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LAKSHMI SINGH: From NPR News in Washington, I'm Lakshmi Singh. The FBI is under fire for how it has used the USA Patriot Act to track suspected terrorists. The Justice Department concluded today that the agency had inappropriately forced businesses to hand over customers' private records and underreported its use of the Patriot Act. FBI director Robert Mueller says the audit is fair and objective.

ROBERT MUELLER: The question should and must be asked, how could this happen? Who is accountable? And the answer to that is, I am to be held accountable.

LAKSHMI SINGH: The breakdown was attributed in part to mounds of data overwhelming FBI agents. President Bush is promoting so-called Ethanol Diplomacy as he tours Latin American nations in a bid to mend US ties with the region. In Brazil today, he and host President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced an agreement to increase alternative fuels production across the Americas.

European Union nations are backing an energy policy package to combat Global warming. As Teri Schultz reports from Brussels, the deal is a significant win for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the bloc's current president.

TERI SCHULTZ: German Chancellor Angela Merkel had been skeptical she could bridge the divergent viewpoints. Many opposed to increasing their renewable energy sources to 20% of overall consumption. Some members were vehemently opposed to any forced usage. Others said they can't afford these methods.

Unanimous approval of the final document that 17 points accepted by 27 members gave Merkel, in her words, no small amount of satisfaction, as she explained through an interpreter.

INTERPRETER: The European Union has shown its capacity to act and that in such an important area, we are prepared to, as it were, hoist our colors to the mast.

TERI SCHULTZ: To achieve the compromise, however, the German deal had to grant each country the right to negotiate its own way to meet the renewable energy target. For NPR News, I'm Teri Schultz in Brussels.

LAKSHMI SINGH: Another college baseball player injured in a bus crash in Atlanta a week ago has died. That brings the total number of deaths in the accident to seven. From Atlanta, NPR's Kathy Lohr has more.

KATHY LOHR: A pitcher on the Bluffton University team, who'd been in critical condition for a week, died early this morning. Zach Arend was 18 years old. He had numerous injuries to his head, chest, and abdomen after the charter bus carrying the team crashed last Friday.

The bus exited Interstate 75, flipped over a concrete guardrail, and then tumbled down back onto the highway. The driver apparently got confused and took a left side exit ramp, thinking he was continuing on the highway. Most of the students were sleeping at the time of the crash.

The driver, his wife, and four other players were killed in the accident. The team was traveling from Ohio to Florida with 35 people on board. Four remain hospitalized in Atlanta, one in critical condition. The coach is listed in stable condition.

Kathy Lohr, NPR News, Atlanta.

LAKSHMI SINGH: The Dow is up about 25 points at 12,286. This is NPR News.

SPEAKER 1: Support for NPR comes from Travelocity, offering tools and information to plan travel worldwide. Support available 24/7 so you'll never roam alone. Travelocity.com.

GRETA CUNNINGHAM: From Minnesota Public Radio News, I'm Greta Cunningham. The Minnesota Senate has given preliminary approval to a bill that would require body piercers to witness the signing of a permission slip before performing body piercings on minors. Under the bill, violators could receive a misdemeanor punishable within up to 90 days in jail or a fine of $1,000 or both. The requirement would not apply to pierced ears.

A house panel got its first look at a Child Care Assistance Bill that would cost about $140 million over the next two years. The bill would restore funding for state subsidized child care that was cut during the state's budget crisis in 2003. About 2,800 low income families are currently on a waiting list for state child care assistance, and the bill would make more low income families eligible for subsidized child care.

Republican Representative Steve Gottwalt of Saint Cloud questioned the cost of the bill, which would grow to more than $500 million in three years. Gottwalt says the state can't afford to spend that much money on child care.

STEVE GOTTWALT: I just want to add that note of reality because we can talk endlessly about lots of great things to put tons of money into, but we all know, from our own experience and from the state experience, we have a limited amount of money to work with.

GRETA CUNNINGHAM: Child care advocates say, while the bill's price tag is high, they're hopeful the legislature will approve more money for child care assistance. A less expensive version of the bill is moving through the Senate.

The forecast for Minnesota today calls for cloudy skies this afternoon, with high temperatures ranging from 35 to 45 degrees. It'll be colder tonight with partly cloudy skies, areas of fog developing around the region after midnight, with lows from 15 to near 25. Mostly sunny on Saturday, with highs from 35 to near 45 degrees. Right now in Duluth, it's cloudy and 43. Rochester reports cloudy skies and 36. In the Twin Cities, clear and 43.

That's the news update. I'm Greta Cunningham.

MIKE MULCAHY: Thanks, Greta. It's six minutes past noon.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

And good afternoon. Welcome back to Midday from Minnesota Public Radio News, I'm Mike Mulcahy, in for Gary Eichten today.

This hour, a poet's look at the life of a civil rights icon, poet Nikki Giovanni, new Rosa Parks. And when her publisher asked her to write a children's book about the woman whose defiance sparked the famous Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, she jumped at the opportunity.

Giovanni was in Minnesota last week to give a Black History Month speech at the University of Minnesota. And today on Midday, we're going to hear what she had to say. Nikki Giovanni is a professor of English and Black studies at Virginia Tech. She's been nominated for a Grammy and has won numerous prizes for her poetry, including three NAACP Image Awards. Her latest collection is titled Acolytes, and we'll hear her read a poem from it later in the program.

But Nikki Giovanni focused most of her speech at the Ted Mann Concert Hall last week on her 2005 children's book, Rosa.

NIKKI GIOVANI: Since I did know Mrs. Parks, somewhat, there are no secrets in this book. But I wanted to bring to this book for children and for people, I wanted to bring another sense of the history of Mrs. Parks and what she was doing. We have to remember that the Parks family, she and Raymond, she was married to Raymond. She and Raymond had no biological children. And the Parks family consisted of Rosa and Raymond and Mrs. McCauley.

They all three had their duties. Rosa and Raymond worked outside of the house, and Mrs. McCauley took care of it. I remembered that Mrs. McCauley had not been feeling well, but I did not remember why. And that's the truth. It may just have been something as simple as a cold. But in order to let the youngsters understand what was going on, I gave her the flu, because we understand that the flu is one of those achy things. And the flu will make you stay in bed and moan a little bit. The flu is just uncomfortable.

And so this particular morning, which is December 1, 1955, Mrs. McCauley would normally have made breakfast, but because she's not feeling well, Rosa got up and made breakfast. Rosa was very pleased that her mother was coming to the table to eat breakfast because that meant that she was feeling better.

