Maya Angelou was born as Marguerite Ann Johnson, in Saint Louis Missouri. Her parents were Bailey and Vivian Baxter Johnson. Maya parents divorced and she and Brother Bailey Jr. had to live with her father's mother, Mrs. Annie Henderson, in stamps, Arkansas. Maya was sexually abused and raped by her mother’s boyfriend, Mr. Freeman. Maya told her mother what he had done to her. And that same night he was beaten to death by a mob of man. The Shock made Maya mute because she thought that her voice was the cause of his death and so the children were sent back to live with their grandparents once again. Her teacher Bertha Flowers helped to talk again. She dropped out of school to become San Francisco’s first African American female cable car conductor.