Hip Hop Speaks to Children by Nikki Giovanni

Originally, Giovanni’s parents had hoped to be able to build a home in a new all-black housing development called Hollydale. Gus Giovanni makes a down payment on a home at 1167 Jackson Street in Lincoln Heights and moves his family there. Simon School, an all-black Episcopal school in the nearby black suburb of Lincoln Heights.

In 1951, her mother accepts a third-grade teaching position at St. Giovanni completes the first, second, and third grades at Oak Avenue School, while her sister completes the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Elizabeth Hicks Giovanni's sister Gary enters third grade there. Giovanni begins kindergarten at Oak Avenue School, where her teacher is Mrs. 1948įamily moves to a house on Burns Avenue in nearby Wyoming, another suburb of Cincinnati. Because Woodlawn has no elementary school for black children, sister Gary lives with father’s half-brother and his wife, Bill and Gladys Atkinson, in Columbus, Ohio, where she attends second grade. Father teaches at South Woodlawn School and works evenings and weekends at the YMCA. The family leaves Glenview and moves briefly to Woodlawn, a suburb of Cincinnati.

At some point during Giovanni’s first three years, her sister-for reasons no one really understands-begins calling her baby sister “Nikki.” 1947 The children and their mother make frequent visits to their grandparents’ home in Knoxville throughout their childhood. In August, the Giovanni family of four moves to Cincinnati, Ohio, home of Jones Giovanni, where both he and Yolande take jobs as house parents at Glenview School, a home for black boys. Yolande Cornelia Giovanni, Jr., is born on 7 June in Knoxville General Hospital, Knoxville, Tennessee. Gary Ann Giovanni, the poet's sister, is born on September 2. Yolande Watson marries Jones Giovanni in Knoxville, Tennessee, on July 3.

1919īirth of Yolande Cornelia Watson, Giovanni's mother, in Albany, Georgia. Birth of Jones 'Gus' Giovanni, the poet's father, just outside Mobile, Alabama, to Mattie Jones and Thomas Giovanni.

Hip Hop Speaks to Children by Nikki Giovanni