Black History Month - Erased Heroes 2/15/21

 

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)

Born in 1917, Brooks graduated from Wilson Junior College. Her earliest poems were featured in the Chicago Defender. Her first published collection(1945) was A Street Bronzville. Brooks became the first African American poet to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1950 for Annie Allen. In 1968, Brooks was named the poet laureate of Illinois. A majority of her poems were written about the African American experience. Brooks came out with a novel, Maud Martha in 1953 and The Bean Eaters 1960. In 1972 she came out with an autobiography Report From Part One. In 1989, Brooks received a lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment. She spent the last ten years of her life as an English professor at Chicago State University