Gwendolyn Brooks, in full Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks, (born June 7, 1917, Topeka, Kansas, U.S. died December 3, 2000, Chicago, Illinois), American poet whose works deal with the everyday life of urban Blacks. She was the first African American poet to win the Pulitzer Prize (1950), and in 1968 she was named the poet laureate of Illinois. (Read W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1926 Britannica essay on African American literature.) Brooks graduated from Wilson Junior College in Chicago in 1936. Her early verses appeared in the Chicago Defender, a newspaper written primarily for that city’s African American community. Her first published collection, A Street
You may know Rosa Parks, but what about other African American historical figures? This Black History Month, learn about these change-makers of U.S. history.