Nikki Giovanni
Birth Name: Yolande Cornelia Giovanni
Place of Birth: Knoxville, Tennessee, U.S.
Date of Birth: June 7, 1943
Date of Death: December 9, 2024
Place of Death: Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.
Ethnicity: African-American, 1/8 Italian
Ancestry/Genealogy:
Nikki Giovanni was an American poet, author, activist, and television personality. She wrote numerous poetry anthologies, essays, and children’s books. She also recorded spoken word albums. She was involved in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Nikki also appeared on the television series “Soul!” She was also a professor at Virginia Tech.
Nikki grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio as well as Knoxville, Tennessee. She had one child.
Nikkie was the daughter of Yolanda, born in Georgia, and Jones/Gus Giovanni, born in Alabama.
Nikki’s paternal grandparents, Mattie and Thomas Giovanni, were born in Alabama. On the 1880 Census, Thomas lists his father’s birthplace as Italy. His mother, Susan, was born in South Carolina.
Genealogy of Nikki Giovanni:
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/pedigree/landscape/GJWD-9FQ
I have previously submitted Deric ‘D-Dot’ Angelettie, a Black man who descends from an Italian immigrant to Louisiana in the 1800s.
This man in Montgomery County, Alabama, is listed as born in Corsica:
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MHKY-QCR
On this census, also in Montgomery, two people with the surname Giovanni were born in France:
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MH5Z-GSY
There is likely some connection between all these since Thomas Giovanni was from Montgomery County. I’d say it’s likely that Nikki was 1/8th Corsican.
Is that actually true? Not many Italians in the South in 1800s
There are two guys with the last name Giovanni in Alabama on the 1850 census. Their ages are listed 35 and 40, and their birth country is given as France. Maybe the line originates with them. I assume the “Italy” on the census was just an assumption, kind of like Chris Mulkey and his purportedly Spanish ancestor.
In the 1870 census, there are some Giovannis all born in Louisiana who are listed as “mulatto” (I assume they’re just ethnic Italians, but it shows you how easy it was for an Italian guy to pass himself off as black back then).
There’s also a “Jasper Giovani”, b. 1838, living in Alabama with his wife and two children who is listed as black. He’s not on any other record I can find, but I would assume he is related to this Giovanni line.
No white person at that time was “passing themselves off as black.” That is patently ridiculous.
I don’t mean to suggest that he would have wanted to do such a thing; just that an Italian-American family in the South being marked as “negro”/”mulatto” on a 19th century census isn’t too unusual.
You did a good research. But there were virtually no Italian-American families in the South except for Louisiana in the 1800s, and were soon absorbed into other Euro communities (made by French descendants, mostly, with some German and Spanish too). On the contrary, it has alwais been the other way round, people of color trying to pass as swarthy exotic Southern Europeans (usually Portuguese). Chris Mulkey ancestor I think was a POC and not Spanish.
Yeah, I think you are right. I brought him up because I think it is a similar situation here with the census. (The guy doesn’t know his father’s identity whatsoever, but it was passed down that he was Spanish/Italian guy, so that’s what he gets listed on the census.)
Like I said, given the existence of the black “Giovani” family in the 1830s, I would think Thomas Giovanni’s father was probably just black.
It has always been the other way round, people of color trying to pass as Europeans of every shapes. Exactly.
Like all of you do.
Remember that the colored SEs and EUs are simply a part not all and only the ones mixed to the swarthy poc sandnggas, the Arabs and the Turks they’re not the natives.
I’m genuinely confused as to why you all are insistent that this man wasn’t Italian. Just because there were very few of them in that region doesn’t mean that there was none. No, it would not be safe – or even reasonable – to assume that he was black.
So he was a fake not a real one.
I wouldn’t say I was especially insistent about it. I don’t know the truth. The idea of an Italian guy in the south that early was just interesting.