Nikki Giovanni

One of the most popular and acclaimed African-American poets of the 20th century, Nikki Giovanni came of age in the heady, militant era of the Civil Rights Movement, and her most influential poetry was suffused with all the spirit and vitality of a new age. Giovanni was born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni, Jr. in Knoxville, Tennessee, on June 7, 1943; her family moved to Cincinnati shortly thereafter, but Giovanni returned to Knoxville to live with her grandparents in 1957. She was an early enrollee at Nashville's all-Black Fisk University in 1960, but was dismissed before completi...