The evening was filled with laughter and profound discussion as poet Nikki Giovanni was invited to reflect on her life as a Black person in Appalachia.
Though Giovanni did not spend her entire life in Appalachia, she was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and after relocating from Cincinnati, Ohio, she taught as a professor at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia. Giovanni recently retired from the university after being a professor for over 35 years.
Giovanni lit up the room with retellings of all the remarkable people she has met over the years. In lieu of recent events, Giovanni recalled the time she had met Queen Elizabeth II. The meeting occurred after the shooting that took place at Virginia Tech in 2007. Giovanni wrote a poem regarding the tragedy which prompted the Queen to ask to meet with Giovanni privately.
“I knew I had to write this, and I knew that it was going to be rough to write about and I knew we were going international with this [poem,] but I never knew the Queen was going to be a part of my audience,” said Giovanni.
The Queen told Giovanni that she enjoyed reading her poetry, which left Giovanni in disbelief. However, Giovanni, a Fisk University alumnus, informed the Queen how her great-grandmother provided £50,000 to students at Fisk which saved the university from bankruptcy. This story led to her explaining to the audience that “there is a relation between all of us, between blacks and white, America and England.” Giovanni then began reciting one of her poems “I’m a Tennessee Native.”
“I’m a native Tennessean, I was born there. During the age of segregation where you couldn’t go to the same amusement park and the same movie theatre, where the white guys would cruise up and down the street calling after you, where the black guys were afraid of being lynched, but we went to church each Sunday and sang a song and we found a way to not only survive, but to find and thrive and to relieve and hope,” said Giovanni.
The retelling of this poem led to Giovanni’s story about knowing activist Rosa Parks and musician Arethra Franklin, her “sorority sister.” Giovanni joked about how she told Rosa Parks that the biggest mistake of her life was joining the sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha instead of Delta Sigma Theta. She then recalled a time when they were planning a march in lieu of Susan B. Anthony and how sorority members from Alpha Kappa Alpha refused to.
“Nineteen members of Delta Sigma Theta told the girls that ‘it doesn’t matter where we march, but we must march,” said Giovanni.
Giovanni told the audience “Don’t let people silence you,” and how we all have a voice that needs to be heard. She then recited a poem about the tragedy behind the death of Emmett Till. She mentioned in this poem those who have went unnoticed as time has moved on. “It was Rosa Parks who could not stand for the death of Emmett Till, so she sat,” said Giovanni.
Giovanni began to retell stories about the way mothers were when she was a child. She said that the smartest thing she learned in her life was that “some things weren’t my business.” She told the audience that is how she connected with her mother throughout life, by having the understanding that some things were not meant to be known. She then recited a poem about how nurturing, yet tough mothers can be and how they are a passage of welcoming for new life to this world.
“You think about those women and they’re great women, they had leftover quilts, clothes…and they came through to us making it all right…and when they left…that became our job, to make things all right,” said Giovanni.
One of the aspects that Giovanni hit on most towards the end of the night was church. “Church is not what you believe but what you learn,” Giovanni said. When people asked her how she was able to stand of the front lines of the protests she led in her youth, she responded by saying “we learned by being on the front lines of the congregation.”
She ended the night by closing on how her life has treated her. “God is good, I’ve got a left lung missing and a right breast missing, so it keeps me balanced,” said Giovanni. She informed the audience she has had two diagnoses of cancer then followed up with a joke. She closed with a poem about growing older and reminded the audience that “you are free to do the best you can do.”
For more information about the exhibit “Y’all Don’t Hear Me,” visit www.etsu.edu/cas/art/galleries/.
This program is in partnership with the College of Art & Sciences’ Office of the Dean, the Mary V. Jordan Multicultural Center, Department of Appalachian Studies, Language Culture Resource Center, Film & Media Studies, Radio, TV & Film Department, Equity and Inclusion, UMOJA, The Bottom Knox, Black Faculty & Staff Association, and the Langston Centre.
