VT Stories Oral History with Nikki Giovanni, March 14, 2017 (Ms2016-015)

Ren Harman: So we'll get started. So good afternoon. This is Ren Harman, the project manager for VT Stories. Today is March 14, 2017 at about 1:11 p.m., and we are in Shanks Hall on the campus of Virginia Tech. And so the first question that I'll ask you--it's the only time I'll prompt you.

Nikki Giovanni: I can be prompted.

Harman: Is if you could just say--and we have a very special guest--if you could just say your name and when and where you were born.

Giovanni: I'm Nikki Giovanni. I was born in Knoxville, Tennessee June 7, 1943, so I'm an old woman. [Laughs.] I recommend that. It is nice growing old.

Harman: Yeah.

Giovanni: I really do.

Harman: So as I told you, we're doing a featured faculty for VT Stories, so if you could just state kind of your current position within the university here.

Giovanni: I am a university distinguished professor. I'm very proud to be, if I may say so. And I teach creative writing. So that's very nice, too, because I 1:00get the creative kids. In the spring now I teach in the evening, so I get the kids when everybody is tired and ready to, you know, they grab their coffee and they're ready to finish their day out.

But I really especially love the fall because I get them at 8:00. And I'm always laughing. And everybody says, well, why the 8:00? I say because at 8:00 I get the students coming actually from their dreams, because there's nothing else going on. They wake up and they come, you know, half the time in pajamas, so they come from their dreams, and so we get a lot of…the creativity is really wonderful.

Harman: So can you just tell me a little bit about growing up, and what it was like growing up, and just a little bit about your family?

Giovanni: Well, I am the baby in the family. And now, unfortunately, and I hope I don't start crying or something, my aunt is dying, and she was the oldest person. And every time--that's why my phone stays and I answer the phone because 2:00I don't think she's…it's not gonna be that much longer. She was the baby aunt. But now I am actually the oldest person in the family.

And it's really--I mentioned I was 73--it's really strange because I was the baby when I grew up. My older sister Gary has passed, and we all lived here. We all ended up…when Virginia Tech invited me to join the Hokie family, we brought everybody. We brought…my mother came and my sister came with Mommy, and then my middle Aunt Ann, because Mommy and Ann were very close, and Ann didn't have any particular reason to--she lived in Philadelphia, but she had retired.

So we called her Anto. So Anto moved, and once Mommy and Anto moved, then Agnes said, well, I'm going, you know, why is everybody there? And she and her husband, who's a minister, a Presbyterian minister, Clinton, moved. And Clinton has passed, unfortunately. And that left--well, Mommy passed, Gary passed, and 3:00then Anto, and then Clinton. And so Agnes moved to Dover, Delaware with her son, which is where she is now.

But it's really funny because I'm the one getting the calls now, well, what should we do about this. And I'm thinking, oh, I'm senior. You know, you never think of yourself as being senior, you know, when you grow up. But I was the baby in the family, and my sister was talented. And so it's always--and anybody out there who has talented siblings, they know what it's like.

Gary could play the--her name was Gary. And Gary could play the piano, and she could dance, and she could sing, just all of those things, and I couldn't. And so people would say, you know, Nikki, can you read? And I said no, but Gary can. Nikki, can you dance? No, but Gary can. And so I spent, I think, most of my life saying no, but Gary can. And it's really almost ironic and fun that it ends up 4:00that I'm the writer in the family. And so I guess wherever Gary, you know, Gary's in heaven saying Nikki--Gary, are you famous, saying no, but Nikki is. It's kind of fun that way, you know.

Harman: So you grew up in Lincoln Heights, correct?

Giovanni: Yeah. Well, I was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. And of course this was during the age of segregation. And there were no jobs. My parents were Knoxville College graduates. And there was just no…just no work. And so my father had an offer for a job in Cincinnati, which is actually, we ended up in Lincoln Heights, but it was Cincinnati area. So we moved. They were waiting for Mommy to actually deliver me.

And I was born in June and we moved like that August, and moved to Cincinnati, so I grew up in… There were two areas of Cincinnati. A part of it was 5:00Woodlawn, which is north of that, and then we bought a home. We had a…we were renting, which, none of this, you know, got into my head because I was a baby. But we were renting there. And then we bought a home in Lincoln Heights. And when we got ready…when I had a little more flexibility, a little more money, I bought another home in Lincoln Heights which was a little better than the home we were living in.

Harman: So growing up, I'm sure you have plenty of stories, but what are some stories that kind of stick out in your mind of growing up there?

