Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was born on June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kansas and raised on the South Side of Chicago. She was the first child of David Anderson Brooks and Keziah (Wims) Brooks. Her father, a janitor for a music company, had hoped to pursue a career as a doctor but sacrificed that aspiration to support getting married and raising a family. Her mother was a school teacher as well as a concert pianist trained in classical music. [2] Brooks' mother had taught at the Topeka school that later became involved in the Brown v. Board of Education racial desegregation case. Family lore held that Brooks' paternal grandfather had escaped slavery to join the Union forces during the American Civil War. [8]
When Brooks was six weeks old, her family moved to Chicago during the Great Migration, and from then on, Chicago remained her home. She would closely identify with Chicago for the rest of her life. [2] In a 1994 interview, she remarked:…show more content… I am an organic Chicagoan. Living there has given me a multiplicity of characters to aspire to. I hope to live there the rest of my days. That's my home office. [9]
She started her formal education at Forestville Elementary School on Chicago's South Side. Brooks then attended a prestigious integrated high school in the city with a predominantly white student body, Hyde Park High School; transferred to the all-black Wendell Phillips High School; and finished her schooling at integrated Englewood High School. [11]
According to biographer Kenny Jackson Williams, due to the social dynamics of the various schools, in conjunction with the era in which she attended them, Brooks faced much racial injustice. Over time, this experience helped her understand the prejudice and bias in established systems and dominant institutions, not only in her own surroundings but in every relevant American mindset.
