Bancroftiana, Number 119 Fall 2001: The Gwendolyn Brooks Papers

The Gwendolyn Brooks Papers

When I first proposed to the Bancroft Collections Committee back in February, 2000, that we acquire a substantial portion of the Gwendolyn Brooks papers, the group was evenly split between those who didn't know who she was and those who were supremely excited.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate and Berkeley English Professor Robert Hass puts it quite simply, calling Ms. Brooks "one of the most important African American poets of the twentieth century... the first major figure to emerge after the Harlem Renaissance... I can think of Berkeley graduate students working in modern poetry, in African American poetry, in women's writing, and in urban studies for whom the opportunity to work on her papers would be an enormous boon."

After contributing hundreds of poems to various periodicals, Gwendolyn Brooks gained national recognition in 1945 with A Street in Bronzeville, her first book of poetry. This led to a flurry of awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her second book of poems, Annie Allen (1949) garnered more awards and was recognized with a Pulitzer Prize in 1950, the first Pulitzer ever awarded to an African American writer.

President Kennedy asked her to read at a Library of Congress poetry festival in 1962, she became The Library of Congress poetry consultant in 1985, and in 1994 she was named the Jefferson Lecturer, the highest humanities award given by the government of the United States. During this period, she published volume after volume and maintained a voluminous correspondence with aspiring young African American poets.

Her creative work is more than enough to guarantee her a lasting place in the history of American letters, but she has also been enormously influential as a mentor to other writers and as a champion of poetry as a means of expression open to every level of society.

The papers being offered contained a cross section of Ms. Brooks' varied and various activities. There were manuscripts of poems and essays, files of correspondence, drafts of speeches, notes, annotated clippings, family papers and photographs, as well as citations, awards, plaques, and personal documents. The correspondence included many familiar names in modern American literature: Ted Berrigan, Arna Bontemps, Eldridge Cleaver, Robert Creeley, as well as 50 years of correspondence with her publishers. Bancroft's Collections Committee listened, saw the great research potential, and approved the acquisition by acclamation.

Gwendolyn Brooks in the early 1930s.

But there was a problem. The collection was being offered to us by a highly respected dealer in New England and had passed through other antiquarian dealers. I wanted to know if Ms. Brooks was aware that 26 cartons of her personal papers were being offered for sale. The dealer traced the provenance of the collection and reported that the material had been recovered from the basement of her home in Chicago after she sold it. She did not know that it was in the market; so Daphne Muse, a friend of both Ms. Brooks and Bancroft, joined me in drafting a letter to her explaining our concerns. With our encouragement, the dealer worked with Gwendolyn Brooks to sort things out.

After a few months, we learned that the purchase could go forward and that Gwendolyn Brooks would be very pleased to have her papers at Bancroft. The price would be somewhat higher than the original proposal, but the additional monies would go directly to her. When we revisited the question in the Collections Committee, there was unanimous agreement that the arrangement was fair and honorable and that we should proceed.

So now we have a bill to pay. Bancroft Friends have already received a letter asking for support for this purchase and we hope that the reaction will be favorable. It has been a long-standing goal of the Library to build on its holdings of contemporary literary manuscripts. It is significant of course that Gwendolyn Brooks is an African American writer, but that does not suffice to explain Bancroft's interest in her. She is a first-rate writer, speaking an American voice to an American audience. Gwendolyn Brooks continues to have a major impact on our literature, and Berkeley scholars will be working in this archive for many decades to come as her role is assessed and reassessed.

—Anthony Bliss,
Curator Rare Books and Literary Manuscripts

Postscript. Gwendolyn Brooks died in Chicago on December 3, 2000. She was 83.