March On mourns the loss of Nikki Giovanni. Nikki Giovanni, the charismatic and iconoclastic poet, activist, children’s book author and professor who wrote, irresistibly and sensuously, about race, politics, gender, sex and love, died on Monday in Blacksburg, Va. She was 81.  Ms. Giovanni was a prolific star of the Black Arts Movement, the wave of Black nationalism that erupted during the civil rights era and included the novelist John Oliver Killens, the playwright and poet LeRoi Jones, later known as Amiri Baraka, and the poets Audre Lorde, Ntozake Shange and Sonia Sanchez, among others. Like many women in the movement, Ms. Giovanni was confounded by the machismo that dominated it. One of her hits, the stirring paeon to Black female agency called “Ego-Tripping,” has garnered the attention of generations of Black girls who have performed it at school. Nikki Giovanni’s words shaped generations, her voice a beacon of truth, power, and unapologetic love. She taught us to embrace our hi...