Poetry Project

Yolanda Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee on June 7, 1943. In August her family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio were she was raised. When they got to Cincinnati her mother and her father took on jobs as houseparents at Glenview School, a school for black boys. In 1947 Nikki and her family leaves Glenview and moved to Woodlawn, which was a suburb of Cincinnati. Her father soon begin to teach at South Woodlawn School and after school and during the weekend he would work at the YMCA. Because Woodlawn had no schools for black childern Nikki's sister went to live with their fathers half-brother and his wife, in Columbus, Ohio. At the time when her sister moved in with them she was going to attend second grade. In mid- January of 1995 she was diagnosed with with lung cancer. After she finds out that she is diagnosed with lung cancer she decides to travel to Cincinnati, Ohio for a second opinion and then had surgery at a Jewish Hospital.

In 1960 Nikki moves to Nashville Tennessee and starts to attend Fisk Unversity. On February 1, 1961 Nikki is expelled from Fisk Unversity because she didnt tell head woman what she was doing over thanksgiving break. After she gets expelled from the unversity she moves back to Cincinnati with her family. Not long after she moved back she began to work at Walgreen's and watched her nephew Christopher. At the time she also started to attend the Unversity of Cincinnati and also did volunteer work with children and parents who are among her mother's clients. Whild everything was going good for her she got the news that her grandfather had died so she drove her nephew and her mother to Knoxville for the funeral. In the fall of 1964 she decides to move back to Nashville and enroll in Fisk Unversity again. She majored in History but took writer workshops with writer-in-residence John Oliver Killens. In the spring of 1966 at the First Writers Conference at Fisk, she meets Dudley Randall, who was soon to launch Broadside Press;...