The Chicago Sends a Man to Little Rock (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Gwendolyn Brooks
- First Published: 1960
- Type of Work: Narrative
- Genres: Poetry, Narrative poetry
- Subjects: 1950’s, African Americans, Discrimination, Journalism or journalists, Racism, Blacks, Love or romance, South or Southerners, Authors or writers, Music or musicians
The Poem
A number of Gwendolyn Brooks’s poems, particularly those written in the years of the Civil Rights movement, highlight major events in the African American struggle for legal equality. The title of this poem clearly conveys its historical context: A reporter from Chicago’s black newspaper, the Defender, travels in the fall of 1957 to Little Rock, Arkansas, during that city’s battles over school desegregation. In the actual historical events, the first nine black students ever to be admitted to Central High School were forbidden to enter the school by the...
[The entire page is 1479 words long]

