August 22, 2025
Vivian Ayers Allen, acclaimed poet and playwright and mother of Phylicia Rashad and Debbie Allen, has died at the age of 102.
Vivian Ayers Allen, celebrated poet, playwright, and mother of Phylicia Rashad and Debbie Allen, has passed away at 102.
On Aug. 20, Allen shared the sad news on Instagram, posting a heartfelt tribute to her late mother that featured a video montage of family photos set to Stevie Wonder’s “Golden Lady.”
“Mommie, you have transformed into that cosmic bird Hawk that lives and breathes Freedom,” Allen wrote. “We will follow your trail of golden dust and continue to climb higher. We promise “to be true, be beautiful, be Free.”
The celebrated choreographer and founder of the Debbie Allen Dance Academy signed off the post with her name, her siblings’ names, and other family members. She also gave a shoutout to “all the Turks in our family,” a nod to the affectionate nickname “MaTurk” that her family used for Ayers.
Ayers lived a life devoted to scholarship, arts, and culture, passions she eagerly shared with her four children. A graduate of the Brainerd Institute, she became the founding director of the Brainerd Institute Heritage after Phylicia Rashad purchased the 12-acre property where the institute once stood in 1999. Ayers’ distinctive poetry style earned her a Pulitzer Prize nomination, a place in Langston Hughes’ 1964 collection New Negro Poets, USA, and praise at NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, where enlarged renderings of her 1952 poem “Hawk” are displayed.
While residing in Texas, Ayers became the first African American faculty member at Rice University, and later moved to Mexico, where she studied Greek literature, Mayan culture, and Mesoamerican math and astronomy. In the 1980s, after relocating to New York, Ayers founded the ADEPT New American Museum of the Southwest in Mount Vernon, where she organized community arts projects and highlighted Black and Indigenous artists.
Her collaborations included a performance with Jimmie Durham and Muhammad Ali in Durham’s My Land. Over her lifetime, Ayers received honors from the National Council of Negro Women, the Jack and Jill of America Foundation, and was awarded a Medal of Honor by Winthrop University in 2008.
In 2023, Ayers celebrated her 100th birthday with a party at the Brainerd Institute, where Phylicia Rashad read Hawk, accompanied by the Claflin University Choir. Another celebration at the Rhimes Performing Arts Center in Los Angeles featured readings and performances by an A-list lineup, including Angela Bassett, Jesse Williams, Alexis Floyd, Cory Henry, and her daughter Debbie Allen.
Ayers’ passing comes just weeks after she celebrated her 102nd birthday with her family, who organized a special jazz concert in her honor.
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