Dr Maya Angelou has been a writer, poet, civil rights activist, actress, director, professor, singer and dancer.
Dr Angelou switched allegiance from Mrs Clinton to Mr Obama
Although she never went to college, she has been awarded more than 30 honorary degrees.
Since 1981, she has been a professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.
She was raised by her grandmother in racially-segregated Arkansas.
She has written about being raped at the age of seven, becoming an unwed mother at 17, and about the friends who changed her life: Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and James Baldwin.
Newshour's Robin Lustig asked her for her reaction to the election of Barack Obama.
First broadcast 5 November 2008