Of course, the day didn't change for Raymond because Raymond did what husbands do. He got up, ran a tub full of water, took his bath, shaved, came and sat down at the table, and food magically appeared in front of him--

[LAUGHTER]

--which he then ate. I like to think that Raymond said something like, oh, babe, I really like your grits so much better than your mom's. They're really smooth. Or, so glad you fixed these biscuits this morning. Something nice. And I hope that he actually scraped his dish. But husbands, sometimes, don't.

But we know that because Mrs. McCauley was not feeling well, we know that Rosa, probably, just said to her mother, mama, why don't you go on in and look at The Price Is Right. And we know The Price Is Right was on because it's been on since they said let there be electricity. Bob Barker has--

[LAUGHTER]

So her mother went on in and sat down and watch television. And Rosa is going to wash and dry dishes. Now, normally, Raymond would have taken her to work because they had a car. People forget the Parks had a car. But Raymond worked at the Air Force base, at Maxwell Air Force base. And he would drop Rosa off and go on to work. But this morning, because she's going to do dishes and because she's late getting dressed, he's going to do what husbands do and he's going to say, baby, are you going to be all right to catch your bus today? And she's going to say, of course.

I mean, how many times did you see your mother? My father used to do that. Mommy would get up and cook for us, get me and my sister dressed, and then she wouldn't be ready. And he would say, well, I got to go. And he'd say-- so we get used to that.

[LAUGHTER]

That's the truth. So she--

[LAUGHTER]

So she did what she had to do. And she finished it up. And she told her mother she'd see her later. And she caught the bus and went to work. She worked at the Montgomery Fair Department Store. She was a seamstress.

And Bryan Collier, who illustrated, wanted you to see that it is Christmas. It is December 1, which means that there are 23 shopping days until Christmas. We know that-- well, that's important to the story. We know that the women in Montgomery are going to do what women everywhere do. They're going to wait until the 16th or 17th before they decide to buy a dress. And then they're going to need it the next day or the day before.

Well, we have Rosa. I wanted to show that she got along with people because people tried to act like, oh, was something wrong with Ms. Parks. She wasn't friendly or something. And her co-workers liked her and they teased her. They used to call her Old Rumpelstiltskin because she worked very quickly and she was very direct. And she would say, oh, it's not magic. I concentrate and you girls are always gossiping.

And so it was some back and forth. She would tease them and they would tease her. She was a funny person to tease because you could go up to so level and then you knew better than to go beyond it. But it was really just a lot of fun.

And I wanted to show that she got along with her supervisor because people try to act like, oh, Rosa couldn't get along with white people. Well, we know that her supervisor was a white woman. And her supervisor is going to say to her, Rosa, how's your mama? Now, whatever else it is you know about Rosa Parks, for 50 years that she was under the microscope in the United States of America, you know that she never said anything that she did not intend to say.

So we know, if a supervisor is asking how her mother is feeling, that there is a positive relationship because otherwise, the woman wouldn't even known she had a mother, let alone the mother was having a cold or something. So the supervisor said, how you mama feeling? She said, I'm feeling fine. So there was a relationship. I'm like, they didn't hang out. But a respect.

The supervisor knew that Rosa would, in fact, work through lunch or work until in the evening until it was done. And she did a smart thing. She said to Rosa, why don't you go on home early? Why don't you go on home? Because she knew that her mother had not been feeling well. It is the 1st of December. And it's there on top of-- she says, the girls are now on top of it. Why don't you go on home and look out for your mom? And we'll see you tomorrow. We're in good shape here.

And Rosa said, that's a good idea. So she is now going home early. It's noon or so. And I have her fiddling. She is now standing for the bus, but she-- I have-- the term I'm using here is she fiddled for a dime. She is very nervously and very excitedly looking for the dime.

We have to remember, as Rosa Parks is approaching this bus at this time, she is in compliance with the segregationist laws of Alabama. Everybody try to act like, there's some scheme going on. She is doing what anybody else has to do. I'm going to pull the book down.

What we know, for example, about-- what I know about children's books is that somebody calls and asks you. In this case, the Vice President Henry Holt called and asked me, Nikki, would you write-- we want to do a book on Rosa Parks' fifth anniversary. We'd love to have you write it. We know that you know Mrs. Parks, and I had written about her before. And I said, yes, I'd be thrilled. I'd be delighted.

So I write the manuscript. And I send it then-- her name is Laura Godwin. I send it in to Laura. Laura then sends it in to Bryan Collier, who is going to be the-- who is the illustrator. The illustrator does a thing called thumbnail sketches. And they're called thumbnails because they're just about this size, they're not big. But he begins to sketch out the book.

And what normally happens with thumbnails is that they send them back to the writer. I never look at thumbnails. And for any of you that end up writing children's books or something like that, it's a bad thing. If you don't think your Illustrator can do the work, then he shouldn't be on your project. She shouldn't be on your project. I never look at thumbnails.

So the first time I see what the book is actually going to look like, it's in a stage called the F&Gs, which is the fold and gathers. And we pull that to check how the colors, actually, are coming. Bryan Collier is a young man, born in New Jersey, now lives in Harlem with his wife and baby. He's 38 years old. He's a young man. But he's never been South.

And working on this project-- his idea of South was Baltimore.

[LAUGHTER]

And that's the truth. But working on this project, he had to go to Alabama. I get this call from Bryan. He says, I'm down here in Montgomery. And I said, how are you enjoying it? Because there was a tea house at the-- he said, Nikki, it's hot. I mean, he just couldn't get over it. And you see that the book is colored by these yellows because he had never-- he'd had no idea of that kind of heat coming at him.

Normally, on the F&Gs, you're going to pull three, the author, the editor, and the Illustrator. And for reasons that nobody knows, four got pulled. And the three of us are on the phone now, and we're talking and we're discussing, I like this. I don't like that Bryan is the one dealing with the color. And it should be this, that, and the other.

And we realized we have an extra set of F&Gs. And it was a consensus. I don't even know who said, why don't we send it to Rosa? But somehow, it was like, well, we have another one. Why don't we send it to Rosa?

And since of the three of us, I'm the only one that knows Mrs. Parks, Laura said to me, should I just send it over to you or do you want me to give you her address? I said, oh, you send it to me because I'm not going to give somebody Mrs. Parks' address. That's ridiculous.

So I said, send it to me and I'll-- Well? So I said, send it to me and I'll send it up to her, which I did. Now I have-- and Michael knows that, I have three phone lines coming into my home. And one is a phone line anybody can get, and that's the truth. I answered that phone from 8:00 in the morning until like 6:00. One is a line that's a little more private, and it's usually the number that I will answer in the evening. But I have another line that supersedes everything. And when that phone rings, I hang it up because I whoever is on that line, I need to talk to, whether it's my mother, whether it's my sister, or whether it be Mrs. Parks. That's the phone that when that line rings, I hang up.

