400 Mulvaney Street

400 Mulvaney Street. Nikki Giovanni. Internationally acclaimed poet and writer Nikki Giovanni was born to Knoxville College graduates Gus and Yolande Giovanni on June 7, 1943, at Old Knoxville General Hospital. She grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, but Nikki and her sister, Gary Ann, spent summers in Knoxville with grandparents Prof. John Brown and Louvenia Watson at 400 Mulvaney Street, now called Hall of Fame Drive. They often played here in Cal Johnson Park. Nikki returned to Knoxville where she continued her education at Austin High School being taught by Alfredda Delaney and Mme. Stokes. Nikki graduated with honors from Fisk University in 1968. She soon published her first book of poetry “Black Feeling Black Talk” which led to her being called the “Princess of Black Poetry.” The author of dozens of books, she has won numerous awards including the Langston Hughes Award, the Carl Sandburg Literary Award and seven NAACP Image Awards., One of her best known essays, “400 Mulvaney Street,” recounts her grief at the loss of her grandmother's house and the surrounding African-American neighborhood to a Knoxville “urban renewal” project in the 1960s. Cal Johnson Park is all that remains of the Mulvaney Street landscape of her childhood.