Nikki Giovanni, the award-winning American poet who was at the forefront of the Black Arts Movement, has died at the age of 81 after a long battle with cancer, local media reported on Tuesday.
Widely considered one of the most prolific African-American poets, Giovanni has received numerous awards and Grammy nominations for her work on civil rights, gender, and race issues.
Giovanni, whose best-known poems include ‘Knoxville, Tennessee’ and ‘Nikki-Rosa’, has died after a third cancer diagnosis, media reported.
“He died peacefully on December 9, 2024, with his lifelong companion Virginia (Ginny) Fowler at his side,” his friend and fellow author Renee Watson said in a statement to CNN.
Poet Kwame Alexander told American media, “We will always be grateful for the unconditional time he gave to us, all his literary children in the writing world.”
The Black Arts Movement, which flourished between 1965 and 1974, saw a wave of Black culture and literature championed by writers such as Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and Audre Lorde.
In his writing, Giovanni reflected on his childhood growing up in Tennessee and Ohio, pushed for black and civil rights, and described his long struggle with lung cancer.
“As one of the cultural icons of the black arts and civil rights movements, she became friends with Rosa Parks, Aretha Franklin, James Baldwin, Nina Simone, and Muhammad Ali and mentored generations of students, artists, activists, musicians, scholars, Inspired. Humans, young and old,” Watson said in his statement.
Giovanni taught creative writing and literature at Virginia Tech and received numerous awards, including the NAACP Image Award, the Rosa Parks Award, and the Langston Hughes Award for distinguished contributions to the arts and letters.
In 2004, she received a Grammy Best Spoken Word Album nomination for ‘The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection’.
In a brief biography on his website, Giovanni wrote: “I wanted to be a writer who dreams or maybe a dreamer who writes but I knew a writer doesn’t make a book.”
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