And this phone rang. And so I was like, OK, let me get this. My sister, by the way, used to be really casual with that line. And she would give it to her friends. And I'd pick up and I wouldn't recognize the voice. And I was like, who is this? And they'd say, I'm a friend of Gary's and she told me to call. I said-- and I finally told my mother, I said, I'll tell you what I'm doing, I'm going to change the number, which I did, and I'm going to give it to you, which I did. And if you give it to Gary, I'm going to change it again and you won't have it.

[LAUGHTER]

Because there's some things you have to know. And that phone rang. And so I picked it up. And of course, you know these voices. I mean, they're iconic voices, for God's sake. And the minute she said hello, I knew who it was. But she would always say, because she had a very soft but a commanding, nonetheless, voice, hello, this is Rosa Parks. Because you know immediately. May I speak with Nikki Giovanni, please? So you say, hey, Ms. Parks. It's me. How are you doing? I'm fine, baby. I'm fine.

So I always thought she called me baby, and that was special. And I realized, no, Rosa probably called everybody, baby. She said, how is your mother? I said, oh, she's fine. Everything is fine. Everything is fine. So it's so nice to hear your voice. Thank you, baby. Thank you.

I said, we sent you the F&Gs on the book. Yes. Yes. She said, I got them. I got them. I said, did you like them? Said, oh, it's a fine book, because she was always positive. It's a fine book, isn't it? It's a fine book. I said Ms. Parks, what's the matter? Said, well, baby, you know that part where you have me getting on the bus? And I said, yes. She said, you said I fiddled for a dime. And I said, yeah. She said, well, baby, I've never fiddled in my life.

[LAUGHTER]

I said, well, Ms. Parks, you're going to fiddle in my book.

[LAUGHTER]

I probably would have changed anything else, but it was important that the kids understand how important it was that she get the dime, because that is going to become a contention. She did find the dime. Because if there's one thing you didn't want to do in the South is have to ask a bus driver for change, because it was verbal abuse, it could be some level of physical abuse, it's all going to be a burden.

And you have to remember, Mrs. Parks got on the bus at the front of the bus, as she was required by. And I used the term "evil." And we had a fight about that because Laura doesn't have children. And I said, the evil system of segregation. And Laura said, I don't think children will understand evil. And I said, Laura, do you have any children. She said, no. I said, when you get some, tell me that.

[LAUGHTER]

No, children understand evil very well. But she got on and she dropped her dime in. And as was required by the evil system, got off, and walked around, and entered in the back. And people have totally distorted that because they want to say she got on the front. She said none of that. She walked around to the back. The back of the bus was full. And she moved into what is called the neutral section.

Now, the bus is like 36 rows-- excuse me, yeah, 36 rows. It goes like that. And that was what? 18 and 18. But two of the rows, everybody gave up a row for the neutral section. So whichever section filled up first, that could be the spillover.

She got on the back, recognizing there was no place to sit in the Black section. She moved into the neutral section. As she looked, there was a man sitting on the window. And Mrs. Parks sat down next to him. And it has been an amazing thing to me, I've got to say, that in all of these years, we're looking at over 50 years, nobody has come forward to say, I was sitting on the window next to Rosa Parks.

Now, maybe even, if this man doesn't, maybe his grandchild would know. Somebody needs to come forward just for the history of it. Ms. Parks always said she didn't remember but I know that wasn't the truth because Montgomery only has 30,000 Negroes, and everybody knew everybody. She knew.

[LAUGHTER]

No, she knew who he was, but I think that she decided in Christian love to forget it because clearly, he was embarrassed by it. But what we've done and what Bryan did here, and I don't know if we can sit in the back, but he's reading a newspaper. And newspaper says, Emmett Till. And we know a couple of things from that. I'll pull the book for a second. We know a couple of things from that. We know that it's either the Amsterdam News, the Chicago Defender, or the Pittsburgh Career that he's reading because he's going to be reading one of the Black newspapers.

We remember-- and Emmett is going to become extremely important to this story, because we remember, May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in 9-0 decision. And we're always thankful that it was 9-0 and 7-1, 7-2, or 8-1 because it would have been overthrown by now. And a 9-0 decision that separate is inherently unequal. And we know that the South responded to that with what was called massive resistance. But we know that Mississippi got crazier than the rest of the South.

That farmer said, well, Mississippi's been crazy, but that farmer-- that following summer, we know that a woman had a little boy. He just actually just turned 14. His birthday was in July. He was a chubby kid. He had had polio. So he had a limp and he had a stutter. And he did what we would call in my day a doo wop. He did that-- and that was to try to disguise his limp.

So if this is your kid, you know you're going to have a problem. You got a chubby kid. He's soft-looking. And he's got this stutter and this limp. So you're going to be worried if you're going to work every day.

Now, they lived in the projects, but that's when the projects were good place to live. And that's the truth. But you're worried that if you go to work every day, he's going to be trying to prove himself to somebody, plus he was a big jokester. So you're worried about him.

But Mamie's uncle, Mose Wright, came up, had some business in Chicago, and said to Mamie, why don't you let him come and visit with us? For a couple of weeks, he played with his cousins. It'll be really nice. Well, Emmett was thrilled because for the first time in his life, he gets to take the train by himself, he gets to go all the way down to Mississippi. He's excited about it.

And he gave his mother-- as we recall, he took his watch off and gave it to Mamie. And she said, why are you doing that? He said, well, I won't need a watch in Mississippi. It doesn't matter what time it is. But he kept his ring, his father's ring. And his father's name is Louis Till. And the ring said LT. And Emmett's hand had just gotten big enough to wear it. And so he kept his father's ring.

He went down to Mississippi. And, of course, as you know, well, you may not, the train stops in Greenville. And so Mose picked him up and took him. They were living in money. Emmett is now going to have another situation because he's a boy from the North and his mother dresses him beautifully. You've always seen the pictures you see of him. He's always had these white shirts, and he flaps his sleeves back. And he wears his slacks. And he wears very soft shoes. He doesn't have brogans.

And his cousins have to get up at 5 o'clock, 5:30 in the morning. They eat breakfast and they have to be in the field. And they pick cotton until 1 o'clock in the afternoon, for which they get a nickel. Now, we don't know how much money Mamie gave Emmett, but we know, let's say, she gave him $10. That would have been a lot of money when your cousins are just making a nickel.

