Poet, writer, trailblazer, icon, mother, sister, professor, activist, educator, legend … beloved. This string of words are but a few to describe Knoxville’s native daughter and unofficial poet laureate emeritus forever, Nikki Giovanni. The sorrow and accolades began to overflow late last night after if was announced that Giovanni had died at the age of 81 in the wake of a third cancer diagnosis.

It feels unfair. Yes, she had a long and productive life, made it to the fourth quarter, a much-admired commentator and retired professor at Virginia Tech University. But it always feels like thievery when giant minds are taken from us.

I do not know how old I was when I first read her poem Knoxville, Tennessee. I know it was before high school, so whether it was late in my years at Sterchi or my brief time at Gresham when it was still a junior high school, I can’t recall. But what I do remember is feeling like, oh, we’re special enough to be written about, too, here in our scruffy little city:

I always like summer
best
you can eat fresh corn
from daddy’s garden
and okra
and greens
and cabbage
and lots of
barbecue
and buttermilk
and homemade ice-cream
at the church picnic
and listen to
gospel music
outside
at the church
homecoming
and go to the mountains with
your grandmother
and go barefooted
and be warm
all the time
not only when you go to bed
and sleep

It’s a poem you can sink your teeth into while blowing dandelions across the yard or lying back in the grass and staring into the sky finding animals in the passing clouds. Giovanni was a little bit of magic born right here at the old Knoxville General Hospital in 1943 to Jones “Gus” Giovanni and Yolanda Cornelia Watson Giovanni Sr. Nikki was a “junior,” you see. Both her parents were graduates of Knoxville College and teachers.

Nikki Giovanni, photo courtesy of nikki-giovanni.com

Though born here, she was primarily raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, but returned to Knoxville often in the summers to spend time at the Mulvaney Street (now Hall of Fame Drive) home of her grandparents, Professor John Brown and Louvenia Watson. By 1958 she had returned to Knoxville to attend Austin High School before going on to Fisk University in Nashville where she eventually earned her bachelor’s degree in history.

By the late 1960s she was living in New York City and was an active member of the Black Arts Movement, and was a civil rights and equal rights for women activist. She was fearless. By 1987 she was teaching creative writing and literature at Virginia Tech. She was a key figure in the mass shooting that occurred on the campus in 2007, having asked the university to remove the shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, from one of her poetry classes in 2005, saying she would resign if he wasn’t. At a memorial the day after the shooting, she closed her remarks with this:

We know we did nothing to deserve it. But neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS. Neither do the invisible children walking the night awake to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory. Neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water. We are Virginia Tech. We will prevail.

In 2019, the city of Knoxville honored her with an historical marker located at the Cal Johnson Recreation Center. Her grandmother’s home was long gone from the path of urban renewal. Giovanni’s essay, 400 Mulvaney Street, recounts the grief of losing her grandparents’ home. Last year, the Beck Cultural Exchange Center opened a permanent exhibit honoring Giovanni after she donated 47 boxes of her memorabilia and writings. She appeared at the Big Ears Festival in 2022 at the Mill & Mine. Her final publication, The Last Book, is scheduled for release in the fall of 2025. Learn more about Nikki Giovanni here.

If now isn’t a good time for the truth I don’t see when we’ll get to it. – Nikki Giovanni

Beth Kinnane writes a history feature for KnoxTNToday.com. It’s published each Tuesday and is one of our best-read features.

Sources: nikki-giovanni.com, Knox County Library digital archives, “Knoxville, Tennessee” from Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgment by Nikki Giovanni. Copyright © 1968, 1970 by Nikki Giovanni,HarperCollins Publishers.