When Angelou was three and her brother Bailey was four, their parents divorced. They sent the children to live with their paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson, and her son Willie in Stamps, Arkansas. Annie, whom the children soon began to call "Momma," was the proprietor of the only store in the black section of Stamps. During the cotton harvest season, Momma awoke at four in the morning to sell lunches to the crowd of cotton laborers …showed first 75 words of 479 total…

…showed last 75 words of 479 total…woman, and she survived the Depression with her business intact. Willie Johnson - Willie Johnson was Momma's younger son. He was crippled in a childhood accident, and he lived his entire life with Momma. He suffered insults and jokes because of his lameness. Being a black man in the South was difficult enough, but a physical handicap made things worse. Like Momma, he was a devout Christian, and he was not given to emotional displays.