Vivian Elizabeth Ayers Allen (born July 30, 1923) is an American poet, playwright, cultural activist, museum curator and classicist.
[15][11] The poem foreshadowed the first successes in space travel,[24] published just 11 weeks before the launch of Sputnik I (the first artificial satellite sent from Earth into orbit).
"[26] There are enlarged reproductions of select lines exhibited at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
[30] Allen also had an academic career, becoming the librarian[4] and first African-American faculty member at Rice University,[31] Houston, Texas, in 1966.
[12] In 1973, she collaborated with the Harris County Community Association and a group of certified teachers to produce the program “Workshops in Open Fields.” It aimed to educate preschool children in the arts.
[2] She moved with her children to Mexico for a year to give them the opportunity to have new experiences away from the "racist" American south.
[12] In 1984, Allen moved to New York where she founded the ADEPT New American Museum of the Southwest in Mount Vernon,[5][28][35] organising community arts projects for the local black community,[36] supporting underrepresented minority artists, and stressing the contributions of both African-Americans and Indigenous American peoples to the arts.
[41] Allen became the founding director of the Brainerd Institute Heritage,[9] supported by the Chester Historical Society, and aiming both to preserve the history of a school that helped shape her but also to commemorate the long struggle of black Americans to provide their children with a good education.
[9][25] A 100th birthday party was held on the grounds of the Brainerd Institute where her daughter Phylicia read "Hawk" with musical accompaniment from the Claflin University Choir.