And this is a soft kid. And this is a kid. So the cousins are going to be jealous. And that's normal. Not a good idea, but nonetheless, normal. So the cousins are trying to find a way to say who they are, that this Northerner come down there with his soft shoes and his white shirts, and his mama gave him money. So they're trying to say, OK, well, maybe you are from Chicago, and maybe you do know a lot about the North, but we know about the South. You have to listen to us about the South.

And Emmett's like, well, what do you know? And it's like, well, we know how to treat white people. And so Emmett did a thing that was going to make the cousins crazy. He says, I know white people. I had a white girlfriend. And they said, you did not. She is. And he pulls out his wallet. And you know how you buy them, and you buy a frame right now. I don't know why it is we don't put Black people in those things.

[LAUGHTER]

I don't. But you buy a frame right now, you get some blonde, right? And so the cousins are too stupid to say they know where that came from. So he's got this picture. So they say to him, well, there's a girl in that store over there. You know so much about white girls. Go over there and say something. So now we're going to have a problem.

Emmett goes into Bryan's grocery, which is what it was then. It's been sold and-- well, it's actually ruined right now. Emmett goes into Bryan's groceries. And he's going to do it because this is the age of segregation. He's going to do what everybody else does in segregation. He's going to stand and wait.

When all of the white people have been taken care of, when everybody's been taken care of, the woman's name is going to be Carolyn Bryant. When everybody's been taken care of, I'm going to give Carolyn a credit for manners. She's going to look over at Emmett and she's going to say, may I help you or what would you like?

He's going to then approach the counter. Now I remember segregation, and some of you who are my age remember segregation. First thing you do is you put your money on the counter. Without her seeing the money, there is no conversation going at all.

So let's say, he put the quarter on the counter, which means he is reaching there. She's standing there. There's not going to be any possibility of any communication physical. He puts the quarter. And he then withdraws his hand. Without that withdrawal, everything is going to stop.

She sees that he has money and she says, what would you like? And he's going to say, $0.10 worth of bubble gum, please. And this is going to give him 20 pieces of bubble gum.

Carolyn Bryant goes over into the case, counts out his gum, makes his change. And she is now at the counter. She-- if at any point, Emmett had reached or moved, she has a gun under the counter. She does know how to shoot it. I know it's serious business. This is Mississippi. She would have pulled that gun out and shot that child.

But of course, she's not doing that. He's standing. And I'm mentioning this because when the trial comes up, they're going to say Emmett grabbed her. And there's no way that was going to ever, ever happen. That just didn't happen.

She puts his bubble gum and his change. And then she withdraws. He collects his money and his product, what he bought. Now, we do know that as he walked back to the door, he stopped and said something. He said, bye, baby, or see you, baby, something silly. He's 14 years old, just turned 14. Something silly that they say. His cousins, who were hanging in the door, giggled, and everybody ran. And unfortunately, nobody told Mose Wright.

Now her husband is named Roy Bryant. And Roy and his half brother, JW Milam, were down in Louisiana, pulling shrimp. They are, as you know, poor whites. And you know they're poor whites because they're trading in the Black community. If they'd had anything, they'd been with white people. So you have to understand where all of this is coming, these tensions are going to come from.

When Roy Bryant gets back, one of the cousins-- and we have to believe that he did not just had no idea what he was doing. One of the cousins said to Roy Bryant, what are you going to do about that boy talking smart to your wife? And so now we've got an elephant in the room. Somebody's going to have to shoot it. And it's just not going to go away. So this is going to be a bad thing.

Now, everybody says JW Milam was crazy, and I have no reason to believe that he was not. They also said that JW Milam got liquored up before he did this. I think that people like JW give liquor a bad name.

[LAUGHTER]

I do. It's like the Congressman is going to be making a pass at some 14-year-old boy, and they're going to say, oh, he was drunk. I don't think so. I think he's a pedophile.

[LAUGHTER]

[APPLAUSE]

No. No, a drunk man speaks a sober man's mind. But we know that about 2 o'clock in the morning, they went out to the field. And you can go-- if you go to Money, Mississippi, you can go out in the field, and you can find some of the cabins that were there.

They went out and they knocked on his door. They called him Preacher. They knocked on his door. And Mose came to the door and he said, who's there? And Roy Bryant had a flashlight. And he flashed it on his face and he said, Preacher's me, Mr Bryant. And he said, what do you want? He said, I want that boy from Chicago.

And Mose immediately knows that there's a problem because 2 o'clock in the morning, somebody's knocking on your door, it's a problem. So he's trying to figure out a way out of this thing. And he said, well, there are a couple of boys here. And he said, I want the one that did all that talking. So you know this is not going to work.

Mose tries to buy it. Mose tries to offer money, and it's not going to work. And finally, JW Milam said, either bring the boy, and I'm sure that he did not say the boy, out or I'm going to kill everybody in the house. And nobody doubted that JW Milam would kill everybody in the house.

So now, Mose Wright, who had asked his niece to send her only son to spend some time with them, is going to have to give this child up. And he knows that this cannot possibly have a good ending. Now, the FBI tells us that the Emmett Till case is closed, that they have, in fact, closed the case. Last I heard, there was no statute of limitations on murder.

So I get tired of the right wing deciding how they're going to apply the law. We know that, for example, we know that Emmett was taken out of the house, and we know that he was taken over to a pickup truck. And we know that someone in the pickup truck was asked, is this the boy? And the person in the pickup truck said, yes.

So that means, though, we do try two men, there's somebody else out here on this murder. Now, it could be anybody from Carolyn Bryant to a crazy Negro named Too Tight Jones. And Too Tight is all over this. We know that Too Tight was there that night because they throw Emmett in the back of the pickup truck, and it's going to be Too Tight Jones who's going to ride to make sure Emmett doesn't jump off.

I think everybody was thinking, oh, they're just going to beat him a little bit, but there's not a good thing to think because this is going to be a horrible thing. They go out to JW Milam's barn, and they begin to beat him. And they begin to beat him. And, of course, Emmett doesn't really have a sense of what's going on, and it's just going to get worse and worse and worse. And this is going to go on all night. And you could hear, they said you could hear his cries all over the delta.

At some point, even they had to look down and recognize, my God. I mean, at some point, they obviously were beating a dead body. We know that one eye was missing. We know that one eye was just hanging by a bit of a thread on his cheek. His mother said it looked like they had taken a hatchet to just chop his face in half. We know that he was castrated. And we know that there was a hole in his head.

And it was presumed, when it was first reported, that that hole was a bullet hole, that they had shot him. But the reality was it was a drill. And when it got looked at, it was a terrible thing. And when Bryant and Milam looked at it, they realized, nobody should see this. Even they knew this was way, way out of line.

