African American poet Amanda Gorman said in a Twitter post that she was “tailed” by a security guard Friday night as she walked to her home in the city of Los Angeles with the guard saying “you look suspicious.”
Gorman, who is 22, drew national attention by becoming the youngest poet ever to be invited to speak at an inauguration, when U.S. President Joe Biden was sworn into office in January.
She posted on Twitter that the guard wanted to know “If I live there” and “I showed my keys & buzzed myself into my building. He left, no apology. This is the reality of black girls: One day you’re called an icon, the next day, a threat.”
“In a sense, he was right,” Gorman continued on Twitter. “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.”
Gorman became a sensation after a moving recital of her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the inauguration.
In 2017, when she was a student at Harvard, she became the first National Youth Poet Laureate.
