The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock

Brooks’s free verse poem has 60 lines that are broken up into 14 stanzas. The first-person speaker is a reporter from the Chicago Defender newspaper. The subtitle, “Fall, 1957,” alludes to, or references, the events that occurred when Little Rock Central High School was desegregated.

The first stanza introduces a major theme of the poem: how white people who engage in acts of racism can appear non-threatening and similar to Black people. According to the speaker, the residents of Little Rock, Arkansas live normal lives. For instance, they “watch the want ads” (Line 3), which means—at the time—to look through the section of a newspaper that advertises job openings. This working-class characterization makes the residents relatable. This highlights how average, relatable people can be prejudiced.

The first stanza also introduces the color motif that runs throughout the poem. A woman doesn’t notice that her “wheat toast burns” (Line 4), and burnt toast is “brownish,” a color that is repeated near the end of the poem. Rather than the racially ambiguous word “people” (Line 1), this specific female resident seems to be white. This gives the reading about toast more depth. A white woman being ignorant, either intentionally or unintentionally, is a kind of mundane nefariousness when the connection is made between the color of the toast and discrimination based on skin color.

The second stanza highlights how the concerns of white residents, like burning toast, are insignificant compared to the concerns of Black residents of Little Rock. The specific concern of that latter group that Brooks references is that Black people were not allowed to attend the same school as white people until 1957. Meanwhile, the white residents have “many, tight, and small concerns” (Line 7). There are localized and minor issues that might bother these white residents. They are subject to the power of “Time” (Line 6), while Black residents are subject to the laws about segregation—or desegregation—made by white people.

In the third stanza, the speaker introduces the idea of church, which begins another religious theme. Residents of Little Rock sing hymns and participate in “Sunday pomp and polishing” (Line 10). These residents boast of their virtue by presenting themselves as devout during public Sunday services. Congregations of churches are most likely still segregated at this time. The white people attending church with other white people alludes to the history of slave owners, as well as the racists during Brooks’s lifetime publicly declaring themselves to be Christians. However, the acts of white, church-going people that caused a Chicago reporter to come to Little Rock—the violent response to desegregation of Little Rock Central High School—were not emulating the acts of Jesus in the Bible.

Stanza 4 describes the seemingly mundane Sunday afternoons of the churchgoers. They can be observed having tea and cookies. The details that Brooks includes about these snacks are meant to highlight how similar racists can be to anti-racists, as well as to Black people. Racists might not always appear monstrous. Here, they appear harmless. They try to demonstrate their civilized nature with activities like tea breaks.

The speaker—the reporter—uses the first-person pronoun “I” for the first time in Stanza 5. He offers a prediction about the future, or a personal opinion about how the residents will behave when he is not there. During the Christmas season, residents “cleave” (Line 16) to Christmas trees and “tinsel” (Line 18). They cling to shiny trappings of the holiday or, in other words, the superficial and capitalistic interpretation of what was once a high holy day celebrating the birth of Jesus.

In Stanza 6, the speaker looks at a different season—summer—when there are baseball games and outdoor concerts. Major League Baseball was only officially desegregated 10 years before Brooks wrote “The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock.” However, in 1957, many local, community baseball fields were still racially segregated in places like Arkansas. The federal laws about desegregation that impacted Little Rock Central High School were part of the same movement to desegregate sports. However, Brooks’s poem is ambiguous—the “uniformed figures” (Line 20) out in the July heat could be any race.

The “Open Air Concert” (Line 23) in the poem is an opportunity for the poet to include specific details about classical music. Brooks’s mother was a classically trained pianist who taught her daughter about music. Like Brooks and her mother, the residents of Little Rock listen to “Beethoven” (Line 24) and “Johann” (Line 25), which is Bach’s first name. These composers emotionally affect people of all races. Like tea-time, music can be wielded by racists as proof of their civilized nature. However, classical music has a diverse audience.

Stanza 7 turns to love and develops the color motif. Romantic encounters are shown from a female perspective—“Soft women softly / Opening themselves” (Lines 27-28). In other words, they receive affection. The speaker describes their anticipation of pleasure, as well as consummating their desire. The colors of azure, purple, and blue are included, alluding to darker shades of skin and/or nighttime liaisons. Brooks is obscure in this section, and the other potential color included, which is the name of a flower as well—rose—is also obscure. Flowers, however, are often associated with female genitalia in art, such as in the paintings of Brooks’s contemporary Georgia O’Keefe. The stanza can be read as losing virginity, as well as a synesthesia—crossing of senses—in the experience of love (experiencing physical sensations as colors). This develops the theme of the mundane lives of people who commit racist acts.

In Stanza 8, the speaker focuses on how Little Rock residents are involved in each other’s lives. They believe “[n]ot answering the telephone is a way of rejecting life” (Line 38), meaning that people must interact in life. Their “business,” a word that is repeated twice in Line 39, is to be interrupted, and to value the mundane: the “bores or boredom” (Line 40). These revelations develop the theme that racists can live mundane lives, lives that are often similar to the lives of the people they oppress. The town’s residents also take great care not to disrupt the status quo when something goes awry, but to be “polite” (Line 40). Here, the idea of civilized behavior, or polite society, returns.

The speaker considers himself, his assignment, and his boss in Stanza 9. Line 48 neatly presents a theme of the poem: “They are like people everywhere.” The residents of Little Rock, some of whom commit violently racist acts, are like the people in other American cities. However, this is not something the newspaper can print. The assignment was to cover a “saga” (Line 44), or a sensational story. The events at Little Rock Central High School are not perpetuated by a uniquely racist community. The reporter is “puzzle[d]” (Line 45) by this non-story, having entered into the situation with anger at how Black students have been treated.

In Stanza 10, the speaker imagines how the editor of the Chicago Defender would reply to the findings articulated in the previous stanza. The editor would question the reporter’s assertion about the mundane, commonplace nature of the racists in Little Rock.

Stanza 11 is the last long stanza of the poem (the following three stanzas are only one line each). Here, the speaker reports on some ways that “brownish girls” (Line 55) and boys who attend Little Rock High School are being harassed. The specific list of things thrown at the Black students is juxtaposed with Biblical imagery. Some “bright madonnas” (Line 54) are placed in the same stanza as “garbage and fruit” (Line 52). Violence is explicit and implied. In this imagery, the persecution of Jesus is connected with the persecution of African Americans.

The “brownish boy” who is a victim of physical violence is given a one-line stanza (Stanza 12). His bleeding is followed by ellipses, indicating that there is something that the speaker does not say, or that the speaker is made momentarily speechless by seeing the boy’s blood.

Stanzas 13 and 14 move away from simply reporting what occurred at the scene and into emotion and imagery. The speaker expresses his hatred for people’s desire for lynching—their “lariat lynch-wish” (Line 59). The poem ends on the image of Jesus as the “loveliest lynchee” (Line 60), deepening the connection between the Lord and Black victims of racist violence.