Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr.[1][2] (June 7, 1943 – December 9, 2024) was an American poet, writer, commentator, activist and educator.

[2] During the 1970s, she began writing children's literature, and co-founded a publishing company, NikTom Ltd, to provide an outlet for other African-American women writers.

[7] Giovanni taught at Queens College, Rutgers, and Ohio State, and was a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech until she retired on September 11 2022.

At age four, the family moved to Lincoln Heights, Ohio, near Cincinnati,[9] where her parents worked at Glenview School.

In 1948, the family moved to Wyoming, Ohio, and sometime in those first three years, Giovanni's sister, Gary, began calling her "Nikki".

[9] In 1960, she began her studies at her grandfather's alma mater, Fisk University in Nashville, as an "early entrant", which meant that she could enroll in college without having finished high school first.

[9][10] She immediately clashed with the then-Dean of Women and was expelled after not having obtained the required permission from the dean to leave campus and travel home for Thanksgiving break.

Giovanni moved back to Knoxville, where she worked at a Walgreens drug store and helped care for her nephew, Christopher.

In 1968, Giovanni took a semester at University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work toward an MSW and then moved to New York City.

[17][18] From 1970, she began making regular appearances on the television program Soul!, an entertainment/variety/talk show that promoted Black art and culture and allowed political expression.

Giovanni's conversation with James Baldwin on Soul!, filmed in London and broadcast in 1971 as a two-part special,[19][20] is considered a defining moment in her career,[21][22] and subsequently became a book.

[23] She appeared on other television programs, including The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1972,[24] accruing such popularity that her 30th birthday celebration at the Lincoln Center filled a 3,000-seat hall.

[12] She was also honored for her life and career by The HistoryMakers, along with being the first person to receive the Rosa L. Parks Women of Courage Award.

[35][36] Seung-Hui Cho, a mass murderer who killed 32 people in the Virginia Tech shooting on April 16, 2007, was a student in one of Giovanni's poetry classes.

"[38] Her performance received an over 90-second standing ovation from the over-capacity audience in Cassell Coliseum, including then-president George W.

[13][45] She had been working on a memoir titled A Street Called Mulvaney, and her final poetry collection, The Last Book, was set for publication in 2025.

[citation needed] Evie Shockley describes Giovanni as "epitomizing the defiant, unapologetically political, unabashedly Afrocentric, BAM ethos.

Rochelle A. Odon states that "Giovanni's realignment of female identity with sexuality is crucial to the burgeoning feminist movement within the black community.

In "Woman Poem", Giovanni shows that the Black Arts Movement and racial pride were not as liberating for women as they were for men.

[64] In an interview entitled "I am Black, Female, Polite", A. Peter Bailey questioned her regarding the role of gender and race in her poetry.

[65] Bailey specifically addresses the critically acclaimed poem "Nikki-Rosa," and questions whether it is reflective of the poet's own childhood and her experiences in her community.

In the interview, Giovanni stresses that she did not like constantly reading the trope of the Black family as a tragedy and that "Nikki-Rosa" demonstrates the experiences that she witnessed in her communities.

[65][66] Specifically, the poem deals with Black folk culture and touches on gender, race, and social issues like alcoholism and domestic violence.

She co-wrote a book with James Baldwin entitled A Dialogue, in which the two authors speak about the status of the Black man in the household.

[67] At a 1999 Martin Luther King Jr. Day event, she recalled the 1998 murders of James Byrd Jr. and Matthew Shepard: "What's the difference between dragging a Black man behind a truck in Jasper, Texas, and beating a white boy to death in Wyoming because he's gay?

[72] Some of the most serious verse links her own life struggles (being a Black woman and a cancer survivor) to the wider frame of African-American history and the continual fight for equality.

In November 2008, a song cycle from her poems, Sounds That Shatter the Staleness in Lives by Adam Hill, was premiered as part of the Soundscapes Chamber Music Series in Taos, New Mexico.

[citation needed] She was commissioned by NPR's All Things Considered to create an inaugural poem for president Barack Obama.

[83] During the 2020 United States presidential election, Giovanni appeared in a campaign ad for Joe Biden, reading her poem "Dream".