World-renowned poet Nikki Giovanni delivers MLK keynote

Nikki Giovanni has a message for Boise State University, and this Thursday at 7 p.m. the Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech will tell students about, “The Right to Dream.”

Giovanni is a black poet, essayist and lecturer whose work influenced many throughout the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 70s. Her work is celebrated for promoting racial equality, and its urgency in calling black people to realize their identities and their rights.

In addition to these accomplishments, Giovanni will be the keynote speaker for Boise State’s Martin Luther King Jr. Human Rights Celebration.

According to its Website, “The MLK Human Rights Committee endures to provide the Boise State University campus with a series of advocacy, awareness, and educational activities for the Boise State community in an effort to promote civility and address the current needs of the community in accordance with the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

Giovanni has enjoyed a long and distinguished career which is marked with numerous honorary degrees, awards and acclimations. She was honored with a NAACP Image Award, holds the Langston Hughes Medal for Outstanding Poetry and has been named woman of the year by

Mademoiselle, Ladies’ Home Journal and Essence.

Giovanni gained national attention in 2007 when she delivered the Virginia Tech Convocation, commemorating the April 16 Virginia Tech massacre. Giovanni taught the Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho in a poetry class.

When asked in an interview with the Idaho Statesman how she can introduce King and bring his message to people two generations after his death, she said, “What people like to know, and what we try to remind them, is Martin was an ordinary man doing an extraordinary job. I think people forget how young he was when he started out. He was only 26, just a kid.”

The keynote address will be held in the Morrison Center, and is free to the public.

SHANNON MORGAN
Assistant Opinion Editor

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