At the height of the ‘global 1960s’, hundreds of African Americans moved to Africa in search of a refuge from racism and an opportunity to participate in anti-colonial politics. One of the most prominent figures in this movement was Maya Angelou. Nine years before the publication of her first book, Angelou lived in Egypt (then known as the United Arab Republic) where she worked as a writer, editor and broadcaster at state-directed media institutions. She continued this work in Ghana, where her journalism and political writing situated the civil rights struggle in the United States within wider campaigns against racism and imperialism. Using previously unexamined documents from Angelou’s personal archive and surviving records of her radical political writing, this article sheds light on the role of African American activists in the global anti-colonial networks of the 1960s and the challenges faced by radical journalists across the decolonising world.