Gwendolyn Brooks in Chicago's Literary Hall of Fame

[Jerry Peterson]

Gwendolyn Brooks came from as humble a circumstance as one can get.

She was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1917, her father a janitor, his father a runaway slave who fought in the Civil War.

The family moved to Chicago when Brooks was six weeks old. Chicago would be home to her from that time until her death in 2000.

Poetry was in Brooks. A children’s magazine published her first poem when she was all of 13. By 16, she had 75 published poems in her portfolio.

Her mother knew Brooks was gifted and took her to meet Harlem Renaissance poets Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson. Made an impression. She could one day move with the giants.

The Chicago Defender published 75 of Brook’s poems between ages 17 and 19, but wouldn’t give her a job when she graduated from Wilson Junior College. So she took typing jobs and enrolled in a series of poetry workshops. Her work won regional awards.

Brooks hit the big time in 1945. Harper & Row published A Street in Bronzeville, her first collection of poems, and critics loved it.

Her second collection, Annie Allen, won the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, the first Pulitzer given to an African-American.

President Kennedy in 1962 invited Brooks to read at a Library of Congress poetry festival. She then went into a new career, teaching creative writing at Columbia College in Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University, Elmhurst College, Columbia University, Clay College of New York, and the University of Wisconsin – right here in my home state.

In 1968, the governor of Illinois appointed Brooks to the post of poet laureate of Illinois. Twenty years later, the Library of Congress selected Brooks as its consultant in poetry. Today that post is U.S. Poet Laureate.

Over the years she sponsored poetry contests for inner-city kids, to help them see the poetry in their lives.

I don’t know how or when I became aware of Brooks, but a decade ago, I found myself teaching her poetry to high school sophomores. I came across her poem “We Real Cool”. Those speaking are seven dropouts in a pool hall, and the poem is something of a rap:

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

Those of my tenth graders who didn’t really want to be in class, they got this one.

Poetry speaks.

Tomorrow: Meet the fourth of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame’s inductees – Lorraine Hansberry