Giovanni: Well, Mommy, first of all, taught school. Well, we started off at Glenview School, which is where--I call him Gus, my father--which is where Gus sat.

But then when we moved to Lincoln Heights Mommy got a job, or was invited--I don't really, again, know that. But she taught at St. Simon's School, which was actually run by the Convent of the Transfiguration. And one of the people that I actually love so much, Sister Althea Augustine, she obviously was a nun. She's passed also. But she became a great friend of mine.

And they tease me all the time because I think I wasn't really good. [Laughs.] And I guess I was smart. I haven't really figured out how to handle that. But it got to the point that I would go to school when school was out because I liked 6:00to talk to Sister Althea. And she was…we were… I guess she was teaching me things. I don't think that I knew that. But it was no point in going to school, you know, at 8:00 in the morning to hear something that you didn't really need, so I would, you know, dust the house, and wash the dishes, and do the things that one should do.

And then about 3:00 I would--or maybe 2:30 I would walk over to the school. So I got teased about this. You never come to school till it's out. But that really worked because you do have…I remember Rose Stenson. You do have some bullies in school and some people and you don't want to be bothered with that. Rose Stenson was bigger than I, and there's nothing I could have done with her. I mean, she beat me up once, but these things happen.

And I thought, well, I don't need that, and what I like is Sister Althea. And 7:00she taught me a lot about the history, about where--she was from New York, and so her way of looking at it. And then you always wonder what would make someone want to be a nun. You know, that, again, that's just interesting. And of course St. Simon's.

And again, we…Mommy--Grandmother, my grandmother was a Baptist, and Mommy ended up in, just because of the location, I think, an AME, African Methodist Episcopal church. So we had these two churches.

And then we had St. Simon, which is Episcopal, but not, you know. And wondering, well, how does this work? And as you look at Jesus, again, it's a great story. It's reality that the man who helped Jesus carry the cross was Simon the 8:00Cyrenian. And of course he's gonna become St. Simon. So as you're dealing with the school that you go to, we went to church every morning. That we did. I had enough sense to go to church, [believe it or] not.

And so you begin to learn the story of Jesus, you begin to learn the story of the people around Jesus, who you liked, who you didn't and who you thought was worthwhile and who wasn't. And everybody, of course, was upset with Judas, you know, because he was a traitor. And everybody loved John the beloved because he was the beloved. And you had to sort of keep it in your mind the difference between John the Baptist. And it took me the longest to realize that the story that we hear of Salome could not be accurate.

You know, why are they always blaming some girl for something? So you begin to learn your Bible in a different sort of way.

Harman: In a different way.

Giovanni: Mm-hmm.

Harman: So you said you went to church every morning, so obviously religion was a big part of growing up.

Giovanni: Well, and I said the church. I should say chapel.

Harman: Chapel, yeah.

Giovanni: Every Saturday--except Saturday because we started school by going to 9:00chapel. And that was what was important. And again, I think it's good because ultimately--I was saying to some kids, I speak a lot--but ultimately, I'm seeing--and I've shared this with them--one of the things that church does, whether it's school or whether it's Grandmother, or whether it's Mommy, is that they teach you to speak, because there's always something going on.

The reverend has a birthday, his wife, you know, has a grandmother who died. There's always some reason that you have to get up and either read something, or sing something, or speak. There's always something that you're doing. So you get into the habit of speaking in front of a group. And I think that that's…my generation, if you look at Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown, all of them, you know, 10:00Diane Nash, and nobody's ever really said how come these people all are good speakers. And they were. Martin. All of them were good speakers. They're good speakers because they grew up in the church speaking.

Harman: Right, yeah. What role did education play? What was your mom and dad's emphasis on education?

Giovanni: Oh, my. Well--and again, we're going back to, you know, both of my parents were college graduates, and both of my parents taught school, so education was important. And I like to read, so reading was important to me. But again, when I stayed with Grandmother in the summer--my sister and I would go visit Grandmother in the summer--but when we stayed with Grandmother, the Carnegie Library of course was the black library, and the Tyson McGhee was the white library uptown.

And so if you were gonna be me, I was reading Charles Darwin. I was reading some things that most kids weren't reading. I realized, and I wrote a poem about that, Mrs. Long had to go up to the Tyson McGhee to ask for the books that I wanted to read.

I just saw, I think, the best movie of 2017, which is "Hidden Figures." And they 11:00go to the library because she wants to learn computer. And she and her sons go to the library, and they want to take a book out to teach them computer. And the white librarian comes up and says what are you doing here. And she says I wanted the book. You can't read the book. You shouldn't even be here.

