June 7 - BlackFacts.com Black History Minute

BlackFacts.com: Learn/Teach/Create Black History

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 7.

Nikki Giovanni was born.

She is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator.

Giovanni grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Knoxville, Tennessee, and in 1960 she entered Nashville’s Fisk University. By 1967, when she received a B.A., she was firmly committed to the civil rights movement and the concept of black power.

Her experiences as a single mother then began to influence her poetry. Loneliness, thwarted hopes, and the theme of family affection became increasingly important in her writings during the 1970s.

She returned to political concerns in "Those Who Ride the Night Winds" (1983), with dedications to black American heroes and heroines.

For children, she wrote "Jimmy Grasshopper Versus the Ants" (2007) and "Rosa" (2005), a picture book about legendary civil rights figure Rosa Parks.

She taught at various universities, including Virginia Tech. In 2007 the school was the site of a mass shooting. The gunman was a former student of Giovanni’s, and she had earlier alerted school authorities about his troubling behaviour.

At a memorial service she gave a powerful reading of a poem she had written following the tragedy.

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