I just checked wikipedia for that prostitution claim and this is what I found...
"Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928, to Bailey Johnson, a doorman and naval dietitian, and Vivian Baxter Johnson, a nurse, real estate agent, and, later, merchant marine. Angelou's brother, Bailey Jr., gave her the nickname "Maya[7] When she was three and her brother four, their parents' "calamitous marriage" ended, and their father sent them alone by train to live with his mother, Mrs. Annie Henderson, in Stamps, Arkansas.[8] Angelou's first book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, recounts the first eighteen years of her life.
Four years later, the children's father "came to Stamps without warning" [9] and returned them to their mother's care in St. Louis. At age eight, Angelou was sexually abused and raped by her mother's boyfriend, Mr. Freeman. She confessed it to her brother, who told the rest of their family. Mr. Freeman was jailed for one day but was found kicked to death four days after his release. Subsequently, she became mute, believing, as she has stated, "I thought if I spoke, my mouth would just issue out something that would kill people, randomly, so it was better not to talk." She remained nearly mute for five years.[6]
Angelou and her brother were sent back to their grandmother once again. Angelou credits a close friend in Stamps, teacher Bertha Flowers, for helping her speak again, as well as introducing her to classic literature. In 1940, when she was thirteen, she and her brother returned to live with her mother in San Francisco, California; as the war raged, she attended George Washington High School and took lessons in dance and drama on a scholarship at the California Labor School. Before graduating, she worked as the first black female streetcar conductor in San Francisco.[10] Three weeks after completing school, she gave birth to her son, Guy Johnson, who also became a poet.[11]
To support herself and her son, she worked as a shake dancer in night clubs, fry cook in hamburger joints, dinner cook in a Creole restaurant, and removed paint from cars in a mechanic's shop.[10] She also "managed a house of prostitution," where she discovered "a certain talent for administration."[12]"
