The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock

The Chicago Defender newspaper plays an important role in Brooks’s poem, as well as in her life. It was founded specifically for Black readers in 1905 by Robert S. Abbot and had many subscribers outside of Chicago. The Chicago Defender took up a strong stance against racism and supported the Great Migration movement: the movement of Black people from southern states to northern states, especially to Chicago. In addition to publishing poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, the Chicago Defender employed Langston Hughes as a columnist. In 2019, the Chicago Defender moved away from print media and focused on circulating news through their online publication.

Brooks was interviewed by Martha Satz for the Southwest Review journal, and the title of the piece, “Honest Reporting,” highlights the importance of newspapers and reporting to Brooks. She says, “That’s the ideal—to put down exactly what is there to be reported, honestly [...] I have felt that maybe I could have left that last line out because that is really going beyond reportage into something that I privately think” (Satz, Martha. “Honest Reporting.” Southwest Review, 1989). In Brooks’s poem, the assumed persona of a reporter mirrors what Brooks believed was the goal of poetry about social issues.