21 pages • 42 minutes read
Gwendolyn BrooksThe Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1957A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“The Lovers of the Poor” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1960)
This poem appears in Brooks’s collection The Bean Eaters, right after “The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock.” “Lovers of the Poor” also addresses social issues surrounding racism, but it centers on an organization of women rather than a male reporter. Food plays an important role in this poem, reflecting the use of tea and cookies in “The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock.”
“We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1959)
New readers of Brooks’s poetry should be aware of Brooks’s most famous poem, “We Real Cool.” It is influenced by and references jazz music. This is in contrast to the classical composers referenced in “The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock,” like Beethoven and Bach. Little Rock, unlike Chicago and New York, does not have a notable jazz scene (which featured many living Black musicians in the 1950s). However, residents of Little Rock have access to outdoor concerts that expose them to dead, white composers.
“Rosa Parks” by Nikki Giovanni (2002)
After Brooks’s death, Giovanni celebrated her and the Chicago Defender in the poem “Rosa Parks.” Like Rosa Parks, the newspaper and Brooks were key figures in the civil rights movement.
Further Literary Resources
Produced by the National Park Service, this is a guide to Little Rock Central High School as a National Historic Site. It gives a detailed account of the events surrounding the Little Rock Nine, as well as the federal legal decisions about desegregation and the civil rights movement. The document was created to aid high school teachers with educating their students about race relations.
“September 26, 1957” on Black Quotidian: EVERYDAY HISTORY IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS by Matthew F. Delmont
This site, hosted by Stanford University Press, provides daily headlines and reproductions of articles from Black newspapers. The September 26, 1957 page linked above is an image and description of the Chicago Defender on the Little Rock Nine, as well as the reproduction of an editorial from the same issue. This view on the issue contemporary to the composition of the poem, in the actual newspaper Gwendolyn Brooks would have been reading at the time, provides critical context on the history of the poem. Many other similar articles, from other papers, are hosted on Black Quotidian, and can provide a deep pool of primary and secondary sources for connecting the poem to the larger Civil Rights Movement.
This resource was created by the Library of Congress as part of their exhibition “The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom.” The section covering the dates 1950-1963 is one of many sections and outlines some of the events that impacted the Little Rock Nine. Readers can gain even more context for Brooks’ poem, and race relations in general, by investigating the other sections, which reach back as far as 1900.
The Chicago Defender by PBS Newspapers
This site by the Public Broadcasting Service gives the background and history of various newspapers, especially local or historically significant periodicals. This particular site is the history of the Chicago Defender through 1997. The site details the origins of the newspaper before World War I, providing insight into the longstanding background of the civil rights movement. The article also goes into the particular style and content of the Chicago Defender, including its idiosyncratic reference style and its provocative headlines. Also, the article goes into the Chicago Defender’s importance for the Great Migration, urging Black families to travel north, and often providing resources to that effect.
Listen to Poem
This 1961 recording was made in the Recording Laboratory of the Library of Congress. “The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock” can be found at minute 35:05.
Related Titles
By Gwendolyn Brooks
