Students greeted poet and civil rights activist Nikki Giovanni with a standing ovation Tuesday night.
About 400 students filled the Reitz Union Grand Ballroom to hear Giovanni speak as part of UF’s Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration. She spoke about Donald Trump and the importance of voting.
Giovanni, 72, opened her speech with one of her poems, entitled “Note to the South: You Lost,” which talked about the Civil War and how the South was on the wrong side.
“They always seem to forget that,” she said.
Giovanni, who said her great-grandmother was a slave, encouraged black students to continue to fight for racial equality.
“You are the ‘after’ segregation; my generation is the ‘before,’” she said. “You think that somebody should like you, and we think, ‘Damn, you got here.’”
She encouraged students to defend and vote for causes important to them, such as Planned Parenthood and the legalization of marijuana.
“We all have to vote,” she said. “I don’t care what you vote for.”
When she mentioned Trump, Giovanni spoke against the racist speech she said he uses.
“I know that Donald Trump is crazy; I think Americans are crazy,” Giovanni said. “‘Let America be great again?’ What the hell is that?”
Greter Gonzalez, a 19-year-old UF public relations sophomore, said she thought Giovanni was inspirational.
“She’s definitely a character,” Gonzalez said. “She’s very entertaining, but also educational.”
She said she was excited to attend Giovanni’s speech, and it was an eye-opening experience.
“In the short term that she talked, she taught us a lot,” Gonzalez said.
Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @k_newberg.
Poet and writer Nikki Giovanni reads her poem titled “Note to the South: You Lost,” to a packed audience in the Reitz Union Grand Ballroom on Tuesday night. Giovanni spoke on black history, racism in the U.S. and other topics.