And they told Too Tight to go get barbed wire and to go get a gin fan. And as the autopsy said, they wrapped the wire around what was left of his neck, and attached it to the gin fan, and they took it to the Tallahatchie and they dropped it in.

The presumption being, of course, that the fish and the crabs would eat the body up, and everybody would say, we don't know what you're talking about. But of course, the body came back up. A fishing boy, fishing, saw the body.

By then, of course, Mamie was in Mississippi. By then, of course, the Sheriff was involved in it, Sheriff Rainey, everybody is involved. And the body comes up. And the Sheriff-- Mamie, says, that's my son. And the Sheriff said, we don't know what it is. We don't even know if it's black or white because he's being arrogant, he's being crazy, and he's trying to bully her. And this is not going to happen.

She said, I know it's my son. Of course, he had his ring on, his father's ring on, but she's his mother. Any of us who are mothers in this room, we know our children. We've carried them for nine months. We birthed them. We know our children. And she knew that it was.

The Sheriff says, we don't know if it's Black or white, but he knew that it was a Black boy because if he had thought it was a white man, he would have sent it to a white mortuary. He sent it over to Century Mortuary. And of course, that's the Black mortuary. And he put it in the casket. And he instructed them to bury him in Mississippi because they wanted to hide it.

And if you recall, and those of you who look into the case, the Sheriff is saying things like, oh, that boy is in Detroit with his grandmother. He's laughing at us. But that's not where he was, that was Emmett. And of course, we finally did the DNA.

And I'm in a good mood, but white people kill me. Everybody in the world knew that that was Emmett, but they had to finally run DNA to say, oh, it's Emmett. You say, oh, whoopee. Never mind, I'm in a good mood. So--

[LAUGHTER]

But a group of men-- no, it just makes you mad that it always has to go that way. What you say is meaningless. You do get sick of that. But--

[APPLAUSE]

No, it's true. It's true. But a group of men in the Pullman porters-- and they're are some of the greatest men. Any of you in college and you're looking for a paper to write. Yeah, no, the Pullman porters are great men. And they went to Mamie. Mamie, she was Mamie Till Bradley at that point. They went to Mrs. Bradley. And they said, what would you like? How can we help? And she said, I want Emmett's body home. I want him home to Chicago.

And when the Northbound train came through-- some of you know Greenville, Mississippi, and you know that the Century Funeral Home is only about 1,000 yards from the railroad tracks. And you can go see it. I mean, it's right there even yet.

And when the Northbound train came through, the porter stopped the train, and walked over, and got the casket. And they put it on the train and continued North. But we know that they did not put the casket in baggage, because had they put it in baggage, one, it had an odor, of course, because it had been in the water for a couple of days, and because it was a really bad beating that he took. Somebody would have noticed it. They put it in their personal effects and watched over it, and took it to Chicago, where his mother had the body taken out to Metropolitan AME Church, where she opened the casket.

And as we recall, she said, I want the world to see what they did to my son. And of course, the sheriff, who never did learn anything, said, that woman should be ashamed of herself showing him like that. But it wasn't Mamie's shame. People kill me. You married to some fool, and he beat you up on Friday and Saturday, and you're telling your girlfriends, oh, I walked into a door. You need to call up and say, this Negro is beating me again, girl, because--

[APPLAUSE]

That's the truth. It's not your shame. He wants to put what he's doing on you. Somebody in this room will be raped, and all of a sudden, that's going to be a shame that you got raped. It's sad that you got raped, but it's not your shame, it's the shame of the fool that raped you. And you have to learn to give that shame back to the people that do it. That's the truth.

[APPLAUSE]

We had the trial, as we know, of Bryant and Milam, in September. And as defense said to an all-male white jury, I know that every Anglo-Saxon drop of blood in your body will send these men free. And they did. The jury said not guilty, but everybody knew they had done it.

And there was an Alabama named William Bradford Huie, and he worked for Look Magazine. Look gave him $4,000. He took it over to the Delta. And he offered them the $4,000, Bryant and Milam, for their story. And they gave their story. And they said, yes, we killed them. It was an approved killing. We couldn't have him down here talking to our women this way.

And so that's going to be in Look Magazine at the end of September, so we can count this one out. 30 days has October, 31 has November. And we are now at the 1st of December. So Emmett is going to be extremely important to what Rosa Parks did.

I had an argument with Laura, my editor, about that when I was writing this, because she said, I don't think it's important. And I said, well, Laura, let me share a problem here. If it's going to be Rosa by Laura Godwin, Emmett's not important.

[LAUGHTER]

I couldn't agree more. But if it's going to be Rosa by Nikki Giovanni, Emmett stays. Emmett had to stay in the book because this is going to be informing what Rosa Parks is going to do. She and the world is recognizing that the time has come for this to stop.

Now, she was sitting there after she spoke to the gentleman. And I gave him an identity as Jimmy's father. After she spoke to everybody, she's sitting there, daydreaming and planning her meal. And Rosa didn't waste time, so she was always doing something, and not paying much attention when this man, James Tate, comes, and he bellows at her. I said, give me those seats.

But Ms. Parks had no startle. There must be something in the water in Montgomery, because nobody-- Martin had no startle. And you remember when Martin was stabbed with a letter opener in Harlem, he was at a book signing. He was stabbed. And you remember, he looked down and said, I have been stabbed. Would someone mind calling an ambulance, please? He-- and of course, the speech that we got or that most of us know that speech is, if I had sneezed, because had he sneezed, had he done anything, he would have cut his heart. So remaining calm is important.

And Rosa was always very calm the same way. And so she just did that Rosa thing. She just [GASPS] and she just looked up at him and said, why do you pick on us. And he said, it's the law. Give me those seats. And she said, no.

Now, the man sitting on the window there decided to give his seat up. And the two men across the aisle decided to give their seat up. I tell you the truth, I don't fault him. This is Thursday, December the 1st. This man has worked all week. Christmas is coming. He's got children. He's got a wife. He may have a mother-in-law. He needs his paycheck, which will come tomorrow because as we know, the Eagle flies on Friday. So he's going to need to go to work. I mean, there's no shame in what he did. And that's why I said, he really needs to admit that he did it.

Rosa got up to let him out. And James Tate thought that he had won the day. So he turned around very arrogantly and went to sit and drive the bus. And when he looked up in his mirror, he saw that she had sat back down. And he said, I'm going to have you arrested. And she said, you may do that. And that's the second time in the history of the world that permission has been given to have a saint arrested.

