Black History Spotlight: Nikki Giovanni

Born in 1943, Nikki Giovanni is the author of numerous collections of poetry and was the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award. Giovanni is commonly praised as one of the best African-American poets emerging from the 1960s Black Power and Black Arts Movements. Her early poems that were collected in the late 1960s and early 1970s are seen as radical as and more militant than her later work.

The older I get, the more I realize that memory plays tricks on us as we get older. I can’t tell you how many arguments there have been over Thanksgiving dinner when one sibling shares a memory and others chime in with “that is not what happened!”. Or even, “THAT NEVER HAPPENED!” I feel like this may be relevant to this post. My first memory of reading Nikki Giovanni was of reading a poem about explicit gay sex.  I cannot find any on the Internet that I find particularly shocking. So I was clearly very young and naive, or I’m remembering it wrong. I remember being less than impressed. So I really haven’t read her in decades.

That said Nikki Giovanni is more than worthy of a Black History spotlight. There is no accounting for my taste. 🙂  Ms. Giovanni will be 78 years old in June. Yet, this month she is still touring colleges speaking to young people about the social injustice that remains in this country. She inspires them to participate in Black Lives Matter and continue to make their voices heard. In truth, she was one of the leading voices of Black Lives Matter before that was even a thing. She has been fiercely political since the 1960s both in her poetry and in her activism. She’s a model for all those who have come after her.

In addition, she’s also a huge advocate for the LGBTQ community. She was open about her sexuality from a young age and wrote many poems about the various love interests in her lives at a time where most everyone was in the closet.

Did You Miss Some Black History Month Spotlights? Click Here To Catch Up! 

After 78 years in this country, she has never been discouraged. Never been silenced and continues to lead and teach the generations that came after here. Rather than the racy poem I was looking for, I have chosen to use the one she wrote for Black history month.

BLK History Month

BY NIKKI GIOVANNI

If Black History Month is not

viable then wind does not

carry the seeds and drop them

on fertile ground

rain does not

dampen the land

and encourage the seeds

to root

sun does not

warm the earth

and kiss the seedlings

and tell them plain:

You’re As Good As Anybody Else

You’ve Got A Place Here, Too

 Copyright © 2002 by Nikki Giovanni.

Thank you, Ms. Giovanni, for being the wind, the rain and the sun for all those seeds.