By Marian Wright Edelman
When poet, essayist, scholar, and activist Nikki Giovanni passed away on December 9, the world lost a singular voice. Young readers especially adored the dozen books she created for children, including beloved works like the Caldecott Honor Book and Coretta Scott King Award-winning Rosa, illustrated by Bryan Collier. In a 2022 interview with the Washington Post, when asked what she believed the role of children’s literature was, she answered: “Children’s literature is the foundation of the rest of the literature that we do.” She went on: “If children are hearing words and hearing poems and hearing stories as they grow up, they one, get used to it, but two, they use their imagination. They begin to wonder, well, where do I fit in that? And that’s why it’s so important to have children’s stories of all of the children—not any one child, but all of the children, from all over the planet.” For decades, Nikki Giovanni’s voice allowed readers and listeners to recognize their own stories and helped them see where they too might fit in.
In 1999, Children’s Defense Fund was grateful when she joined then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman, Dr. Maya Angelou, Dr. John Hope Franklin, Dr. Dorothy Height, U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Walter Dean Myers, and more than 200 other guests for CDF’s National Symposium on the Arts and Scholarship, which celebrated the dedication of the Langston Hughes Library at CDF Haley Farm. Haley Farm, CDF’s center for training and spiritual renewal, is sited on grounds formerly owned by Roots author Alex Haley in Clinton, Tennessee. It is outside Knoxville, where Nikki Giovanni was born and spent much of her childhood visiting and eventually living at her grandparents’ home. She returned to Knoxville often in her work, including the poem “Knoxville, Tennessee,” which described simple summer joys that would leave a child “…warm/all the time/not only when you go to bed/and sleep”. She also returned to Knoxville memories in “Saturday Days,” the essay she generously included in Dream Me Home Safely: Writers on Growing Up in America, a 2003 anthology celebrating CDF’s 30th anniversary. That essay remains a beautiful, evocative description of Black childhood joy.
Her grandparents lived near Cal Johnson Park, built on land that had been purchased and then willed to the city by its namesake Black donor for the use of Black children, and in “Saturday Days” Nikki Giovanni described how much she loved going there the moment her grandmother agreed they were done with their careful weekly housekeeping routine (“I’m still not sure what it is about living rooms that makes black women crazy…”). She explained that a different segregated park had the only local swimming pool for Black children, “but we at CJP had the swings”:
“I’ve always thought swinging should be an Olympic sport. I knew, in fact, when synchronized swimming became a ‘sport’ that double dutch would be next. I admire double dutch. Those ropes would pop and the girls would turn faster and faster and the girls running in and jumping out would dance a dance that would make ballet dancers weep from envy. They would jump up and twirl and pass each other on one foot then flip to their hands then flip back up and I would stand amazed. I have no sense of rhythm. All my rhythm is in my head. But I could swing.
“Swinging took courage and patience and balance and the most difficult maneuver is the dismount. I grew up with iron swings that were set in concrete; none of those recycled things for me. The swing was hard black rubber connected to links of iron. These were swings to take you to the moon. The object, for those who do not swing, was to stand in the seat and pump up. You pumped up as high as you could go. You were actually trying to reach parity with the top bar. When you got ‘even with the bars’ (to which I ascribed 10 points) you ‘kicked out and sat down in the seat’ (10 points). If you missed the seat you could still hold on but it looked really ragged. You then pumped once or twice more to show control (10 points) then (and this was the final crucial ending) you ‘bailed out.’ You got 20 points for a perfect landing. If you fell or tumbled over you lost points accordingly. Sort of like a poor girl’s parallel bars. The dismount was everything! And I would practice and practice. Pump and jump; pump and jump. Then Grandmother would call me to lunch. But,” Nikki Giovanni concluded, “I was ready. I knew I was ready. I was prepared to go for the gold medal. All I needed was a chance.”