And so the lady and her son say oh, we're sorry, because the three of them are really cool. She says oh, I'm sorry, I'll leave then, you know. But what she did, of course, was she stole the book. And when they got back on the bus--and of course they were at the back of the bus because again, we're talking before Rosa Parks.

And they sat down and she opened the book. And her son says, Mama, did you steal the book? And she said I pay taxes. [Laughs.] I thought it was wonderful. And now, you know, I'm an old woman, so now I of course realized what Mrs. Long had to go through. She has passed also. But what she had to go through to get some of the books that I wanted to read. I don't know that other people didn't, but I know I wanted to read, you know, the Walt Whitmans. I was just into a certain 12:00level of books, and she had to go up.

And she'd say, well, I'll get them tomorrow for you, Nikki. And she had to go up. I didn't realize what she must have… Somebody probably said cruel things to her. I wrote a poem. I wrote several poems about my library because it finally dawned on me that it wasn't just go to the library. I just thought oh, it must be out, or, you know, as a kid I wasn't thinking there's this problem.

Because segregation didn't really hit--I think my generation, I don't think just me--didn't really hit us until we were in the late teens. And of course we did get Mrs.--well, the murder of Emmett Till changed everything. And then Mrs. Parks changed the rest of it. And so now we are going to be the generation that's going to protest.

Harman: To "Hidden Figures," I have a nine and a six-year-old, and my nine-year-old got to see "Hidden Figures" as part of kind of this after--or this school project thing, and he came home talking to my wife about what a great film it was, so I'll definitely have to watch that.

Giovanni: Oh, I think--well, it is a great film. And it's a love story. And that's always nice, too. And I was shocked, frankly speaking, that "Moonlight" won anything. I thought it was the dumbest movie I had ever seen in my life. And I don't eat popcorn, but if I had eaten popcorn, I would have thrown it at the screen. I thought it was horrible. And I thought it was an attack on the black community. It had no story. As a writer, it had no story. I was incredibly--

Harman: Disappointed.

Giovanni: Disappointed would be a nice word, to use that. And then when you have a film as great as "Hidden Figures," or as fun as "La La Land," or as poignant, I guess is the word, as that "By the Sea," what's his name by the sea.

Harman: "Manchester by the Sea," yeah.

Giovanni: By the sea, yeah, then how does this movie that has…there's no dialogue. I mean, the guy speaks three times, and it's like, what? I think it's Hollywood's attack on black people, frankly speaking. And I keep saying I should write something about it because I don't think that that happened by accident.

And we had the envelope to come out and it was "La La Land," which everybody thought it was going to be, and then somebody said oh no, we made a mistake. In 850,000 years they haven't made a mistake. So I think that it was an attack, and say okay, you want black people? We'll give you black people. And I just thought it was terrible.

Harman: Yeah, 'cause there was a lot of controversy the previous year because, you know--

Giovanni: Because nobody--right, they wanted…some of the people wanted Will Smith. I don't know. I really don't go to that many movies. And until "Hidden Figures" came out that I had to deal with, the movie that I had seen before that was "The Godfather."

Harman: Oh, gosh.

Giovanni: I just don't do…because you're busy. And now you can buy, you know, you have a big screen at home and you can buy everything. And I don't know how to do all of those things, but you can do that thing like ask for the movie that 15:00you want and it'll come up. And I travel a lot, and so I'm fortunate in a couple of places, you know, if you're staying at the Ritz or you're staying, you know, at some of the first class, it's, you know, tell us what movie you want and you can watch it, so you don't have to go--

Harman: You don't have to leave the comfort of your own home or couch.

Giovanni: Yeah. And it makes sense. You know, you're sitting there, you're piled up, and you can watch it. So again, I was disappointed.

Harman: I've heard that from a few people, so you may not be the only one.

Giovanni: I don't think I am.

Harman: I don't think you are. I want to ask you a little bit about…you were talking about segregation, and it didn't really hit your generation until your teen years. So kind of going into your teen years, what were some--I'm sure 16:00there's a lot of stories about how that kind of played into your life.

Giovanni: Again, I--and I think I'm not the only one--we had--I know that the reason I don't like movies, for example, is that in Knoxville, which is where I'm gonna spend most of my time, but in Knoxville we had the Tennessee Theater and we had the Bijou, both of which were segregated. But the Bijou you could go to, but you had to go upstairs. You had to walk all the way.

And it was something that didn't suit me. In Cincinnati we had the Albee and the Keith, and you could go and you could sit anyplace. But something touched you wrong. Something touched me wrong, and so I never did really get into it.

