Poet Maya Angelou is first black woman on US quarter coin

Maya Angelou has become the first black woman to appear on the US 25-cent coin, which is also known as a quarter.

Angelou, who was a poet and activist, was the first black woman to write and perform a poem at a presidential inauguration in 1961.

Coins are also planned for other famous American women by the US Treasury, which makes US coins, including a tribal chief, an astronaut and an actress.

"Each time we redesign our currency, we have the chance to say something about our country - what we value, and how we've progressed as a society," US treasury secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.

American author and poet Maya Angelou was a role model and an activist who recorded and celebrated the experience of being black in the United States.

She was born Marguerite Johnson in St Louis, Missouri, on 4 April 1928.

Angelou was writing poetry by the age of nine and went on to work as a dancer, waitress and journalist.

But she shot to fame with her 1969 book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which was about her childhood growing up in the US in the Deep South. This area of the country enforced segregation laws, which were racist and discriminated against black people.

Read more: What is racism - and what can be done about it?

Angelou went on to be active in the US Civil Rights movement working with Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. The movement aimed to bring legal equality for black people in America.

As well as poetry, she wrote cookbooks, children's books, a feature film screenplay, and even a 10-part TV series.

In 2010, she was given a Presidential Medal of Freedom - the highest US award given to a member of the public - by President Barack Obama.

Angelou died in 2014 at the age of 86.

The new quarter shows Angelou with open arms. Behind her is a flying bird and rising sun, which are "inspired by her poetry and symbolic of the way she lived", the US treasury department said.

The front side of the quarter shows the traditional bust of George Washington, the country's first president.

The US Mint plans to make 20 more quarters over the next four years, showing other American women who played important roles in the country's history.

Coins are also planned this year for Sally Ride, the first female US astronaut; Wilma Mankiller, the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation and a campaigner for Native American rights; and Anna May Wong, who is considered the first Chinese-American film star in Hollywood.

In the UK, no non-white person has ever been featured on British money. But Royal Mint, which makes all the coins we use in the UK, and Chancellor Rishi Sunak say they want to feature a more diverse range of people on money in the future.