Beck Cultural Exchange Center honors Nikki Giovanni with permanent exhibit

Nikki Giovanni is leaving little pieces of herself at the place she calls home in Knoxville.

The Beck Cultural Exchange Center, Knoxville's hub for Black history and archives, will open an exhibit June 7 in honor of the poetry legend's 80th birthday. The exhibit will be a permanent home for some of the poet’s most personal possessions. Giovanni shipped 47 boxes of memorabilia and books from her home in Virginia to the museum.

"It's amazing because so many people who don't live here in Knoxville and guests coming to our city, they don't realize Nikki is from here. They are surprised, but then people who live here who are native take great pride in her," Renee Kesler, executive director of the Beck Cultural Exchange Center, told Knox News.

"As African American women, knowing this extraordinary woman who has a gift that she has used for social justice her entire life, she literally embodies that and it means so much to so many people. And what I love about it is that the Beck Center gets the privilege of not just talking about Nikki, but also her lineage because she is from here. So we're proud to really push our chest out and show this off."

Knoxville’s late Avon Rollins inspired Beck Center’s preservation of Giovanni’s history

Kesler met Giovanni many years ago through her predecessor, the late Avon Rollins, Giovanni’s class of 1961 Austin High School classmate. Rollins was a civil rights legend who helped organize Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, held sit-ins, and was a huge factor in the integration of Knoxville movie theatres. It was a phone call about Rollins' death in 2016 that sparked a budding friendship between the two that Kesler cherishes.

To make sure that Giovanni’s legacy lives on long after she is gone, Kesler says that the Beck Center was the ideal place to preserve her history, and Rollins would have wanted nothing less.

“He felt like women had done so much in the movement and other periods of history. And yet they did not get their due. And he felt like anything he could do to push women to the forefront of the work that was happening, he was going to do just that," Kesler said.

Personal book collection and other items part of exhibit

Those visiting the Beck Center and doing research can expect to see a wide range of Giovanni's items from her personal collection, many moved from her office at Virginia Tech University after her retirement last year. Many are being digitized for future use.

Besides personal paperwork, the items include a rocking chair and bicycle.

But it’s her book collection with hundreds of titles that Kesler says many will find the most intriguing. Giovanni collected them across the decades.

Alex Haley’s "Roots," dozens of James Baldwin titles, Tupac Shakur memoirs and even fantasies like "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" are there.

“Nikki is a brilliant mind. So I think it’s great to know, what does she sit down and read, right? So these books have been through some stuff, these are some lived experience books. So you're not just looking at her collection. You are also looking at what may have helped to inspire her own work throughout her life," Kesler said.

Giovanni told Knox News that she could have sent her most sacred treasures anywhere, but with Knoxville as her home – even though the neighborhood she loved and her Mulvaney Street home are gone because of urban removal – the Beck Center was the only place that made sense.

“When I drive down Summit and James White Parkway now, honestly the places that I once knew are gone. And I think that's what all of us as writers do. We want to keep something alive. We want people to know. I never want Mulvaney to die, and the Beck Center and Renee have made sure it doesn’t. It’s a comfortable place for me,” she said.

Angela Dennis is the Knox News social justice, race and equity reporter. Email angela.dennis@knoxnews.com. Twitter @AngeladWrites. Instagram @angeladenniswrites. Facebook at facebook.com/AngelaDWrites

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Beck Cultural Exchange Center honors Nikki Giovanni with permanent exhibit of personal items