● Gwendolyn Brooks:
Pulitzer Prize winning poet and author Gwendolyn Brooks was born June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas. During the Great Migration, her family moved to Chicago where Brooks learned to absorb her surroundings, turning her affinity of writing into a lifelong career. She is the first Black person to receive a Pulitzer Prize, hers being for poetry for Annie Allen, May 1, 1950. She’s also the first Black woman to be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1976. After crafting a beautiful legacy, Brooks passed away in her home in Chicago December 3, 2000 at 83 years old.