It’s the birthday of the first African American author to win the Pulitzer Prize (1950), Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000). Brooks was also the first African American woman appointed to be poetry consultant (now called poet laureate) to the Library of Congress (1985-86).

Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas, but grew up in Chicago, with parents who encouraged her and her brother to be readers. Brooks began writing poetry at a young age and had her first poem published at 13 in American Childhood magazine. She graduated from Woodrow Wilson Junior College in Chicago in 1936 and several years later married Henry Blakely; they were married for 30 years, divorced for four, then remarried and remained together until his death in 1996. They had a daughter and a son.

Brooks’ first published collection of poems, A Street in Bronzeville (1945), drew its material from Chicago’s South Side; her mastery of many poetic forms and her ability to bring ordinary lives to life garnered her great critical praise. Her next collection, Annie Allen (1949), portrayed a Bronzeville girl growing up and was called “technically dazzling” by critic Phyllis McGinley; this collection won the Pulitzer. Brooks would later say that winning the Pulitzer would change her whole life: “I sometimes feel that my name is Gwendolyn Pulitzer Brooks.”

By the 1960s, Brooks was well-established as a Big Important Poet, yet late in that decade she reinvented herself in response to the rising community of young political black writers. Her collection In the Mecca (1968) reflected her new political engagement and included a long tragic poem about a mother’s search for her missing daughter throughout the Mecca, a once-grand decrepit apartment building; the book was nominated for a National Book Award. That same year, Brooks became poet laureate of Illinois. In addition to her other awards, Brooks received the National Medal of Arts and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award.

Brooks’ poem “We Real Cool” from her notable collection The Bean Eaters (1960) reads in its entirety:

 

We real cool. We

Left school. We

 

Lurk late. We

Strike straight. We

 

Sing sin. We

Thin gin. We

 

Jazz June. We

Die soon.

 

Have a brilliantly sunny Friday marked by thoughtful political engagement—climate change, people!—and stay scrupulously honest to the data.