DEBBIE ELLIOTT, HOST:
She was a civil rights activist, a dancer, a singer, a writer and a poet. I'm talking about Maya Angelou.
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MAYA ANGELOU: You may write me down in history with your bitter twisted line. You may trod me in the very dirt. But still, like dust, I'll rise.
ELLIOTT: That's Angelou performing her iconic poem "Still I Rise" in 1978. In honor of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence this year, our series America In Pursuit explores culture, history and objects in American life.
MODUPE LABODE: This is called Flag Hall, and it's named as such because behind us is where the original Star-Spangled Banner is on display.
ELLIOTT: And at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, here in Washington, D.C., there's an object that belonged to Maya Angelou. So we asked Modupe Labode, a curator at the museum, to tell us about it.
LABODE: This artifact is a typewriter that belonged to Maya Angelou. She probably had it from the early 1980s until her death. It's an Adler typewriter. It's an electric typewriter that was manufactured in West Germany. You can see the keys are kind of well-worn. You can still read them. So it looks like she was typing very regularly.
ELLIOTT: When you look at this, what do you think about? What do you think this means when you think about American history?
LABODE: For Maya Angelou, I see this as a tool of her creation. She was very precise about how she did her own work. She believed in writing and rewriting and rewriting. So one of the first things she did was - whether it was a poem, a cookbook - she would write it out in longhand, and then her first revision would be typing it into the typewriter. So I also see the typewriter as part of craft.
And we've got a photograph of her above. Yes, we do. And one of the things that I love about that photo - she really was a believer in living a good life, bringing people together, especially to eat, to celebrate, to sing. You see a lot of books behind her. There's an ashtray, so that's of a certain time. And it looks like somebody has said something that is really making her laugh.
ELLIOTT: Do we know which particular work she may have created on this typewriter?
LABODE: Probably the piece that many people are most familiar with is the poem that she created that she wrote for President Clinton's inauguration. So I think it's a reasonable assumption that she may have used this typewriter when she was revising the poem that she recited at President Bill Clinton's inauguration in January 1993.
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ANGELOU: History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but, if faced with courage, need not be lived again. Lift up your eyes upon this day breaking for you. Give birth again to the dream.
ELLIOTT: Why is it that Maya Angelou's typewriter deserves this prominent position in telling the story of America and its 250-year history?
LABODE: Maya Angelou took being an American very seriously. She didn't take it for granted. She came from and knew about people whose worlds and lives weren't often taken seriously. She grew up poor and Black in Arkansas and in Missouri. She endured sexual violence as a very young child. She used her writing and her skills as a singer, a dancer, an entertainer, as a poet to have us recognize our common humanity.
So she refused to believe that someone was lesser than another. She believed in the equality of human beings and that we should be confronting those who consider people because of their race, their gender, their wealth, lesser than. And so she, in many ways, embodies through her writing what we believe America should be about - about equity of opportunity, about not erasing differences, but celebrating them and bringing people together.
ELLIOTT: So have you ever met her?
LABODE: I did not have the privilege of meeting her. I did hear her speak, and she had a very regal bearing. One of the things that is really important is how she could use her voice - when she recited her poetry, when she sang a little bit - to have her words come to life in a different way.
ELLIOTT: Is there one particular work of hers that speaks to you personally?
LABODE: I encountered "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings" quite young, when I was in middle school. It was a gift from my godmother, so it was a connection across generations. So when we acquired this typewriter, it really made me think about how important the very - what we might think as very small aspects of life are in creating our history.
ELLIOTT: That's Modupe Labode, a curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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