Outspoken poet and professor Nikki Giovanni electrified South Carolina State University students Wednesday, touching on subjects as diverse as Saddam Hussein, tattoos, slavery, Tiger Woods and space flights to Mars.
In a resounding finale to this year's Awakening Lecture Series, Giovanni, 59, read excerpts from her poetry, including the well-known "Ego Tripping," and gave her free-speech rights a workout.
"I'm so sick of this retro president, yeah, fighting a war, like what, you invented it? War was old and crazy when it was new, and it's crazier now. What did you do yesterday? 'Well, I dropped bombs.' B-i-i-i-g deal!" she said, drawing out the phrase.
"It's embarrassing that we have a head of state that says, 'I want to kill Saddam.' That's embarrassing! By any other standard, that's mass murder. He's a war criminal," Giovanni declared to hearty applause.
Giovanni expressed contempt for President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, who attended prestigious universities thanks to affirmative action, "then turns around and says we don't need affirmative action."
"It's OK for (Supreme Court Justice) Clarence Thomas, OK for Condoleezza, it's just not OK for you and me?" Giovanni asked. "Of course we need affirmative action ... America, for almost 250 years, had affirmative action for whites. It was called segregation.
"I'm so happy Tiger Woods lost the Masters," she continued. "That little Negro wants to act like, in 1990, people didn't have to picket Augusta National for his kind to play golf.
"And then he turns around and wants to say to Hootie Johnson -- who the hell could be named Hootie, as old as he is? Doesn't that boy have a name? -- and he's going to say, 'Oh, it's a private club.'
"No, Tiger, it was a private club (when African-Americans were not welcome). And people opened that door. And you can't make your mouth say, 'Of course the women should be admitted as members'? You have a $100 million contract going on and you can't do that?
"But you see, he wanted to win his third jacket. That meant more to him than anything," Giovanni continued. "So the left-handed boy from Canada, who had never won diddly-squat in his life, and never will again, came up and beat him. I was so glad!"
So who does Giovanni consider worthy of emulation? Rosa Parks, for one. And "the great Angela Davis, who recognized and accepted her responsibilities."
Giovanni admires African-Americans for their resilience, even after being forcibly removed from their homeland as adolescents and teens and forced to live and work in servitude to people of European descent in the New World.
"Don't you ever wonder how those folks stayed sane?" Giovanni asked. "They chose to keep their dignity and their humanity" and their pride in themselves and "in the work of their hands."
Even as slaves, African-Americans "gave an honest day's work," she said, adding that she's "a fan of reparations ... We have a sacred obligation to collect their wages."
African-Americans need to realize that America has embraced their culture. White plantation owners "lost" the culture war, "and their flag should be in a museum some place," Giovanni said.
Standing in the Martin Luther King Jr. Auditorium, Giovanni noted that if the famed minister and civil rights leader had not been killed, he would be 74.
"He sure was a good man," Giovanni mused. "I'm really sure if he were here, he would have braids ... a pool cue with a mahogany case ... and a tattoo ... something like 'Freedom Now' or 'Go Vote' ... I have a tattoo, and mine says, 'Thug Life.'"
Giovanni is not apologetic about her political activism. "How can artists be indifferent?" she asked. "We have to be activists," even if it's asking her neighbors to drive slower so as to "not murder the squirrels."
"Everything I do is pretty direct," she said. "I always say what I believe. I like controversy. I'm a '60s person."
But she's not stuck in the past. "This is not the 19th or the 18th or the 20th century. This is the 21st century ... It's time to enter the future," she said.
Giovanni fervently supports a manned space mission to Mars. Why? "Because it's there," she said, "and because it won't come here." She is confident it can be done if "the dreamers" replace "the bean counters."
Giovanni said she strongly disagrees with those who disparage the younger generation. "I like your generation." she said. "I don't think you're apathetic or stupid or not capable.
"You can't just sit around and let people tell you any damn thing ... Don't lose the people who love you. Lose the people who don't care about you."
She advised young people not to sit around waiting to be "discovered" by someone influential. "The only person who needs to discover you is -- you," she said.
T&D Staff Writer Lee Hendren can be reached by e-mail at lhendren@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5552.
Nikki Giovanni at a glance
-- Professor of English and the Gloria D. Smith Professor of Black Studies at Virginia Tech.
-- Born in Knoxville, Tenn.; reared in Ohio.
-- B.A.: Fisk University. Graduate studies: University of Pennsylvania.
-- Selected poetry collections: "Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not-Quite Poems," "Blues for All the Changes: New Poems," "Love Poems," "Black Feeling, Black Talk" and "Black Judgment."
-- Recipient of Langston Hughes Award for Distinguished Contributions to Arts and Letters; NAACP Image Award for Literature; and "woman of the year" honors from Essence, Mademoiselle and Ladies Home Journal magazines.