[APPLAUSE]

To the credit of the bus, the bus did not divide Black and white. The white people knew that she was in the neutral section. So they're screaming at James Tate, drive. And the Black people knew that Mrs. Parks was right. And they are asking her, yeah, you're right. Take my seat. Because they know if cops come on the bus, cops are going to do what cops do, and they're going to have belly clubs and they're going to have guns, and somebody can get hurt. And so they're hoping to get it resolved a little bit below that. But of course, now, Mrs. Parks knows that her moment had come.

She's 42 years old. She is indeed drop dead gorgeous. All you have to do is go back and look at pictures of her at that point. No, she's a beautiful woman. And like a lot of beautiful women in the south, she downplayed her looks. She wore those little dumb glasses and-- but no, she was a beautiful woman. And she was at the height of her womanhood. She was at that moment.

And many of us reached that moment where everything that she has come together, and she knows it. So nothing is going to deter her. So she simply sits there and waits.

I wanted to show Claudette Colvin because Ms. Colvin, nine months earlier, had been arrested on the same offense with Ms. Coleman, 16 years old. She had personal issues and she had had issues with the law. So nobody-- Montgomery is a conservative community. Nobody's going to go down behind Claudette Colvin.

But Rosa is now going to take a stand. That's going to require some level of action. And Bryan wanted you to see that she's just sitting there, waiting. To the credit of the cops, they got on the bus. And it was two of them. And that was what was funny, two cops to arrest Ms. Parks, who was smaller than I am and weighed about 105 pounds. But they didn't manhandle her. One of the cops just touched her on the shoulder and on her elbow, and said, auntie, won't you give me those seats?

And I used to laugh at Ms. Parks about that. But I said, well, it's so lucky it was you and not me, because if that had been me, I got a bad mouth, I would have been forced to say, do I look like your mama's sister?

[LAUGHTER]

So the cop be swinging the thing, people get hurt. But she just said no. One of the cops picked up her purse. And one of the cops just led her off the bus.

This is Jo Ann Robinson, who was Dr. Jo Ann Robinson. She's the head of the English department at Alabama State. And she's in Piggly Wiggly. All of my women in this book are in domestic situations because all of the women are going to be ordinary women who are going to step up to this wonderful challenge that has been offered to them.

And she's in Piggly Wiggly, buying dinner, when somebody comes in and says Rosa Parks has been arrested. And she goes, not Mrs. Parks. And she tells them, meet me at 10 o'clock-- because she is the newly elected head of the Women's Political Caucus, meet me at 10 o'clock at my office tonight.

She bought her dinner, went home, cooked it for her husband. She has two sons. Went home and cooked their dinner, bathe the boys, put them to bed, kissed her husband goodnight, and drove back out to Alabama State. One might ask, why didn't the men go? Because it is Thursday night, and though, the good old boys are not usually rallying at Thursday night, if a bunch of Black men are hanging around at Alabama State, it could be a problem. And the women thought that they could handle it.

The women of the Black Political Caucus made signs all night because Jo Ann Robinson recognized she is probably the unknown figure in the Montgomery bus boycott. She recognized, now, we have an issue. Let us ask people to stay off the buses on Monday when Mrs. Parks goes for arraignment. And that's what they did. All night, they made, in those old stenography machines where you had to run them that way and you had those blue papers and stuff, they ran off 30,000 copies.

Now, sometimes, when you hear about the Montgomery bus boycott, you hear that the preachers that Sunday all announced it in their churches and everybody stayed off the buses. And I'm glad for the preachers who did announce it in their churches. And I'm certainly glad for the people that stayed off the buses. But you really do have to ask yourself, does everybody really go to church? I don't think so. You had to--

[LAUGHTER]

No. And then when you think about the church, if you think about Dexter Avenue, you think about Ralph Church, those people had cars. So it was very important that you get to the juke joints. It's very important that you get to the people that have to be on the bus. And it's also, and I should point out, very important, that is Rosa Parks.

Don't you know-- had this been, for example, Coretta King, and I like her, it's not that. But had this been Coretta King who had been arrested for refusing to give up her seat, the Black community and I love us, but the Black community would have said, how come Martin didn't drive her?

[LAUGHTER]

It would have been sad. But those of us who are Black know us. If it had been-- no, I mean, that's the truth.

[APPLAUSE]

If it had been Juanita Abernathy, somebody would say, how come Ralph didn't give it a car? It had to be somebody who had to be on the bus. And the way that everybody knew is that she lived in the projects. So the word spread. If she had lived in a detached house, nobody would have known. She would have gone-- it would have gone on. And so all of these things are coming together, says that it's time.

Monday morning-- I need to show you Johnnie Mae Carr, Ms. Carr, who is still with us, was Rosa's very good friend. And one of the great pleasures in life is sitting with Rosa and Ms. Carr and listening to them talk. And like all the old ladies, to any of you that remember beauty parlors, you'd be sitting there to get your hair done.

When I was growing up, I have no concept, I still don't, of children having appointments. They just never did. You had a bad tooth, you went to the dentist. You sat there until he didn't have an adult to wait on. You want to get your hair done, in those days, we got our hair done. You went to the beauty parlor and you sat until nobody was busy. And then they got you. You don't have appointment. I mean, I'm always amazed, I had an appointment with the doctor. He said, no, that's not what you do. You go to the doctor and you wait.

And I got used to sitting-- I'm saying, I got used to sitting with old ladies because if you sit with them long enough, they forget you're there.

[LAUGHTER]

And they won't-- no, because they want a gossip. They want to use this time. And so if you just sit quietly, I would sit with them. And they would start to tell each other story. First, they were aware that I was sitting. I was sitting and having coffee. And then they forget about me and go on and talk. And so it was always a lot of fun. But they used to have this ongoing question of who was going to eulogize who. Because if you know any 80-year-old woman, they talk about how their death is going to happen. And that's true.

Mrs. Parks is older than Ms. Carr. And so because Rosa didn't like to speak publicly, nobody really knew that because she did and she did it well, but it wasn't something she liked. And she would say, oh, no, Johnnie, you're going to eulogize me. I'm older. And she said, no, Ms. Carr. Said, no, no, Rosa, you have to do it. You'll have to do it. And it was really sad, in Detroit, at Rosa's funeral, to watch Mrs. Carr have to do it because I remember some of the discussions that she did there.

Bryan fell in love. And this is the only person in this book in real time. And that's what she looks like. Because when Bryan met her, she hugged him. And Bryan is a former football player. And she did that thing that Black women do. I don't know if white women do it or not, just no Black women do. And that's, come on, baby, you need something to eat.

Well, Bryan, they always said, Bryan will eat anybody's anything. And so Ms. Carr started to feed him. And the more she fed him, the more he could talk to her. And so he just like, he said, you got to meet Johnnie Mae Carr. I said, I met Ms. Carr. Oh, she's so nice. So he went back and forth a couple of times because he had never met-- he hadn't been South, so he didn't know women like that and how they do it. So it was just like, I wish I had my grandmother.

