Gwendolyn Brooks: The Oracle of Bronzeville

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was born on June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas. Her father, David Anderson Brooks, was a janitor and her mother, Keziah (Wims) Brooks, was a schoolteacher and classically trained concert pianist. When Brooks was only weeks old, her family left Kansas and relocated to the South Side of Chicago. As a child, she demonstrated a passion for reading and writing, which her parents fostered. At the age of thirteen, Brooks published her first poem, “Eventide,” in American Childhood. During her teenage years, she corresponded with two prominent African American writers of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson. Both praised her work and encouraged her to continue writing. By the time she graduated high school, Brooks was a regular contributor to a column in the Chicago Defender, the leading African American newspaper in the country at the time. After high school, she graduated from Chicago’s Wilson Junior College (now Kennedy-King College) and worked for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). 

Throughout her lengthy career, Brooks authored more than twenty collections of poetry, in addition to a two-part autobiography and a novel. Furthermore, she won many prestigious awards and held several important positions. In 1945, Brooks published her first collection of poetry, A Street in Bronzeville. She followed it up four years later with Annie Allen (1949), which won her the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In 1953, Brooks published her first and only novel, Maud Martha. Seven years later, she published her third collection of poetry, The Bean Eaters (1960). Contained within the volume is arguably her most famous poem, “We Real Cool.” In 1968, Brooks published In the Mecca, another collection of poems. That same year, she was named poet laureate of Illinois. In 1972, Brooks published the first part of her autobiography entitled Report from Part One. She would not publish the second half, Report from Part Two, until 1996. In 1985, Brooks became the first African American woman appointed consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Four years later, she received the lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1990, Brooks became a professor of English at Chicago State University. She remained in the position until her death on December 3, 2000 at the age of eighty-three.  

Following Brooks’s death, the Chicago Park District partnered with the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, the Poetry Foundation, and Brooks Permissions to create a memorial in honor of the esteemed Chicago poet. Dedicated in the city’s (Gwendolyn) Brooks Park in 2018, on what would have been her 101st birthday, the memorial features a bronze bust of Brooks, the first outdoor portrait sculpture of an African American woman in Chicago’s history. Designed by sculptor Margot McMahon, the bust depicts the poet during her later years. She gazes into the distance as if deep in thought, her left hand touching the side of her face while her right rests on her left elbow. In front of the bust is a small gravel plaza with sitting stones arranged in a circular pattern, giving visitors the sense that they are gathering to hear the bronze Brooks recite some of her poetry. Flat, rectangular stepping stones inscribed with verses from Annie Allen create a meandering path that connects the plaza to a yellow wooden porch, a reconstruction of Brooks’s favorite childhood writing spot. 

Alexander, Leslie M. and Walter C. Rucker, eds. Encyclopedia of African American History. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2010.

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"Gwendolyn Brooks." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets. Web. 11 March 2021 <https://poets.org/poet/gwendolyn-brooks>.

"Gwendolyn Brooks: The Oracle of Bronzeville." Chicago Park District. City of Chicago. Web. 11 March 2021 <https://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/parks-facilities/gwendolyn-brooks-oracle-bronzeville>.