Nikki Giovanni will keynote the Black Empowerment Student Alliance’s gala “A Night of Expression” April 12 in Wolfe Alumni Hall to celebrate Black History Month.
Giovanni is an activist, poet, professor, speaker and writer whose work has focused on civil rights, equality, love and the empowerment of the black community.
“Nikki Giovanni is probably one of the … most popular, most well-known black poets in the U.S.,” BESA adviser Todd Lawrence said. “She would probably be the most prominent speaker that (BESA) has brought in.”
Giovanni’s speech at the gala will focus around students and how they can create changes for the common good. She’ll also entertain a question and answer session for an hour each.
Giovanni gained fame during the tumultuous political and social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s. She is most famous for her poetry, written with a militant prose. Her work also explores topics like family, sexuality and romantic love, as well as the power of the individual to effect change in oneself and others.
Not only has she earned dozens of awards, including more than 20 honorary degrees and certificates, Giovanni obtained the keys to more than a dozen cities.
Giovanni was most recently in the spotlight in April 2007. Cho Seung-Hui, the student who murdered dozens on the Virginia Tech campus in 2007, was one of Giovanni’s students. Giovanni approached her department’s chair to have Cho removed from her poetry class as she described him as “mean” and “menacing.” Giovanni even said she was willing to resign instead of continuing to teach the eventual mass murderer.
Following the tragedy, Giovanni wrote a poem and delivered it at Convocation on the Virginia Tech campus on April 17, 2007.
BESA’s club directory page said its mission is to “serve as a support network for black students at St. Thomas,” as well as “to promote greater awareness of black culture and black presence within the St. Thomas community and the community at large.”
BESA president senior Solomon Anderson said he hopes the gala will help fulfill the mission.
“I want people to feel as though they’ve learned something,” Anderson said. “That they have gained another aspect of the rich history that Nikki Giovanni comes from. To be able to say they saw someone who influenced them, that would be great.”
Getting Giovanni on campus was no easy task for BESA. It was a long process that began with contacting the firm that handles her speech bookings. BESA also had to have the money up front, otherwise it would have been unable to book Giovanni.
“It’s a significant amount of money,” Lawrence said. “Not ridiculous, but it was significant.”
Another step in securing Giovanni as the keynote speaker was coordinating with Campus Life.
“Everything has to go through Campus Life,” Lawrence said. “You have to meet all of their criteria and requirements.”
Among those requirements is signing a contract that prohibits speakers from using certain types of language and terminology.
“Every speaker who comes to St. Thomas has to sign a speaking contract,” Lawrence said.
The keynote speaker for last year’s gala was Def Poetry Jam co-founder Bruce George. Anderson hopes this year’s event will continue the success of the 2012 gala.
“This year, we wanted to continue that theme,” Anderson said. “We wanted someone who was not only a prominent artist in our community, but also someone who has done a lot of service work in the community at large.”
The “A Night of Expression” gala was supposed to take place sometime in February, but had to be postponed because of what Anderson called “space unavailability” and “schedule conflicts.”
Anderson said he couldn’t be more excited to be having such an historic figure and prominent member of the community coming to the St. Thomas campus.
“It’s a tremendous honor to have on my part,” Anderson said. “She’s one of my personal heros. It’s like a dream come true.”
Trevor Walstrom can be reached at wals0505@stthomas.edu.