Now we're going to come to December 4. It's going to be Monday morning. And the buses roll at 6 o'clock. And as we recall, Monday morning at 6 o'clock, there were nobody on the bus. White people in Montgomery said, oh, they were being intimidated. By what? A 5 foot 1, 42-year-old woman? No, people were tired of it. People stayed off the bus because their moment had come.

And that evening, nobody rode the buses all day. It's one of the things-- let me just share this for a second. You get tired-- when you're Black, you get tired of a lot of things. But one of the things you get most tired of is everybody tells you Black communities, you can't work together. Say, y'all just barrel the crabs, just trying to pull each other down.

And I always access in my head, every time I have to hear some crap like that, I access two things, one is Harriet Tubman. Ms. Tubman was, as the poster said, wanted. Harriet Tubman, a.k.a. Moses, stealer of slaves. Ms. Tubman, we know, went into the South numerous times. We really don't know. We credit her with saving 300 slaves, which is a lot of times because she didn't pull 300 slaves at one time.

But we do know this. We know that the overseer had no idea who Harriet Tubman was. They had no idea what she looked like. The overseer would see her and maybe look at her and wonder, who is that? And said, master, you know me. Let it go. Because he didn't know, because she's Black. The master didn't know anybody.

But we know that every slave on the plantation, on every plantation which she went, they knew her. And nobody said anything. The word went, Moses is here. Moses is here. And the people who were going to ride the underground railroad would find her, would get together with her and figure out when they were going to leave. And the other people who knew that people were leaving didn't say anything.

You would think that for a pork chop, for a bottle of beer, we would have sold each other out. And Ms. Tubman died of old age. She had $10,000 on her head, which was a little less than a quarter of $1 million today. And she had freedom on her head.

So if you had turned in Harriet Tubman, you could have had $10,000 in freedom. And nobody did. She died of old age, sitting on her porch. And the other thing that gives me great cheer was the Montgomery bus boycott, because no matter how much Montgomery kept trying to say, oh, they were scared to get on the bus-- my favorite Montgomery bus boycott story is a maid story, because one of the mistress, the woman she worked for had said, there was one of those like, Matilda, are you boycotting the buses? And the maid did that colored thing, said, no, ma'am. There's a lot of trouble on the buses. And I'm going to stay off them until it's over.

[LAUGHTER]

[APPLAUSE]

That's true. And as we know, the people are going to March for 381 days. They're going to March through the storms. They're going to March in the heat. They're going to March in the rain. They're going to March through everything. And they're going to March into the Supreme Court finally rules, once again, that separate is inherently unequal, that Blacks have to be-- the 14th Amendment is applicable, and that Blacks have to be treated equally under the law.

Now, one of the things, as we know, October 24, is that Mrs. Parks passed. And we know that in the passing, she, as with another 29 other people, was laid in state in Washington. She was one of the-- she, actually, was the only woman-- she was the second Black and only woman. Everybody else and who has lain in state has been a military man, a political man, or a policeman. And they all have the ability to kill or not kill. But we know Ms. Parks had nothing but truth, nothing but justice, nothing but the right thing on her mind. And so she lay in state.

But we know that in the state of Alabama, Ms. Parks lay in the rotunda, which is what she should have been doing. And we know there's a crazy [MUTED] named Condoleezza Rice, who is--

[LAUGHTER]

[APPLAUSE]

She is. No, she's a terrible person. But we know that-- she is. She's from Birmingham. Condoleezza was friends with one of the girls who was blown up. So you really have to ask yourself, what the hell is wrong with her? How does she get to this position?

[APPLAUSE]

It's a terrible thing. But we know that she decided to go to Montgomery for Ms. Parks land in state. And I was watching it because i didn't want to do that. I did her life. I wasn't competing with them, but I was watching that. And you remember, because people do it all the time, when you have somebody land and say people touch the casket, they're trying to show.

And I was looking at it and I just went, oh, my God, did you see that? And you run it back. If you're recording the funeral, you'll say, Condoleezza is reaching for the casket. I'm telling you, the casket moved. And I--

[LAUGHTER]

[APPLAUSE]

No. No. No, you know Rosa was there saying, no, no, baby, not you, not you.

[LAUGHTER]

So we come to the end. And I want the children to thank Rosa. And I thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I'd like to read a couple of poems. It was-- 2005 was a really difficult year. My dog died. And then my mom died. And then my sister died. And then Rosa died. And then Edna Lewis died. And then Coretta died. So it was just like, boom, boom. And then my aunt died. And it was just like, you know how they tell you, he doesn't give you more than you can bear. But it's one of those things you find. Look, I get it. I get it. Stop this.

But I was-- I did a thing that the Jewish people call sitting Shiva. And to be honest, mommy didn't haven't any reason to die. My sister was dying because she had a lung cancer and it had metastasized. It had first gone to her liver, which already means that she wasn't going to survive it. But it also went into her brain. And my sister's older. And so I really think that mommy just didn't want to bury Gary, I really do, because there was nothing wrong with mommy.

And I had gone out to Arizona because I was at a conference. And I left home on the 6th or 5th or 6th of June. And I got a call on the 8th. And my dad died on the 8th of June. But I got a call from my sister. And she said, mommy's dying. I said, what do you mean mommy's dying? Because no, I just left home a couple of days. What do you mean mommy's dying? She said, no, she's dying. I said, what happened? She said, she fell. I said, Gary, you're not making sense. But I figured, the tumor is bothering her. And I said, OK, let me-- who's the doctor? I knew her family doctor, but I didn't know who was doing the hospital.

So I called the doctor. And I said, it's Nikki. I'm calling about my mother. He said, your mother's dying. And I said, wait a minute. You're the doctor. He said, yeah. I said, you're telling me, she's dying? He said, yeah. And I said, well, am I paying you? And he said, I suppose so. I said, then you need to leave a bill and you need to go someplace because I'm firing you.

And the reason I'm doing, don't tell me-- you're a doctor. Don't tell me you-- don't tell me what you're doing to make it all right or to make it better. Don't do that. And of course, I caught a plane and came right home. And he was upset when he said, there's no reason to be upset with me. I said, hey, yes, there's every reason to be. I leave home with a healthy mother and I come back, somebody told me she's dying. You don't have any solution.

I hired another doctor. And he's really good. His name is Harry McCoy. McCoy is a brilliant doctor, and I knew that. He's a brilliant oncologist. And Harry said, Nikki, I hate to tell you this, but she is. She said her body is shutting down. She does not wish to continue, and there's nothing we can do about it.

