Dr. Amy Tillerson-Brown, a professor of history at Mary Baldwin University, met Nikki Giovanni as a Virginia Tech undergrad in 1991.
“But being in her class opened my eyes up to so much,” Tillerson-Brown said. Discussions in the class were not what she was used to growing up in Prince Edward County. Giovanni’s stories are what hooked Tillerson-Brown on her teaching style.
“But I also recognized how nurturing and how genuine she was,” she said of Giovanni, who would become the undergrad’s mentor.
In the Creative Writing class, Tillerson-Brown was majoring in English but admits poetry is not her strength. she quickly recognized the importance of being a sponge and soaking up what Giovanni taught.
“She was nurturing and genuine,” Tillerson-Brown said of her teacher who would go on to be her mentor.
While Tillerson-Brown was a student in her Creative Writing class, Giovanni fought one of her battles with lung cancer and a portion of her lung was removed.
“But, she beat it, so she was like superwoman to me. She beat cancer,” Tillerson-Brown said.
She added that Giovanni was selfless and down-to-earth, especially considering she was already an international icon in the 1990s. For example, despite her celebrity status in the United States, Giovanni once asked Tillerson-Brown for a ride on campus in her 1986 Chrysler Lebaron.
“I was so honored to have her in my car,” Tillerson-Brown said.
Giovanni, who retired from teaching after 35 years at Virginia Tech in 2022, died on Dec. 9, after another battle with cancer. She was known all over the world for her poetry and writing in support of Black civil rights.
“She was a truth teller,” Tillerson-Brown said. “And I learned then, before I was 21 years old, that if anything is going to change, you’re going to have speak out against it or speak up for it. And it’s not easy, it’s not comfortable, but it’s what we have been chosen to do.”
As an undergrad, she also took Giovanni’s Black Studies and Harlem Renaissance courses.
“The impact she made on me as an undergrad student was something I could not forget if I tried,” Tillerson-Brown said.
She remembers that Giovanni frequently stayed after class in her office to speak with students when most professors would have left after teaching.
Giovanni spoke at MBU in 2006 and again in March 2023 after Tillerson-Brown had become dean of MBU’s College for Women. Tillerson-Brown wanted to make sure that her students at MBU knew Giovanni.
Tillerson-Brown remembers the Virginia Tech mass shooting in 2007, which was one week before her wedding. Despite dealing with the grief on campus, Giovanni still made sure to send her former student a wedding gift.
In a speech after the mass shooting, Giovanni said “We are Virginia Tech,” reminiscent of Marshall University’s anthem in West Virginia after the loss of 75 community members, including 37 Marshall football players in a plane crash in November 1970.
“It’s nothing she could have told me that I wouldn’t have believed,” Tillerson-Brown said of Giovanni, who also repeatedly showed her believe in her student. Giovanni’s arguments were always well researched and not based on feelings.
As a graduate student at Virginia Tech, Tillerson-Brown visited Giovanni’s undergraduate class one day and the mentor allowed her former student to speak to the undergraduate class about Negro spirituals.
“Just the opportunities, just the trust,” Tillerson-Brown said. Giovanni knew she had trained her student well and she trusted her to speak to students.
While on the board for the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Giovanni did not hesitate to recommend Tillerson-Brown for a position while she was working on her PhD in history. Giovanni believed Tillerson-Brown could do more than what she planned for herself.
“She believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself,” Tillerson-Brown said.
Throughout her career, Giovanni wrote several letters of recommendation for her former student.
Giovanni’s wife, Virginia “Ginny” Fowler, taught an American literature course that Tillerson-Brown attended before attending Giovanni’s Black Studies course. Between the two courses, Tillerson-Brown understood that what Fowler and Giovanni considered important, she should also consider important as a young Black woman. That decision would determine the future MBU professor of history’s career path.
“There is no way I could disconnect the impact of those woman on me as a person and the trajectory of my career. I would not have been interested if I had not [had their classes]. I wouldn’t have. Not an option that I could build a career on.”
American society was teaching Tillerson-Brown that Fowler’s and Giovanni’s courses were elective courses, not mandatory. In the early 1990s, she was just beginning to understand the bigger picture that Black Americans played in American history.
“So, there’s no way I’ll ever forget that,” she said.
Giovanni taught her critical thinking, the importance of asking the hard questions and to allow students to make mistakes in class so that they could learn.
“No matter what I do, my teaching is my teaching because of Nikki.”
Tillerson-Brown said she hopes she has 1/8 the impact on her students that Giovanni had on students, including herself.
The two women last spoke approximately six months before Giovanni died. By then, Giovanni was writing letters to Tillerson-Brown’s daughter and encouraging her to be a strong young Black woman.
Giovanni remembered her students as individuals, not just as names on her classroom roster.
“I’m going to miss her. Virginia Tech is going to miss her. The world’s going to miss her.”
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Rebecca Barnabi
