Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), American poet, the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize. Born in Topeka, Kansas, Brooks graduated from Wilson Junior College in Chicago, Illinois, in 1936. Her first book of poems, A Street in Bronzeville (1945), was praised by critics as a clear and moving evocation of life in an urban black neighborhood. For the collection Annie Allen (1949), Brooks was awarded the 1950 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Her other works include the novel Maud Martha (1953); the children's poetry book Bronzeville Boys and Girls (1956); and the volumes of poetry The Bean Eaters (1960), Selected Poems (1963), In the Mecca (1968), Riot (1969), Family Pictures (1970), Aloneness (1971), To Disembark (1981), The Near-Johannesburg Boy (1987), Blacks (1987), Gottschalk and the Grande Tarantelle (1988), and Children Coming Home (1991). Brooks also published two autobiographical works, Report from Part One (1972) and Report from Part Two (1995).

Brooks was noted for her adaptation of traditional forms of poetry and for her use of short verse lines and casual rhymes. Her work had always depicted black struggles, but after 1968 she became more active and outspoken in attacking racial discrimination. She also worked extensively to distribute and encourage black poetry. Brooks was named poet laureate for the state of Illinois in 1968, succeeding Carl Sandburg. In 1985 she was appointed poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, and in 1988 she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Her many honors included the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award (1946) and a National Endowment for the Arts Senior Fellowship for Literature (1989), a lifetime achievement award. Brooks received the National Book Foundation's medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1994.