And so I'm sitting in the hospital. And you know how, any of you who've lost your parents or anybody close to you, it is. And they come in and out. And mommy said, I want to go home. And I said, that's fine. I have a 20-year-old car. I drive an MR2. It's a little Toyota. I really like the car, but it's not the kind of car you take your mother home-- last time you're going to take your mother home because this is going to be the last thing you do.

So I went and rented a Volvo and took mommy. Well, it should look nice because we knew it wasn't going to work. And we had rented a hospital bed. And mommy was losing weight. And so she could actually slip through the things. And so it was just like, you're sitting there. And so I'm supposed to be a writer. Now, again, that was June 10. And so I'm supposed to be a writer, and I was sitting there with mommy. And I said to myself, you're supposed to be a writer. You should write.

So I went and got my-- we lived down the street from each other. I went and got my laptop. And I would say, 3/4 of acolytes came from sitting Shiva with my mother. And what I was trying to do is just capture what I was feeling. I know I'm not the only person whose mother has died, I'm not trying to say that. It's not on that level. It's just that we live in a country that doesn't allow you to mourn. And I knew, for example-- no, thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

People say that, get over it or move on. It's crazy. And we buried mommy, AME, of course, my grandmother's baptist. But we had a relationship with AME Church. And her friends teased me, said that, you buried GAME. And I said, well, if I had buried her baptist, we'd just be in third offering, five hours.

[LAUGHTER]

So I did that. But [LAUGHS] you know what I mean. But Reverend Ora came over. And he's a really nice man. And he said, Nikki, he said, your mother's a wonderful woman because he knew her and she had gone to his church. And he said, we're really going to celebrate her life. And I said, Phillip, we're not celebrating her life.

And he said, Nikki, look at all the wonderful things that she's done. Of course, we're going to celebrate. And I said, Philip, I am sad and I am mourning. And there may come a time that I will call you and I will say, Philip, why don't we celebrate my mother's life because mommy worked in the community, she did lovely things. I said, but at her funeral, we are mourning. And if you don't mourn, I'm going to put somebody else in your pulpit because I do not want to hear that she is just going home, that this is a wonderful thing, that we're thankful that God is calling her, none of that. I wanted my mommy, and I wasn't going to get her, and I wasn't going to let everybody tell me that it's all right, because it was not all right with me.

And you get tired of people trying to, it's like, oh, yeah, I want to be big about it. I was not big about it. And I-- no, it's not right. And anybody whose mother died, you know exactly what I feel. And you have to sit there and everybody is telling you how this is a good thing. And all you know is there's a hole in your heart. And you have to be careful because now, I mean, mommy's been dead all year. And something will happen. And without thinking, you find your hand is reaching to call her or something goes on and you say, oh, wait till I tell-- and you realize--

No, you have to mourn. Mourning is important. I wrote a poem that I would like to share from this book. And somebody pointed it out to me today, a lot of these poems are the I am poems. And I think when you lose your mother, you have to redefine yourself. So I realize I've been doing a lot of I am. But this is I Am In Mexico.

I am in Mexico. I study sea turtles. I have no idea why. I also like hippopotami. There must be a reason. My sister has lung cancer. Before I left for the baby sea turtles, I fired her doctor. He was not, I think, a bad man, he just didn't have an answer. And like a lot of folk who lack answers, he decided there was nothing to be done. I had to hope he was wrong. But right or wrong, he needed to be fired.

I am in my mother's bedroom. She is in a hospital bed, which she does not like. She has gotten out of it twice now. Mostly, she has not fallen, but slipped when sliding through the bed supports. She has total control of her bladder and can still go to the bathroom on her own steam.

We worry because she seems so frail. She is terminal, and none of us like that. I fired her first doctor too. I don't like bad news. And I was diagnosed with lung cancer 10 years ago. I got lucky, I'm still here. At least my mother will not have to bury me or my sister. Things remain in order.

And this is the culmination of a young woman's thoughts. Youth is a good idea. We are strong and determined. We have a sense of justice. Me, I only wanted to be a voice, coming as I do from a voiceless people, a people who were denied freedom, a language and education, coming as I do from a people who had only a song with which to tell our story in a poem with which to dream. I wanted to be a voice.

My mother is a sneak reader. She has read all my books, but she never discusses them with me. She knows most of my poems by heart. I know this because something will come up, some little thing, some unimportant thing, and she will quote me. She collects my keys to the cities, all my Delta Sigma Theta elephants, any photographs with important people. She especially likes the photograph with Hillary Clinton. My favorite is with Edna Lewis.

Mommy makes the best bean soup. Ms. Lewis fries the best chicken. I am the best eater.

[LAUGHTER]

Mommy has never hesitated to say she is proud of me, even when she's not. But the Grammy nomination stands out because she always thought I should have had one. She took me aside to say, I'm so very proud of you. I didn't win, but I went to LA, and I looked good.

[LAUGHTER]

She was already too sick when Oprah recognized me as one of the 25 living legends. And so one era ends, my mother and my beginning career. My aunt is crying. She reminds my sister and me that she has never known a time without her oldest sister, our mother, neither have my sister and I. I am sad today, and I probably will be for a long time.

I still miss my grandmother who died 36 years ago. My father died 23 years ago, the day after my birthday. Mommy went into the hospital on June 8. I recently turned 62. I am 24 years younger than mommy. That's all I have to say.

[APPLAUSE]

MIKE MULCAHY: Nikki Giovanni reading her poem, I Am In Mexico, last week at the Ted Mann Concert Hall at the University of Minnesota. Her talk was sponsored by the U of M's office of University Women.

Nikki Giovanni is a professor of English and Black studies at Virginia Tech. Her new collection of poetry is called Acolytes. And her children's book about Rosa Parks is Rosa.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

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MIKE MULCAHY: And of course, while you're at minnesotapublicradio.org, you can listen to all our past Midday programs, including our 11 o'clock hour today about the Budget Balancer.

And speaking of 11 o'clock, on Monday, we will be talking with Lowell Bergman. He is a former 60 minutes producer and just completed a series for frontline on PBS called News Wars. He, in one of his programs, talked in depth about the situation the Los Angeles Times is in. And we're going to talk to Lowell Bergman about the state of newspapers, the future of newspapers, and especially as it relates to the Twin Cities. That's Lowell Bergman, Monday at 11 o'clock, right here on Midday.

Midday is produced by Sarah Meier and Curtis Gilbert. We had help this week from Tom Scheck, Jeff Nelson, and Denise Nichols. Our engineers this week were Cliff Bentley, Steve Griffith, and Josh Kabasta. Thanks so much for listening.