Amanda Gorman, who became a national sensation when she delivered an emotional poem in President Biden’s possession in January, said on Friday that a security guard followed her home and said she looked suspicious.
“A security guard followed me on my walk home tonight,” Mrs. Gorman wrote on twitter. “He asked if I lived there because ‘you look suspicious’. I showed my keys and zoomed into my building. He left, with no excuses. This is the reality of black girls: one day you are called an icon, the next day a threat ”.
Mrs. Gorman said in another tweet: “In a sense, he was right. I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, inequality, ignorance. Anyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is an obvious and fatal danger to the constituted powers. “
Gorman, 22, who is from Los Angeles, did not immediately respond to a message sent on his website on Friday night. She is the youngest inaugural poet of all time in the United States and was named the first young award-winning poet in the United States in 2017, when she was a student at Harvard.
In Biden’s possession, she was widely acclaimed when she recited, in a voice full of clarity and emotion, “The Hill We Climb” in front of the sunlit Capitol, just days after a violent crowd of Trump supporters besieged the building while Congress met to certify the results of the presidential election.
In the poem, Ms. Gorman spoke of “striving to forge a union with a purpose, to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man”. She described her past as a “skinny black girl, descendant of slaves and raised by a single mother”, who can dream of becoming president one day, “only to find herself reciting for one”.
After the inauguration, IMG Models, which represents supermodels, including Alek Wek, Paloma Elsesser and Joan Smalls, announced who would represent Mrs. Gorman for fashion and beauty endorsements.
And “Good Morning America” broke the news that Ms. Gorman would perform at the Super Bowl pre-show, which she did in February.