Nikki Giovanni’s philosophy of teaching and research fits an old Chinese proverb: What I hear, I forget; what I see, I remember; what I do, I understand.
“A lot of history is emotional learning,” Giovanni said. She wants her students to understand — not just read and forget — what black people have endured, survived, and overcome. She wants them to understand it for the sake of the future as well as the past.
Giovanni — renowned poet, the Gloria D. Smith Professor of Black Studies, and professor of English at Virginia Tech — teaches such courses as The Harlem Renaissance and Black Aesthetics, in addition to creative writing and poetry writing. She teaches about times of strife when blacks were slaves or about times of hardship when, just a couple of generations out of slavery, black people during the Depression were beginning to find their voices. She is teaching about those who struggled to overcome circumstances that often could have broken them as a people, but didn’t.
Her students read such books as The Harlem Renaissance and When Harlem Was in Vogue. They learn that Madame C.J. Walker was the first black millionaire in the United States. Walker and her daughter A’Leia helped start the Harlem Renaissance, a time when black musicians, writers, and artists were coming into their own. The students learn about such things as hush harbors, places where slaves slipped away to sing spirituals, risking being whipped or sold as a result. But Giovanni makes sure the students go further than words in a book.
“I decided what I wanted to do with my classes was hands-on,” Giovanni said. So she’s had her students hold a fish fry, a chittlin’ strut, and a rent party. They have rehearsed and performed publicly as the Denmark Vesey voices, a slave choir named after a former slave who led a rebellion. Their research has been the planning and execution of events modeled after those of former times. The students planned the events, made the Web pages advertising them, served as hosts, and came away with a lot better idea of what life was like for black people in the past.
“I think this is the type of research I will remember most because I was able to play a part in what went on,” said Darin Oduyoye, who, as a member of Giovanni’s creative writing and poetry classes, took part in the chittlin’ strut, the fish fry, the gospel concert, and the rent party. “I was able to assist her with the purpose of the event, what we would gain, who would be invited. When you’re involved in how an event comes to be, you really remember a lot about the events or the research you’ve done.”
The students are not likely to forget the hours of rehearsing spirituals — with no accompaniment — and how an overflow crowd joined in spiritedly as they sang “Wade in the Water.” Although they were in no danger of being whipped or sold for their singing, Giovanni said, they could get the feel of the simple traditional spirituals that the slaves, who were forced to be illiterate, could remember and repeat.
Giovanni’s students might have sensed the spirit within a people who found a way to sing even while enslaved. “You realize, ‘My God, what an achievement,’” Giovanni said. “That’s up there with any cathedral, any army conquering, anything, but they were not killing; they were elevating. It’s a wonder they didn’t despair, but they created something. They created a culture and changed a religion.”
Will Simpkins, a junior from Radford who took the Harlem Renaissance and writing courses, said the slave-choir performance, with its singing, audience participation, and dancing, “was a real experience of culture.” Simpkins, who has attended all the events, said, “A lot of times, you can’t get the full grasp of what living in someone else’s shoes is like until you experience the culture itself.”
Back in the ’20s, for example, people sometimes had a hard time making ends meet. So the men fished, the women cooked the catch, and they had a fish fry in a public park on Saturday night, charging a quarter for a sandwich. Or, if they came up short on their rent one month, they’d throw a rent party. A musician friend whose name might have been Fats Waller or Duke Ellington provided entertainment and the hosts fried up some chicken (or at least boiled some chicken feet and rice) or maybe cooked some chitterlings. The guests paid a quarter admission, $1.50 for food, and maybe a quarter to play a game of whist. They had fun and helped the hosts pay the rent.
The students certainly won’t forget the mood as, at their own event, they chowed down on real ’20s rent-party foods like fried chicken, baked ham, chitterlings, pig feet, and sauerkraut while the music of such performers as Augustus Kitchen or Kenton Tillerson filled the air. The rent party was successful, not just because the students raised about $500, but because “it makes a difference when you look at the nickels, dimes, and quarters” that accumulate, Giovanni said. “The students could see it: this is how people made a way.”
Her students probably will remember the 400 or so people who filed by to purchase fish sandwiches during their own fish fry and stayed to socialize as the quarters, Harlem-Renaissance prices, piled up. Oduyoye won’t forget the chittlin’ strut, similar to a rent party, because his parents traveled from Columbia, Md., to attend and “thought it was a great event.”
Giovanni’s students learned about a resilience that can come in handy even today. “A student a couple of years ago had a rent party,” Giovanni said. “She got some pizza and sold it and everybody was happy. That’s what you’re hoping. People will learn the resilience and pull on it when they need it.”
Giovanni draws on her own experiences in helping the students research the events. “I’ve had rent parties in the '60s,” she said. “A lot of musicians would have socials. I’ve had book parties. Morgan Freeman read for me, and the admission was you buy a book. It’s the same principle. The students like doing these things, and I think they learn a lot.”
Oduyoye says the events not only help students connect with the past, but are good for the university’s commitment to diversity. “People of different majors and races seem to have enjoyed them and learned something from them,” he said.
The traditions continue. Even rap musicians, who “would never call what they do a rent party,” have “blue lights” in the basement, Giovanni said. “They’ve created an art form from it. If anything would make the fathers of the Renaissance happy, it’s that we’re still seeing this level of creativity.”