In Gratitude to Nikki Giovanni

UT Libraries mourns the passing of beloved poet and Knoxville native Nikki Giovanni.

Giovanni was born in Knoxville on June 7, 1943. She grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, but returned to Knoxville to attend Austin High School, now called Austin-East Magnet High School. Giovanni was a graduate of Fisk University, and she spent the majority of her academic career teaching creative writing and literature at Virginia Tech. But she maintained her ties to Knoxville and used her talents to further several projects of the University of Tennessee Libraries.

On April 5, 2018, at the Bijou Theatre, Giovanni delivered the Wilma Dykeman Stokely Memorial Lecture, an event sponsored annually by the Library Society of the UT Libraries and the Knox County Public Library. Giovanni read half a dozen poems and prefaced each poem with a candid digression on subjects that ranged from the history of civil rights to her father’s abusive relationship with her mother. She admonished young people to vote, reminding the audience that each owed a debt to civil rights activists like Fannie Lou Hamer who took terrible risks to secure voting rights.

In 2007, Giovanni spoke at an event sponsored by the Center for Children’s and Young Adult Literature — at that time, part of the UT Libraries. Her presentation was based on her book On My Journey Now: Looking at African American History through the Spirituals. 

Most recently, Giovanni composed a poem to be read at an event celebrating the legacy of two other Knoxville-born artists, Beauford Delaney and Joseph Delaney, both painters who were part of the early 20th-century revival of African American art known as the Harlem Renaissance. The 2023 event was sponsored by the UT Libraries, the Beck Cultural Exchange Center, and the Knoxville Museum of Art.