The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock

“The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock” by Gwendolyn Brooks was published in her 1960 collection The Bean Eaters. This book, her fourth collection of poetry, came out after Brooks won a Pulitzer Prize for Annie Allen (her second collection of poetry). Brooks was a part of the Chicago Black Renaissance movement, as well as the civil rights movement.

“The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock” is a free verse poem that references a Black newspaper that published Brooks’s writing. It is inspired by the events that occurred at Little Rock Central High School during the federally mandated racial integration of schools. The poem explores the mundane nature of racists, as well as some connections between the persecution of African Americans and the persecution of Jesus. Brooks’s poem also explores ideas surrounding civility and civilized activities.

Poet Biography

Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas in 1917. Her family relocated to Chicago as part of the Great Migration (the mass movement of Black Americans leaving the Jim Crow South). Brooks was an active poet at an early age, publishing her first poem when she was 13 years old. By the age of 17, her poems were routinely appearing in the Chicago Defender, an African American newspaper.