To The Diaspora

Dudley Randall, to whom Brooks dedicates the first iteration of “To the Diaspora,” founded Broadside Press in 1966 to help establish copyright over his poem “The Ballad of Birmingham” (Leasher, Evelyn. “Broadside Press of Detroit.” Michigan Historical Review, 2000, p. 107). Within just a few years, Broadside Press became one of the most important publishers of writers and graphic artists of the Black Arts Movement, especially as emergent and militant Black artists found it difficult to get contracts and adequate promotion from traditional publishers. Far from being surprised at these difficulties, Black writers and critics saw the resistance to publishing their work as more evidence of the anti-Black agenda of cultural institutions of the United States.

Brooks’s association with Randall as a publisher came when she gave him permission to reprint her poem “We Real Cool” as one of several broadsides—a single, large sheet with no folds. Brooks had up until then published the bulk of her work with Harper and Row, a well-respected literary publisher founded in the 19th century. By the late 1960s, Brooks was ready to move on. Brooks published Riot (1969) with Broadside Press, affirming her commitment to supporting Black art and homegrown Black cultural institutions.