Get to know Vivian Ayers Allen; she is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet, activist, and scholar. She is also the mother of actors Debbie Allen and Phylicia Rashad.
She was recently honored by NASA for her contribution to the Apollo 11 mission. The ceremony, held at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, celebrated Allen and other women for their crucial roles in the success of the historic moon landing in 1969.
The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center was subsequently renamed the “Dorothy Vaughan Center in Honor of Women of Apollo,” acknowledging the legacy of these pioneering women.
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Allens’ poem “Hawk”, published on July 11, 1957, metaphorically links the journey into space with the quest for freedom, as per People of Color In Tech.
An excerpt of the poem reads, “And then one night, unwittingly, I walked out, looked up and discovered a diamond-studded sky/ ‘Look at that,’ I thought/ A world resplendent with beauty and truth and dignity and freedom/ It was the first time I had ever really seen it/ The perfect scheme, then crystallized in my mind/ I would convert this energy to the wings and take to the stratosphere/ I’d soar up there.”
A picture of Allen and her “Hawk” poem was mounted by NASA on a wall in the space center in her honor. To celebrate their mother’s legacy, Debbie Allen, Phylicia Rashad, and their brother Andrew Arthur Allen Jr. attended the ceremony on July 19.
“We are proud to host this historic event as the agency honors the significant contributions women have made to the space industry, particularly trailblazers who persevered against many challenges of their era,” NASA Johnson Director Vanessa Wyche stated in a press release.
NASA’s Artemis program was also talked about at the event. Its goal is to send the first woman and person of color to the moon.
Allen, who is now 101, graduated from the historic Brainerd Institute in Chester in 1939 and continued to Barber-Scotia College and Bennett College. She is also a recipient of Honorary Doctorate Degrees from Bennett College and Wilberforce University.
Her literary career started in Houston, Texas with the publication of “Spice of Dawns” (1952), a compilation of poems that was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. This was followed by “Hawk,” just 11 weeks before the launch of Sputnik I.
A native of Chester, S.C., one of Ayers’ skills and hobbies is studying different cultures around the world. She went to Rice University, Columbia University, and Princeton University to study traditional Greek. She has also read and translated books about Mayan society and astronomy.
In 1973, she worked with certified teachers to start her signature program, “Workshops in Open Fields”, which became the prototype of grassroots arts programming by Nancy Hanks, who was then Director of the National Endowment of the Arts.
