CNN news 2014-06-01 加文本

cnn news 2014-06-01

CARL AZUZ, cnn ANCHOR: This is cnn STUDENT NEWS. It`s Thursday, May 29th, I`m Carl Azuz. The first story we are covering - President Obama`s speech yesterday at West Point. It was a graduation speech at the U.S. Military Academy, but it was a foreign policy speech, too. The president wanted to define how his administration has dealt and would deal with other nations. Basically, represent the U.S. on the world stage. He`s being criticized on this issue. Republicans say America has lost influence in the world under President Obama`s leadership. Critics say the U.S. has appeared soft on issues concerning the Syrian civil war and unrest in Ukraine. The president highlighted his administration`s work to end the war in Iraq, wind down the war in Afghanistan. Kill terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. He also said that true leadership isn`t only having the world`s most powerful military, but in doing the right thing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Time for the "Shoutout." Who said, "We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated?" If you think you know it, shout it out!

Was it Franklin Roosevelt, Kevin Garnett, Helen Keller or Maya Angelou? You`ve got three seconds, go.

It was poet Maya Angelou who penned these words in addition to many others. That`s you answer and that`s your shoutout.

AZUZ: American writer Maya Angelou or Angelou knew something about defeat. She was sexually abused as a child, she struggled and made mistakes before her rise to renown, her refusal to be defeated led her to victories in literature, dancing, acting. Angelou passed away yesterday morning at age 86. Fredricka Whitfield reviews her life as enduring and preserving as the words Angelou wrote.

MAYA ANGELOU: "The hells we have lived through and live through still have sharpened our senses and toughened our will." FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, cnn CORRESPONDENT: Celebrated poet and activist Maya Angelou, may have been speaking about herself on that day in 1995. Born Margaret Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, April 4, 1928, the hells she lived through began at the age of seven when she was raped by her mother`s boyfriend. After she spoke out against him, he was beaten to death by a mob. Young Margaret blamed herself.

ANGELOU: I was 7.5 and my 7.5-year-old logic deduced that my voice had killed him so I stopped speaking for almost six years.

WHITFIELD: And it was during those years of silence that she discovered poetry and her love of art. WHITFIELD: Her poetry was first physical. Winning a dance and drama scholarship in San Francisco, then later touring Europe in 1954 in "Porgy and Bess." But her growing love for the written word took her to Egypt and Ghana where they became a newspaper editor. In Ghana, she met Malcolm X and returned to the U.S. in 1964 to join his fight in the civil rights movement. After Malcolm X`s assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, asked her to join him. He was killed on her birthday in 1968. The following year her first memoir was published, "I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings." More bestsellers would follow.

Blazing trails on the big and small screens, she directed documentaries. Her screen play for 1972`s "Georgia Georgia" was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Maya Angelou was dominated for a Tony Award. She won three Grammys and in 2011 President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

ANGELOU: I am the hope and the dream of the slave. And so naturally, there I go rising.