Honoring a Pioneer: My Uncle Dudley Randall
Dudley Randall was the leading exponent of the new black poetry movement of the 1960s. Randall, whose critically-acclaimed poems prompted Detroit Mayor Coleman Young to name him the Poet Laureate of the City of Detroit in 1981, started the Broadside Press out of his home in 1965 and ran it nearly single-handedly for a dozen years, promoting the work of a generation of black poets. Pulitzer Prize winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks was quoted in Detroit Free Press as saying, "Many times I've called Dudley Randall a giant because he really sacrificed himself to young poets and the new black poetry, which he was responsible for stimulating in the 1960s. I feel he will go down in history as one of the major progressive black influences of our time."
Randall's entire career was dedicated to poetry and poets. Through the Broadside Press, he provided black poets with a way to have their poems published at a time when it was very difficult for them to get their works in print. In addition, he edited anthologies of black poetry and was an accomplished poet in his own right. He attended literary conferences, met and encouraged other black writers, contributed articles and poems to black journals, and organized poetry readings. Randall also taught black literature at the university level and was poet-in-residence for a time at the University of Detroit.
A Poet from an Early Age
Dudley Felker Randall was born in Washington, D.C., on January 14, 1914. His earliest recollection of composing a poem was when his mother took him to a band concert. Impressed by the big bass drums and bass horns, the four-year-old came home and wrote a poem to the tune of "Maryland, My Maryland." Randall's parents were both educated-his mother, Ada Viola Randall, was a teacher, while his father, Arthur George Clyde Randall, was a minister. His father was active in politics and often took Randall and his brothers to hear prominent black speakers, such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Walter White, and James Weldon Johnson, leaders of the fledgling organization called the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).Civil Rights Movement Inspired Randall
In 1963, a year of heightened civil rights activism, two startling events helped set in motion the forces that would convince Randall to start the Broadside Press. First was the September 1963 bombing of a Baptist church in Birmingham, AlabamaBroadside Press Published Black Poetry
"Broadside Press began without capital, from the 12 dollars I took out of my paycheck to pay for the first Broadside, and has grown by hunches, intuitions, trial and error," Randall wrote in Broadside Memories. Throughout his twelve years as publisher of the press, from 1965 through 1977, he maintained its financial and artistic independence, never accepting loans or outside funding. Many of the poets he published refused to accept royalties, insisting the proceeds from the sale of their books be used for the press. Even after she had won the Pulitzer prize and was being published by Harper & Row, a major New York publisher, Brooks choose Randall's Broadside Press to publish books of her verses and, later, her autobiography. Her support of the Broadside Press was characteristic of the loyalty poets felt toward the press and its publisher.The press's first book was the Danner-Randall collaboration, Poem Counterpoem, published in 1966. This was followed in 1967 by For Malcolm, a collection of poems about slain leader Malcolm X. Co-edited by Randall and Margaret G. Burroughs, For Malcolm included poems by such established poets as Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden, and Margaret Walker, as well as several younger poets. Around the time For Malcolm was published, Randall decided that Broadside Press would become the primary outlet for young black poets to have their works published, since major publishers had not yet begun to accept their poems.
Among the relatively young poets Randall published in the late 1960s were Don L. Lee (later Haki R. Madhubuti), Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, and Etheridge Knight. According to Black Writers in America, these were poets who were "committed in their poetry to the cause of political, social, and moral revolution, and all believe that poetry and other forms of artistic expression should serve the ends of revolution." Nikki Giovanni later told the Detroit Free Press, "Broadside was neither the mother nor father of the poetry movement, but it was certainly midwife. Dudley understood the thrust of the movement, which was essentially vernacular. He … allowed his poets to find their own voices. That was the charm of Broadside."
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