I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings should be required reading in high school. Like most good books in my life I read it on my own. She describes being raped by her mother's boyfriend at age 7, going to trial where he got a slap on the wrist because she was "asking for it". Then her mother's family killed the man. She thought her speech had killed him so became voluntarily mute for 3 years. We've had "discussion" on privilege which some say does not exist. She talks of her grade school graduation, the girls in starched dresses, the boys in suits, and a local politician (forget which office) spoke, a real occasion. This pol talked about how great things were coming to their small Arkansas town. Why, the next year, the all white high school would have a state of the art biology and chemistry lab, a new gym, and an art teacher coming 3 days a week to teach the students. Of course, none of the students he was addressing would ever attend that all white school. They went to an all black school with no labs, no gym, no art.
I remember when I heard Miss Angelou (as she liked to be called) speak, she talked about working as a journalist in Egypt. She was the only woman, the only American, the only Black person, and at 6' the tallest person in the office. She joked about how she considered converting to Judaism so she'd REALLY not fit in.
She lived in Ghana for a number of years, returning to the US to work with Malcolm X setting up the Organization for African-American Unity.
Charles Blow has
a good article.
Luckily I was smart enough to get into a great career, but still. 
