down in ignorance, your mouths spilling words armed for slaughter, the rock cries out to us today you may stand upon me, but do not hide your face. across the wall of the world of rivers sang the beautiful song, it says come, rest here by my side. each of you a bordered country, delicate and strangely made, proud yet thrusting perpetually under siege. your arm's struggle for profete have left collars of wavers on

my shore. colors of debris upon my breast. yet today i call you to my river side, if you will study war no more. come, clad in peace. and i will sing the songs the creator gave to me when i'm the tree and the rock were one. before cynicism was a bloody fear across your brow. and when you yet knew you still knew nothing. the river sang and sings on. there is a true yearning to respond to the singing river and the wise rock, so say the asians, the hispanic, the jew, the african, the native american, the sue, the catholics, the muslim, the french, the greek, the irish, the rabbi, the priest, the shiik, the gay, the straight,

the preacher, the teacher. they hear the tree, come to me. here beside the river. plant yourself beside the river. each of you descendant of some past owned traveler has been paid for. you who gave me my first name. you pony, apache, you cherokee nation who rested with me. then forced on bloody feet, lift me to the employment of other seekers desperate for game. starving for gold. you the turk, the arab, the sweed, the german, the eskimo, the scott, you the achante, the yuruba, the crew, bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a night mayier, praying for a dream. here, root yourselves beside me. i am that tree planted by the river which will not be moved.

i the rock, i the river, i the tree, i am yours. your passages have been paid. lift up your faces, you have a piercing need for this bright morning dawning for you. history despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived but if faced with courage need not be lived again. lift up your eyes upon this daybreaking for you. give birth again to the dream. women, children, men, take it into the palms of your hands. mold it into the shape of your most private need. sculpted into the imagine of your most public selves. don't up your hearts. each new hour holds new chances for new beginnings. do not be wedded forever to fear. youth eternally to brutefulness. the horizon leads forward offering you space to place new

steps of change. here, on the pulse of this fine day, you may have the courage to look up and out and upon me. the rock, the river, the tree. your country. no less to you now than the master dom then. here on this new day you may have the grace to look up and out. and into your sister's eyes. and into your brother's face. your country, and say simply, very simply, with hope, good morning. >> the world last heard from maya angelou over twitter five

days before she died. she wrote, listen to yourself and in that quitetude you might hear god. thank you, have a good night. i'm julie haener. at shell, we believe the world needs a broader mix of energies, which is why we are supplying natural gas, to generate cleaner electricity, that has around 50% fewer co2 emissions than coal. and why with our partner in brazil,

we are producing a biofuel made from renewable sugarcane to fuel cars. let's broaden the world's energy mix, let's go. hello, everybody. i'm beth troutman. we've been searching the web for the best videos of the day and we've got them for you, "right this minute." a wing suit pilot goes for broke between two buildings. >> he put it right between the eyes. >> now, meet the daredevil who went all stealth to pull it off. >> at one point, i just said, let let's do it. >> a worr keeps working even though her hand is sandwiched -- caught in the dough machine. how they set her free. a