Amanda Gorman, who became a national sensation when she delivered a moving poem during the inauguration of President Biden in January, said on Friday a security guard followed her home and told her she looked suspicious.
“A security guard took me home on my hike tonight,” she said. Gorman said wrote on Twitter. “He asked if I lived there because ‘you look suspicious’. I showed my keys and moved into my building. He’s gone, no excuse. This is the reality of black girls: one day you are called an icon, the next day a threat. ‘
Me Gorman said in another tweet: ‘In a sense, he was right. I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, to inequality, to ignorance. Anyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is an obvious and fatal danger to the powers that be. ‘
Me. Gorman, 22, who hails from Los Angeles, did not immediately respond to a message sent through her website Friday night. She is the youngest inaugural poet ever in the United States and was named the first United States Youth Poet Laureate in 2017, when she was a student at Harvard.
At the inauguration of mr. Biden applauded as she, in a voice filled with clarity and emotion, read “The Hill We Climb” in front of the Sunlight Capitol, days after a violent crowd of Trump supporters gathered in the building as Congress convened to confirm results of the presidential election.
In the poem, Ms. Gorman spoke of ‘striving to achieve a union with purpose, to put together a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man’. She described her background as a “skinny black girl, descended from slaves and raised by a single mother,” who could dream of one day being president, “just to tell herself for one.”
Following the inauguration, IMG Models, which includes supermodels including Alek Wek, Paloma Elsesser and Joan Smalls, announced that it would represent Ms. Gorman for the affirmation of fashion and beauty.
And “Good Morning America” made the news that Ms. Gorman would act on the Super Bowl show, which she did in February.