I like the zoo, but I really still hate amusement parks. And I have a son, so the hardest thing, after having a child, because children want to go and ride that thing, the roller coaster, and they want to…

Harman: Yeah.

Giovanni: And I had friends who thought amusement parks were great. And I said that's fine. Let me give you some money. You can take Thomas. Because to this day. Now, Grandmother liked circuses, and so when the circus came to town, she was always like ooh, the circus is coming to town. And that's because Grandmother, you know, again, grew up in the South and stuff, and so the circus meant a lot to her, and you'd come and watch the circus.

I hate the circus. I mean, I just…I never liked any of those things. And I think that I learned to dislike them, I didn't learn to… I didn't like the way we were treated in them. And it probably has something to do with why I don't like popcorn, I don't know.

Harman: So it's like kind of public spaces, more or less, that you kind of just avoided, yeah.

Giovanni: Yeah, you just don't like it. And I went to--I attended Fisk University, so when I went to Fisk of course Diane Nash and John Lewis were both there, and Diane started the Fisk sit-in and John joined. But John went on to 18:00become an incredible force in the civil rights movement. And of course you went to picket with them because it was the right thing to do. And so you just tried--I mean, I wasn't, truly I was not important. I was just another body in the line.

But you realize that something has to change. And even as those things changed something would never be the same. And being in Knoxville, by the way, we were down the--or I guess that's up the street. I don't know which way that goes. We were about half an hour, 45 minutes away from Oak Ridge.

And Oak Ridge was federal, and of course Knoxville was state. And so you could go to Oak Ridge for your picnic, you could go to Oak Ridge to swim. And I'm always laughing because black women my age can't swim. You're not gonna find half a dozen--I'm serious--black women my age. They just can't swim because we never had a swimming pool. And the only time you could swim would be on Saturday.

And black women couldn't swim on Saturday because we had to get our hair straightened and we were going to church on Sunday. And so if you went swimming, your hair would…it was nap back up. And a lot of the men, the boys went to Oak Ridge with their families, and they could swim, so boys my age can swim, but women my age can't.

Harman: So when did you…so did your mother and father both go to Fisk? Is that correct?

Giovanni: No, no. Mommy and Gus went to Knoxville College.

Harman: Okay.

Giovanni: It's a Presbyterian college in Knoxville, Tennessee. I believe Knoxville College. I don't believe--Knoxville College is now closed. It's about money. And what they needed, and what most of these colleges need is a partner. And so now it's become…they have younger people. It's not a college. It's like another kind of school. And of course those of us who dislike Donald Trump, of which I would put myself way in the front, I dislike him a lot, but all of that, 20:00when he had the college presidents, I think 60 of them came. And it really was just a--

Harman: From HBCUs?

Giovanni: Mm-hmm. I'm sorry, from the HBCU. And it was just a photo op because he's not gonna do anything for it. But Fisk needed it. All of those colleges. The only black college that has enough money to survive is Spelman. And the rest of them are needing some help.

But that fool that is the Education Secretary said things like oh, they built…they made this because they didn't like it. And they said have you ever heard of slavery? I mean, just things like that make you so…really so angry to have that kind of language. But then that fool Ben Carson is saying things like, 21:00well, they were immigrants, they were involuntary immigrants, you know. And you just want to--

Harman: It's like the Twilight Zone.

Giovanni: Oh, my. You know, you really just want to string him up and beat him, but I guess you're not allowed to do that. But the HBCUs are important. But I think that the HBCUs are gonna have to--I would like to--finish your sentence, Nikki. They're gonna have to find partners. And I would like very much to see Fisk, because we're right there, I would like to see Fisk partner with Vandy, because Vanderbilt is a private school. It's gonna be difficult for the public schools because public schools can't…it's a different kind of partnership.

There are many things that are going on, but I think that we're gonna have to look at how we make partnerships with other institutions.

Harman: So when did you first start thinking about college? And when you entered college, what was your major going in?

Giovanni: I don't know what my major was going in. My major coming out was history. But the Rockefeller Foundation had a test, and I was in school. I was living with my grandmother then and I was in school, in Austin High School. And Mrs.--Madame Stokes, because she taught French--Madame Stokes called Grandmother.

I was in Philadelphia with Grandpapa. We were visiting my Aunt Ann. And she said Nikki has to come home to take a test. And it was…she explained it to Grandmother. Grandmother called Ann and said put her on a train, because I didn't travel alone. I thought, okay, I'm gonna travel alone. And what I remember was the chocolate chip cookies.

Harman: Oh, man.

