Gwendolyn Brooks
(1917–2000)

Gwendolyn Brooks is one of America's most distinguished contemporary poets. Her work draws on traditional, modern, and contemporary verse forms, all of which reflect the society and culture of African Americans. Her later poems are characterized by intense voices and lean forms that convey the urgency and outrage of what came to be known in the 1960s as the Black Arts Movement.

David Brooks and Keziah Wims, Gwendolyn's father and mother, were married in 1916 and settled in Chicago, where they were the second African American family to move into their neighborhood. David completed high school and attended Fisk University for one year. He hoped to become a doctor. Brooks's mother, Keziah, came from a family of ten children and studied to be a classical pianist.

Gwendolyn Brooks was born on June 7, 1917, and her brother Raymond was born 16 months later. Their mother encouraged the children to play quietly and kept them sheltered from racial strife. This helped young Gwendolyn to develop the powerful imagination that allowed her to become an important poet. When she entered elementary school, however, she was shocked by the racism that surrounded her.

Shy and dark-skinned, Brooks found it difficult to gain social acceptance among her peers, but her enthusiasm for writing grew. In 1930, her first published poem, "Eventide," was printed in American Childhood, and by 1934, her poems were appearing regularly in a weekly column in the newspaper Chicago Defender.

Brooks graduated from Englewood High School, then went on to Wilson Junior College and graduated in 1936. Afterward she worked several miserable jobs, including selling religious objects door-to-door and being a maid. These experiences eventually became the inspiration for her books Maud Martha (1953), her only novel, and In the Mecca (1968). After college, in 1939, Brooks married Henry Lowington Blakely II. Their son, Henry III, was born a year later.

In 1945, Brooks won the Midwestern Writers Conference Prize with her poem "the progress." Her work was soon forwarded to Richard Wright, author of Native Son and Black Boy. Impressed with Brooks's poetry, Wright recommended her work for publication. The collection was published as A Street in Bronzeville in 1944.

The next few years were very successful for Brooks. She won two Guggenheim Fellowships, a National Institute of Arts and Letters award in 1946, and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

In 1949, she was the first African American to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. The publication of Annie Allen, and its favorable reviews, brought Brooks national attention.

Gwendolyn's daughter, Nora, was born in September 1951. Brooks continued to draw from her own experiences in her novel Maud Martha, published in 1953. Maud Martha tells the story of an African American woman coming to terms with prejudice and poverty. In 1956, she wrote Bronzeville Boys and Girls, followed by Bronzeville Men and Women, which was published in 1960 as The Bean Eaters.

During the 1960s, Brooks became involved with the civil rights movement and later with the Black Power and Black Arts movement. During this time, Brooks began to support young black writers by subsidizing their publications, donating cash awards for writing contests, and giving financial aid directly to writers.

Throughout the 1970s, Brooks published a number of books of poetry as well as her autobiography, Report From Part One. A second autobiographical work, Report From Part Two, was published in 1996. In January 1980, Brooks read at the White House, and in 1985, she was made the Library of Congress's poetry consultant, one of the country's most prestigious literary appointments.

The Civil War led to the end of slavery in the United States, but not the end of discrimination, especially in the South. Consequently, many African Americans migrated north to urban areas in the early 1900s. World War I created professional and educational opportunities for African Americans and a black urban middle class was established.

This period was marred by racial violence, but also saw great artistic and cultural advances for African Americans. One example of this new pride and culture is the Harlem Renaissance, named for the cultural explosion in the 1920s in Harlem, an African American section of New York City.

The economic depression of the 1930s ended the cultural and economic prosperity of the Harlem Renaissance, and it took World War II to prompt reforms. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public schools was illegal, beginning the civil rights era. Throughout the latter half of the 1950s and the 1960s, leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., fought against discrimination.

In the wake of King's assassination, there were again riots in most large American cities. In the 1970s, gradual steps were made toward racial equality and, increasingly, African American popular culture influenced national tastes. Racial equality remains a goal in the United States but progress continues to be made.

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