Gwendolyn Brooks
Born in Topeka, Kansas on June 7, 1917 she was the first Black person to ever win the Pulitzer Prize for anything. She was the Poet Laureate of Illinois for over 30 years and a Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress.
Gwendolyn Brooks was the author and editor of more than 20 books, mostly poetry for children and adults. However, fiction, autobiographies and anthologies also played a part. She focused primarily on the urban Black experience but addressed social and global issues, as well.
Margaret Burroughs
Born in 1915, she was an American visual artist, writer, poet, educator, and arts organizer. She cofounded the DuSable Museum of African American History, the oldest museum of Black culture in the United States and, as a long-time educator, spent most of her career at DuSable High School. Her writing focused on Black experiences and the
importance of Black people,
particularly Black youth, appreciating their culture.
Mama and Margaret.
Mama and Margaret
Of course they met long before she was Mama to me or my brother Henry. Before Gwendolyn was Blakely or Margaret was Burroughs.
They met when my mother joined the NAACP Youth Council which at that point was thought to be a fairly militant organization. There my mother found young Black thinkers: educators, artists and writers, legal minds and budding entrepreneurs. Among them, John H. Johnson and Margaret Taylor Burroughs. The Youth Council was political and social. They marched in the streets in protest against lynching but they also held dances.
Gwendolyn and Margaret continued their friendship and their commitment to poetry years later at a poetry club at the South Side Community Arts Center which was conducted by Inez Cunningham Stark.
One of the members knew a young man named Henry Blakely. She told him if he came to a meeting he would find “a girl who wrote“. My future father, Henry L. Blakely II, was also interested in writing poetry so he went to see what there was to see.
Neither knew just how significant that meeting would be! Legend has it that when he walked in the door Mama looked up and said, “That’s the man I’m going to marry”. Margaret yelled out “Hey boy! This girl wants to meet you!” Who knows? With-out my mother’s brave announcement and Margaret’s exclamation I might not even be here. In fact, it was Margaret who gave the eulogy for my grandfather, David Anderson Brooks, at his funeral in 1959.
In Report From Part One, the first half of my mother’s autobiography, she described her relationship with Marga-ret Burroughs. “Through all the oddities of the Changes, always my friend, not afraid to mix cold seriousness with warm humor.”
Gwendolyn Brooks and Margaret Burroughs. Two women. Two artists. Two change agents. Two icons. Two friends.
— Nora Brooks Blakley
Nora Brooks Blakely is a literary arts administrator (President, Brooks Permissions) and Authorpreneur (Flying Colors Unlimited)
