When Brooks was six weeks old, her family moved to Chicago as part of the Great Migration.
Early Lifeīrooks was born on June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kansas. She died in her Chicago home on December 3, 2000. In 1950 Brooks became the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize, for her book Annie Allen. She began writing and publishing as a teenager, eventually achieving national fame for her 1945 collection A Street in Bronzeville. Poet Gwendolyn Brooks moved to Chicago at a young age.
