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Transcription: [00:04:52]

{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Out of the Harlem Renaissance and into the forties and fifties, um, more formal kinds of Black, or Black American, African American, Afro-American poets, um, developed-- came onto the scene. People like Gwendolyn Brooks and so on.
[00:05:08]

{SPEAKER name="Eugene B. Redmond"}
Right. Sure. Gwendolyn Brooks interestingly enough had, had met James Weldon Johnson when she was a, a little girl, I think twelve years old, in a, in a like a church basement, you know, that was, typical. You know, you'd meet uh, a Hughes or a, a James Weldon Johnson or a Sterling Brown, you know, at a church social. You know, that's-- that's the way we, we made it. That's-- that's our training ground.
[00:05:29]
And, uh, well yes, Gwendolyn Brooks wrote her first poem I think when she was around thirteen or so, uh, started writing. And um, the uh, the most honored black poet, uh, of all time, of course, was Brooks. The, the first to be honored, uh, at that official American level.
[00:05:48]

{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Mmhm.
[00:05:48]

{SPEAKER name="Eugene B. Redmond"}
When in 1950 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Annie Allen. But, um, the thirties and forties and fifties were crucial decades for Afro-American poets, um. Lots of poetry was being written, but it was not reflected in book, published form, as, uh, say were the poems of the 1920s, you know. The, uh, the poets to emerge from this period, of course, were people like Frank Marshall Davis, um, Robert Hayden. Very fine, extremely brilliant and important. Hayden, Hayden should've gotten the Pulitzer a long time ago.
[00:06:24]

{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Mmhm.
[00:06:24]

{SPEAKER name="Eugene B. Redmond"}
Um, you had M. Carl Holman, who was one of the founders of the Atlanta Der-- De-- Atlanta Daily World. Um, Gwendolyn Brooks, of course, uh, held sway during that day. Melvin Tolson, the first American poet to be made Poet Laureate of a foreign country. That was Liberia in the late forties, he was commissioned, you know, to write his centennial, uh, poetic, you know, uh, tribute.
[00:06:50]

{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
Yes.
[00:06:50]

{SPEAKER name="Eugene B. Redmond"}
And he came up with a fine piece called Libretto for the Republic of Liberia.