Angelou has received a gratifying share of public acclaim. She holds honorary degrees from Mills College, Smith College, Lawrence University, Oberlin College, Mt. Holyoke, Boston
College, Spelman College, Brown University, Rollins University, North Carolina School of the Arts, and, the most significant, the University of Arkansas, in the backyard of land tilled by her great-grandmother, a slave. In 1976, Ladies' Home Journal chose her Woman of the Year in Communications; in 1987, she accepted the North Carolina Award for Literature. Two years later, she was named one of USA Today's fifty black role models. She has also been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for poetry, a Golden Eagle film award, and an Emmy for acting, and has received fellowships from Yale University and the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1983, she accepted the Matrix Award from Women in Communications, Inc.; in 1990, along with dancer Judith Jamison and settlement worker Mother Clara Hale, she received the Candace Award, an honor extended by the National Coalition of Black Women to ten black Americans for achievement, character, and service. In 1993, she read her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the presidential inauguration ceremonies, and four years later she wrote the lyrics to the musical "King!" which was staged during that year's presidential inauguration to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.
To all this praise, she has said, "I'm convinced that I'm a child of God. That's wonderful, exhilarating, liberating, full of promise. But the burden which goes along with that is, I'm convinced that everybody is a child of God. . . . I weep a lot. I thank God I laugh a lot, too. The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry." To an interviewer's question about her influence, she replied, "Each of us, famous or infamous, is a role model for somebody, and if we aren't, we should behave as though we are — cheerful, kind, loving, courteous. Because you can be sure someone is watching and taking deliberate and diligent notes."