Giovanni: 'Cause I'm sitting on the train from Philadelphia going to Knoxville, and my chocolate chip cookies. And I took the test and was admitted to Fisk. They had a program called the early entrant program. And actually, here at this school, Ginney Fowler at a different college--I think she was at University of Kentucky--also was an early entrant. So I never graduated from high school, and 23:00I went the next year to Fisk University.

Harman: Oh, wow.

Giovanni: But my grandfather was also a 1905 graduate from Fisk, so coming to college was quite wonderful. I don't think I knew what, but I know that as I graduated, as I finally graduated, I was a history major.

Harman: You had a rough couple years at the beginning?

Giovanni: I got kicked out, if you call that a rough couple. I wasn't--

Harman: Can you tell that story?

Giovanni: It's a long story. I don't know if I can. But if you take a girl who didn't go to school until school was out because she would rather talk to the teacher than be bothered with the class, then, you know, going to Fisk was going to be some difficulty.

And of course Fisk, like all of the schools at that time, too, we had to wear dresses. I was saying to my class, you know, you had to wear dresses and stockings.

Harman: Oh, wow.

Giovanni: Yes. It was just crazy, but that's the way that went. And so I think things have relaxed a little bit now. And of course I have kids that come to class in shorts--

Harman: In pajamas, right?

Giovanni: It's the truth. But it didn't suit me. The dean didn't suit me, and I'm sure I didn't suit her. And so I was out of school for a year because we didn't understand each other. The funny thing is I saw her, I think now about two years ago. I didn't recognize her because I do good to recognize myself most days. And she came over. She said I don't think you know me. And I was like, you know, I'm friendly, so yeah, no.

And she said who she was, and she said what she did. And I said, well, it's probably the best thing that happened to me because it gave me a year to think. And I am a big, big, big fan of there are no mistakes, there are just learning opportunities. And I say that to my kids, and my kids don't understand it right 25:00now. But no matter what happens, no matter what goes on, it's not a mistake, it's another way of learning.

And my example is, you know, that one plus one equals two, so if somebody says one plus one equals three, it's not a mistake, they just haven't learned that one plus one equals two. And what you're trying to do, no matter what's going on in your life, there's no mistake. I'm a big fan of--though I'm not--but I'm a big fan of divorce because people, you know. I of course support abortion and people doing whatever they want to do. There are no mistakes. It's how you take your life and use whatever it is that you're learning.

And I think that that's…I think that's what's important. I think we in America, maybe we in the world, look too often for mistakes, and then we try to say to people, oh, you made a mistake. Well, you didn't. You learned something. And that's what you have to think about.

Harman: So take these mistakes and use it as kind of a learning tool for the next situation or--

Giovanni: It's not a mistake. It's what you've learned.

Harman: It's what you've learned, right. I like that.

Giovanni: And you have to embrace that, though. It can't be… It has to be meaningful to you. You have to embrace it. And if you're not gonna keep it in your heart, it's not gonna do any good because you're gonna say I made a mistake. But what you have to do is think okay, what have I learned and where am I going from there.

Harman: Without getting yourself in too much trouble, can you…is there some good stories from your years at Fisk, from college that you want to share?

Giovanni: Oh. I mean, I…of course I had--which was simply incredible--we were able, when I got back to Fisk, which was the next year--Dean Blanche Cowen, who was a wonderful, wonderful woman--she has passed also--but that was the best thing.

And again, I hung out in the dean's office because she had a lot that I could learn. And of course she had work to do, and she would say, Nikki, I have work to do today. And I'd say okay. And I would sit in her office and read and talk 27:00to her.

But what we did that was incredibly wonderful was we were able to form a writing group. And we hired John Killens because we got a grant to hire John Oliver Killens, who wrote "And Then We Heard the Thunder," and he wrote "Cotillion." And if you ever read "Cotillion," John said to me, you know, that's you. I was the girl in "Cotillion." I said, oh John, that was really wonderful.

But when John came, he wanted, of course, to have a festival, and his thing was let's have a festival. And so that's…we sat down and we wrote and asked everybody. Of course we were all excited about--he was then LeRoi Jones, and it was like how do we get LeRoi Jones to come. So we begged him and we found a little money to do that. But we were also, at Fisk, we were taught by Robert Hayden, who has written one of the great poems, period, "Those Winter Sundays," just a great poem.

And we were being taught by Arna Bontemps. He was our librarian. And I'm 28:00forgetting somebody else that I want to… But we had great… Well, the Harlem Renaissance, practically. And Arna was, of course, a close friend of Langston Hughes. But I don't have a recollection of meeting Mr. Hughes.

But of course also we had the Jubilee Singers, and so when I met, at her