Nikki Giovanni, the pioneering Black poet, activist, professor, and children’s book author whose work transformed African-American literary history, died on Monday at the age of 81 due to complications from lung cancer, her wife Virginia C. Fowler told the New York Times. Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up largely in Ohio before organizing with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at the historically Black Fisk University and becoming a defining member of the Black Arts Movement. She is survived by Fowler as well as her son, whom she raised as a single mother.
Giovanni was a frequent guest on Soul!, a TV variety show that regularly raised issues of Black art and political expression, as well as a seven-time NAACP Image Award winner, a 1996 recipient of the Langston Hughes Medal, and the founder of Niktom Ltd., a publishing company opened in 1970 to promote and publish the work of African American women writers.
Over the course of her life, Giovanni was given the keys to over two dozen American cities, including New York, Los Angeles and New Orleans. She also taught at Virginia Tech from 1987 to 2022, delivering a chant-poem at a memorial for the victims of the school’s 2007 shooting. (In fact, the culprit, Seung-Hui Cho, was a student in one of Giovanni’s poetry classes, and she was among the professors who raised concerns about his conduct.)
Many of Giovanni’s writings have found new life on social media since their initial publication, including the 2020 poem “Allowables,” which includes the memorable lines: “I don’t think I’m allowed / To kill something / Because I am Frightened.”
