Term Papers on Nikki Giovanni

Term Paper Title	Nikki Giovanni
# of Words	1349
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	5.4

Nikki Giovanni

     Nikki Giovanni emerged as a poet during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s.  Her poems, written during the revolution, reflect her views on racism and prejudices in society and her dislikes about the government.  She calls for the unity of the African American people and the awareness to the coming Black revolution.  However, Giovanni’s poems began to change in the late 1960’s after the birth of her son.  Her writing became less politically motivated and began to focus more on love and family.
     Giovanni expresses her dislikes about many of our presidents including, but not limited to: Abraham Lincoln, Richard Nixon, and Lyndon B. Johnson.  “The great emancipator [is] a bigot” in “The Great Pax Whitie,” because the Emancipation Proclamation did not free any slaves (53).  President Nixon does not have a lot of courage in Giovanni’s eyes, as she refers to him as President “no-Dick” Nixon in her autobiography Gemini (106).  She also blames the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. on President Johnson.  “Do not be fooled, Black people.  Johnson’s footprints are the footprints of death” (Giovanni, Black Feeling 55; 36-37).  Giovanni does not think Johnson listens to the Black people and their opinions, much less hers.  She states this in “A Historical Footnote to Consider Only When All Else Fails:”
LBJ has made it
quite clear to [her]
He [does not] give a
Good god**** what [she thinks]. (10-13)
     Nikki Giovanni’s anger toward racism in America is found in poems like “The Great Pax Whitie” and “Ugly Honkies, or The Election Game and How to Win it.”  “The Great Pax Whitie” alludes to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr., as it states:
So the great white prince
Was shot like a nigger in  texas
And our Black shining prince was murdered
Like that thug in his cathedral
While our nigger in memphis
Was shot like their prince in dallas. (71-76)
In “Ugly Honkies,” Giovanni asks, Why is it “[…] only the ugly / honkies / who hate?” (1-3).  Giovanni goes on in “Ugly Honkies” to list people such as: Hitler, Nixon, Lyndon, and “all the governors of [Mississippi]” as the ones who hate (4-7).  She even compares trusting a white man, to “[turning] your back on a cobra” in “Of Liberation” (81-85).  At the Black Power Conference of Philadelphia in 1968 Giovanni noticed:
the conference had guards; the artists had guards; the guards had guards even […]. This is foolish, because it has already been proved beyond a reasonable doubt-with the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy-that anybody the honkie wants to take off he not only can but will, whenever and however he wants to stage it. (Gemini 108)
     Furthermore, Giovanni encourages African Americans to get angry and to “destroy the whites who oppress them” (“Nikki Giovanni (1943-)” 2).  Such encouragement can be found in “The True Import of Present Dialogue, Black vs. Negro.”  In “The True Import of Present Dialogue” Giovanni asks
Can a nigger kill a honkie
Can [he] kill [his] nigger mind
And free [his] black hands to
strangle?” (34-36)
“Giovanni [is] not so much urging violence for itself as she is demanding black assertiveness, although […] she may be willing to accept violence even if she is not enthusiastic about it” (qtd. in Kranz 63).  She wants black people to stop being lazy, to get a grasp on their futures, and to gain knowledge through experience.  After all, knowledge is power.
     Next, Giovanni addresses the lack of unity in the Black people.  During 1968, the United Brothers, a black rights group made up of only men, held a demonstration in Newark to protest the upcoming election.  However, they were unsuccessful.  Giovanni blames their defeat on the fact that they were not united (107).  Also, Giovanni gives comparisons of many social groups and how they gain power through organization in “Of Liberation:
Dykes of the world are united
Faggots got their thing together
(Everyone is organized)
Black people these are facts
[Where is] your power
Honkies rule the world
[...

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