WDBJ7 Roanoke News and Weather NRV Lynchburg Danville | "We are Virginia Tech": Nikki Giovanni talks about her poem
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"We are the Hokies.
We will prevail, we will prevail, we will prevail.
We are Virginia Tech."
Nikki Giovanni woke up up the morning of the Virginia Tech convocation and almost rewrote that poem. She said she was panicked and afraid it wasn't good enough, but in the end, she decided not to change a word.
Nikki Giovanni has made a career of words. This time her words struck a bigger chord than she ever could have imagined, reminding everyone what it meant to be a Hokie that day--April 17th, the day after a gunman killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus.
Giovanni's poem is now in front yards and hanging from the walls.
"It was about those families, about those people, and somebody had to say something," Giovanni told News-7's Rachel DePompa in a one-on-one interview today.
"It seems like somebody was trying to take who we are away from us," Giovanni said. "And I thought, no, no, no--we are Virginia Tech!"
