Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni Jr., the internationally recognized poet and provocateur, died Monday in Blacksburg, Virginia. She was 81.
Giovanni was a prolific writer, activist, educator, recipient of the Langston Hughes Medal and NAACP Image Award, Emmy Award winner, Grammy Award nominee and much more.
She is survived by her wife, fellow writer and professor Virginia “Ginney” Fowler, and son, Thomas Giovanni. “We will forever feel blessed to have shared a legacy and love with our dear cousin,” her relative Allison Ragan said on behalf of the family, in a statement obtained by USA TODAY Monday.
Giovanni is one of the world’s most famed African American poets, gaining notoriety in the late 1960s as part of the Black Arts Movement. Giovanni’s work touched on civil rights, the Black Power Movement, hip hop and more. She wrote more than two dozen bestselling poetry collections and children’s books during her lifetime, including 1968’s “Black Judgment” and 1983’s “Those Who Ride the Night Winds.” Fowler once called her “the definitive ‘poet of the people.'”
Who is Nikki Giovanni?
Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, to her parents, Yolande Cornelia Sr. and Jones “Gus” Giovanni on June 7, 1943. Soon after her birth, Giovanni’s family moved to Cincinnati and then to Wyoming before Giovanni returned to Knoxville to attend high school.
Giovanni did not dream of being a writer. “I think I just recognized I couldn’t do anything else,” she once said. “I wasn’t pretty, I couldn’t sing or dance and I couldn’t play the piano. Once you start eliminating things, you think, ‘What does that leave me with?’ What it left me with is that I watch. I watch anything in every space I’m in. And, if you’re watching, all you can end up being is a writer because you’re going to share what you have seen.”
Giovanni was a fierce advocate for African American rights during the Civil Rights Movement. She picketed in front of the Tennessee Theatre against segregation, one of many battles she engaged in on behalf of Black Americans.
“We weren’t trying to tell white Americans what to do,” Giovanni said. “We were trying to remind ourselves that we have a right.”
She cooked with authors Margaret Walker, Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison (and insisted that she was a far better cook than Angelou). She listened to the music of her friends Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Nina Simone. She traveled with Muhammad Ali when he was being robbed of his belt and was in the same sorority as Aretha Franklin and Barbara Jordan. She stood beside Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, founders of the Black Panther Party.
Literary legend: Moments for the culture Giovanni’s talk with James Baldwin and her ‘Thug Life’ tattoo
But, Giovanni’s name was never in the grocery store magazines (her ultimate measure of fame).
“I haven’t kept a low profile, I just don’t have a need to be famous,” Giovanni said. “That’s not what I’m about. I am an artist, so what I would like is to be read.”
Giovanni is set to release a posthumous book of poetry, “The Last Book,” in fall 2025.
Contributing: Taijuan Moorman, USA TODAY
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Nikki Giovanni dead: Poet and activist was 81