The young American poet who won acclaim for her performance at President Joe Biden’s inauguration, has told of being followed home and accosted by a security guard who allegedly claimed she looked suspicious, it is reported in the Guardian.

Amanda Gorman said the incident, on Friday night, was “the reality of black girls” in the US, in which “one day you’re called an icon” but the next day considered a threat.

Gorman wrote on Twitter: “A security guard tailed me on my walk home tonight. He demanded if I lived there because ‘you look suspicious’. 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.” She added in a follow-up tweet: “In a sense, he was right. I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, to inequality, to ignorance.”

Gorman, 22, from Los Angeles, also shared a post she made in February which said: “We live in a contradictory society that can celebrate a black girl poet & also pepper spray a 9 yr old” –a reference to a recent incident in Rochester, New York, that led to protests and three police officers being suspended pending the completion of an investigation.

Amanda Gorman was the youngest poet to perform at a Washington inauguration in January when she recited her poem ‘The Hill We Climb’.

Background: ‘Democracy can never be defeated’