It is the task or job or responsibility or pleasure or pride of any writer to respond to his climate.
—Gwendolyn Brooks
The 1960s assassinations of two great African American leaders, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, mobilized the Black Power movement, an international campaign against anti-Black racism. Brooks, like many Black writers, felt the need to address these tragedies and their repercussions. The Black-owned Broadside Press responded to that need, publishing work that emphasized issues of identity, cultural history, racial justice, and community uplift. Broadside’s first book of poems, For Malcolm, provided a space for Black authors to speak about the life, work, and death of the prominent leader.
For Malcolm: Poems on the Life and the Death of Malcolm X
Edited by Dudley Randall (1914–2000) and Margaret G. Burroughs (1915–2010)
Detroit: Broadside Press, 1967
Purchased on the Edwin V. Erbe Jr. Acquisitions Fund, 2020; PML 198544