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.[2] 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.[2] 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.[7] 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.[2] She would closely identify with Chicago for the rest of her life.[2] In a 1994 interview, she remarked:
Living in the city, I wrote differently than I would have if I had been raised in Topeka, KS ... I am an organic Chicagoan. Living there has given me a multiplicity of characters to aspire for. I hope to live there the rest of my days. That's my headquarters.[9]
She started her formal education at Forestville Elementary School on Chicago's South Side.[10] 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.[11]
Brooks began writing at an early age and her mother encouraged her, saying, "You are going to be the lady Paul Laurence Dunbar."[12] During her teenage years, she began filling books with ''careful rhymes'' and ''lofty meditations," as well as submitting poems to various publications.[2] Her first poem was published in American Childhood when she was 13.[2] By the time she had graduated from high school in 1935, she was already a regular contributor to The Chicago Defender.[10]
After her early educational experiences, Brooks did not pursue a four-year college degree because she knew she wanted to be a writer and considered it unnecessary. "I am not a scholar," she later said.[9] "I'm just a writer who loves to write and will always write."[9] She graduated in 1936 from a two-year program at Wilson Junior College, now known as Kennedy-King College, and at first worked as a typist to support herself while she pursued her career.[9]
