Honors
- 1946, Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry.[2]
- 1949, Poetry magazine's Eunice Tietjens Memorial Prize[2]
- 1950, Pulitzer Prize in Poetry[2] Gwendolyn Brooks in 1950 became the first African-American to be given a Pulitzer Prize. It was awarded for the volume, Annie Allen, which chronicled in verse the life of an ordinary black girl growing up in the Bronzeville neighborhood on Chicago's South Side.[28]
- 1968, appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois, a position she held until her death in 2000[2]
- 1969, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award[29]
- 1973, Honorary consultant in American letters to the Library of Congress[30]
- 1976, inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters[6]
- 1976, the Shelley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America[31]
- 1980, appointed to Presidential Commission on the National Agenda for the Eighties.[30]
- 1981, Gwendolyn Brooks Junior High School in Harvey, Illinois dedicated in her honor.[30]
- 1985, selected as the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, an honorary one-year term, known as the Poet Laureate of the United States[2]
- 1988, inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame[32]
- 1989, awarded the Robert Frost Medal for lifetime achievement by the Poetry Society of America[33]
- 1994, chosen to present the National Endowment for the Humanities' Jefferson Lecture.[2]
- 1994, received the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters[34]
- 1995, presented with the National Medal of Arts[35]
- 1997, awarded the Order of Lincoln, the highest honor granted by the State of Illinois.[36]
- 1999, awarded the Academy of American Poets Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement[37]
Legacy
- First awarded in 1969 (for “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier): Gwendolyn Brooks Prize for Fiction[38][39]
- 1970: Gwendolyn Brooks Cultural Center, Western Illinois University, Macomb, Illinois[40]
- 1990: Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing, Chicago State University[41]
- 1995: Gwendolyn Brooks Elementary School, Aurora, Illinois[42]
- 2001: Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy, Chicago, Illinois[43]
- 2002: 100 Greatest African Americans[44]
- 2002: Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School, Oak Park, Illinois[45]
- 2003: Gwendolyn Brooks Illinois State Library, Springfield, Illinois[46][47]
- 2004: Hyacinth Park in Chicago was renamed Gwendolyn Brooks Park.[48]
- 2010: Inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.[49]
- 2012: Honored on a United States' postage stamp.[50]
- 2017: Various centennial events in Chicago marked what would have been her 100th birthday.[51]
- 2017–18: "Our Miss Brooks @ 100" (OMB100) a celebration of the life of Brooks (born June 7, 1917), which ran through June 17, 2018. The opening ceremony on February 2, 2017, at the Art Institute of Chicago featured readings and discussions of Brooks' influence by Pulitzer Prize-winning poets Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Gregory Pardlo, Tracy K. Smith, and Natasha Trethewey.[52][53]
- 2018: On what would have been her 101st birthday, a statue of her, titled "Gwendolyn Brooks: The Oracle of Bronzeville", was unveiled at Gwendolyn Brooks Park in Chicago.[54][55]
- 2021: Gwendolyn Brooks Memorial Park dedicated in Macomb, Illinois.[56]
This content is from Wikipedia. GradeSaver is
providing this content as a courtesy until we can offer a
professionally written study guide by one of our staff editors. We do
not consider this content professional or citable. Please use your
discretion when relying on it.
