Maya Angelou becomes first Black woman on quarter

Time to read
less than
1 minute
Read so far

Maya Angelou becomes first Black woman on quarter

Thu, 01/13/2022 - 03:55
Posted in:
Body

New York Daily News The U.S. Mint recently began shipping out a new series of quarters, including ones featuring writer Maya Angelou, making her the first Black woman to ever appear on a quarter.

The new coin is part of the American Women Quarters Program, which will later have coins bearing the likeness of Wilma Mankiller, the Cherokee Nation’s first female chief, Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American movie star, Adelina Otero-Warren, a suffrage movement leader and Sally Ride, the first American woman to go to space.

The Angelou coin has George Washington on one side and shows Angelou with her arms raising up in front of a bird and beams of sunshine. Angelou was a prominent civil rights activist. The image is “inspired by her poetry and symbolic of the way she lived,” the Mint said.

“It is my honor to present our nation’s first circulating coins dedicated to celebrating American women and their contributions to American history,” Mint deputy director Ventris C. Gibson said.

Angelou, who gained worldwide fame after the release of her memoir “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings,” died in 2014 at the age of 86. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011 during Barack Obama’s first term.