Maya Angelou: The last Interview By Toyin Falola (2024)

Maya had been helping Moore on a documentary film project, BLOOD AT
THE ROOTS, an exploration of the roots of racism, going back to the
8th century AD, when the first mass deportations of African
populations for the purpose of enslavement in the Middle East took
place. For Moore, that was the very beginning of the concept of racial
slavery. It was in that context, and assisted by an African-Canadian
film crew, that he flew to Winston Salem, on April 19th, for the
fateful two-hour interview that Dr. Angelou was to grant him. A great
friendship of 50 years linked them.

Forty-eight hours ago, we spoke about Maya, not knowing that two days
later, she would be dead. It was very painful for me to send him a
note that Maya was gone. I knew Maya Angelou personally, but our
encounter is not the subject of this piece, today. Rather, I turn to
this last project to which she had lent her voice and support, and to
the deep friendship she entertained with a man whom she proudly
designated as “my son Carlos.”

Today, Carlos´s name circles around the world, on account of Maya
Angelou´s death. But is precisely because it was to him, and the film
project he is doggedly pursuing, that Dr. Angelou chose to utter her
last words to this world. That interview, because of the nature of its
subject, during times when we are witnessing the brutal re-emergence
of racism worldwide, will enter history in a special way.

Some may wonder who is this man, to whom Maya Angelou reserved her
parting words. But, to some of us, Carlos needs no introduction. He
fought Fidel Castro for over three decades to a standstill, arguing
from his many places of exile that Marxist socialism did not erase
racism in Cuba, or in anywhere else for that matter. He defied that
regime in proclaiming that blacks continued to be its victims, as
before the Revolution. Imprisoned twice on charges of “racial
subversion,” he fled Cuba into exile through the embassy of Guinea, in
late 1963, residing in various places, including Nigeria, where he
became a close friend of Fela Anikulapo Kuti. He wrote the latter´s
biography at his request. Fela: This Bitch of a life, published to
much acclaim in 1982, in Great Britain and France, was the first
biography ever of an African artist and became a classic; the
indispensable book on Fela.

When the musical Fela on Broadway was released, a few years ago, all
those who knew the Fela biography saw the clear evidences of what
appeared to be brazen intellectual looting. And, indeed, Carlos Moore
sued. A host of people, on several continents, including me, rallied
to his side. Assisted by Spike Lee, who helped provide legal defense,
Susan Taylor, Ruby Dee and, of course, Maya Angelou, Moore prevailed
after a tough two-year battle. The Broadway producers threw in the hat
and settled.

Moore´s out of court settlement was decent, but rather than dreaming
of buying a house on the lake, he placed it at the service of a
greater cause: the making of a historical documentary on the origins
of racism, with Maya Angelou and Aime Cesaire (the Martiniquan poet
and philosopher responsible for the founding of the radical Negritude
Movement), at the center of it. To those who may not know, Carlos was
the one who convened the largest gathering ever on Negritude, in
Miami, FL, on February 26-28, 1987. It was at that three-day
conference, that Césaire delivered his now famous “Discourse on
Negritude,” his message to posterity. That speech is now considered to
be an essential manifesto of the global struggle against racism.

Maya Angelou was there, along with other notable black scholars - John
Henrik Clarke, Rex Nettleford (Jamaica), Alex Haley, St Clair Drake,
Lelia Gonzalez and Abdias Nascimento from Brazil, Manuael Zapata
Olivella from Colombia, Léopold Sedar Senghor from Senegal, and a host
of other brilliant thinkers, scholars and artists from four
continents. Until today, Maya Angelou was the only surviving icon who
had attended that amazing conference. Part of her last interview for
the Blood at the Roots film project, consist of her reflections on the
Negritude Movement, on Césaire and his signal contributions, on
Mandela, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and the issues that made these
men and women so special to the world. Those were the people with whom
Maya Angelou kept company and faith for long decades, in her untiring
struggle to erase racism from the face of the planet.

To add what you might call a gossip, but known to a few of us: Césaire
and Senghor were not really on talking terms for twenty years prior to
the Miami conference. I hold the view that Carlos Moore´s stature was
the only element capable of bringing them together, in the same room,
to deliver their antithetical visions on black emancipation, which
Senghor saw in terms that many considered as alienating and
consequently dismissed as assimilationist. If you knew Senghor as a
poet, you may not know that he was a very reticent figure. I met him
three times and getting three sentences out of Senghor’s mouth was a
problem. But that story of how it was possible to convince both men to
speak their last word at the same forum is something to be told
another day.
Carlos’s interview with Dr. Angelou, the very last one - and lasting
two hours! - is now set to become one of the greatest treasures of
this era. I understand that it was originally intended to be the
backbone of the Blood at the Roots film project, along with Césaire´s
“Discourse on Negritude.” Now, it too, will be available to
prosperity, in its integrity. So, when it will be released, as part
of that film project, we are bound to have a definitive document about
this era that will nurture us and the generations to come.

Carlos has done it again, and we owe him. Our collective debt to this
African Cuban, now in his 71st year, for this interview with our
sister Maya Angelou (and equally for Césaire´s last political
message), is immense.

Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
104 Inner Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7224
512 475 7222 (fax)