PBS News Hour

GEOFF BENNETT: Nikki Giovanni, a fierce and lyrical voice whose work illuminated love, liberation and the unyielding power of self-expression, has died.

Tributes are now pouring in from across the country, as admirers and friends warn the passing of a literary legend.

Writer, activist and public intellectual Nikki Giovanni was an unmissable and unmistakable presence in American culture for more than 50 years.

NIKKI GIOVANNI, Poet and Writer: I'm not ashamed of our history because I know there is more to come.

GEOFF BENNETT: Her poetry and prose, published in more than two dozen volumes, grappled with race, sex, gender and politics.

And her commitment to fighting injustice inspired generations of Americans from all walks of life.

NIKKI GIOVANNI: You cannot be afraid and you cannot be worried about who doesn't and who doesn't like what you do, because there's always somebody who's not going to like it.

If nobody doesn't like it, something's wrong with it.

GEOFF BENNETT: Born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni Jr. in 1943, Giovanni grew up in Cincinnati.

At 15, she fled a turbulent family life and a father who was abusive to her mother.

NIKKI GIOVANNI: I shouldn't say this on the radio, I guess, but it was clear that either I was going to kill him or I had to move, and so I decided to move.

If I dreamed natural dreams... GEOFF BENNETT: By the late 1960s, she had again moved to the Northeast, publishing militant, artful poetry that quickly made her a leading figure of the Black arts movement and a fiery feminist counterpoint to the machismo she found in certain pockets of the civil rights movement.

In 1971, in a now iconic interview with James Baldwin, Giovanni, then just 28 years old, spoke to the problems she saw in the way some Black women were treated in relationships.

NIKKI GIOVANNI: Why are you going to be truthful with me when you lie to everybody else?

You lied when you smiled at that cracker down the job, right?

Lie to me.

Smile.

Treat me the same way you would treat him.

JAMES BALDWIN, Writer: I can't treat you the way I treat him.

NIKKI GIOVANNI: You must.

You must, because I have caught the frowns and the anger.

He's happy with you.

Of course he doesn't know you're unhappy.

You grin at him all day long.

You come home and I catch it all.

Because I love you, I get least of you.

I get the very minimum.

And I'm saying, fake it with me.

Is that too much for the Black woman to ask of the Black man for 10 years, so that we can get a child on his feet that says, yes, father smiled at mother?

He talked to me about school today.

GEOFF BENNETT: By 30, she was a genuine literary star selling out Lincoln Center.

NIKKI GIOVANNI: One ounce of truth benefits like a ripple on a pond.

GEOFF BENNETT: Over the next decades, she published frequently and toured widely, often reading her poetry against the backdrop of gospel music.

NIKKI GIOVANNI: He looked at his dusty crack boots to say, sister, my time is getting near.

GEOFF BENNETT: Giovanni spent 35 years as a professor of English at Virginia Tech.

The day after a shooting there that killed 32 people back in 2007, the community turned to her for solace amid the tragedy.

NIKKI GIOVANNI: No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds.

We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid.

We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be.

KWAME ALEXANDER, Poet: She reminded us all to always be bold, to always speak your mind, to always lift your voice, and no matter who's watching or who's in the room, to be unafraid, to be unashamed.

GEOFF BENNETT: Poet Kwame Alexander was a friend who had studied under Giovanni at Virginia Tech.

KWAME ALEXANDER: When I think of Black liberation and Black power and all these things that Nikki wrote about so eloquently is, I like to think of this thing I call matter-of-fact Black, the thing I think I learned from her, in that we have to remember our own humanity and not by be defined by other people.

And we got to remind America and the world of our humanity as well.

GEOFF BENNETT: Among a lifetime of accolades, she won an American Book Award and was a seven time recipient of the NAACP Image Award.

And over a career that spanned more than half-a-century, she remained uncompromisingly herself.

NIKKI GIOVANNI: What I know is that I will not let the world change me.

I think that whatever it is that I have to give, I have some truths to give, I have -- there's some laughter.

I'm a Black woman.

And Black women, despite all of it, we still find a way to laugh.

GEOFF BENNETT: Giovanni is said to have continued working until her final days.

Her final book of poetry titled "The Last Book" is set to be released next year.

Nikki Giovanni died of complications from cancer.

She was 81 years old.