21 pages • 42 minutes read
Gwendolyn BrooksThe Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1957A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
How Racism Hides in Plain Sight
The central theme of “The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock,” or the “biggest News” (Line 46), as Brooks’s speaker puts it, is that it can be difficult to differentiate people who would commit, encourage, or tolerate violent acts of racism from the people who are committed to anti-racism by looking at people’s daily activities. For instance, both racists and non-racists have to deal with parts of their homes breaking, and “put repair / To roof and latch” (Lines 3-4). This is a mundane activity that can be easily observed in the lives of people who are prejudiced and people who are not.
The first lines of the poem hint that the “Man,” or reporter, that the Chicago Defender sends to Little Rock anticipates many obvious differences among the people who harass and assault Black students. He arrives and sees “the people bear / Babes” (Lines 1-2). The line break after “bear” hints at one meaning of bear: to endure hardship. However, Line 2 offers a different meaning of bear: to go through the act of labor to produce a child. Enjambment, the placement of a line break in the middle of the sentence, contrasts the reporter’s expectations with what he discovers. Racists are not monstrously different—in other words, they do not necessarily stand out in a crowd. They face the same day-to-day struggles in childbearing and child-rearing as everyone else.
Racists and non-racists share similar moments of happiness as well as struggle. People of all different races are “Blanket-sitters” (Line 25) who enjoy outdoor concerts. Brooks writes, “[t]here is love, too, in Little Rock” (Line 27). To return to the first lines about bearing children, Brooks includes images about flowers opening, which illustrates romantic and sexual love. Love and sex are part of the day-to-day lives of racist and non-racist people.
However, this big “News” (Line 46)—big enough to earn the capitalized ‘n’—is not something the editor of the Chicago Defender would accept. The mundane nature of racists is not good for sensational newspaper headlines. If the reporter wrote that the people of Little Rock are “like people everywhere” (Line 48), his editor would be “angry” (Line 49). This is not only bad for newspaper sales, but it also shows how racism lurks in people who seem innocuous. It would be easier to combat racism if racists were easily identifiable, but their generally mundane lives make racism more difficult to eliminate. This mundane nature is better articulated in poetry, or other forms of art, rather than journalism, according to the “Editor” (Line 49) in the poem.
The Persecution of Black People and the Persecution of Jesus
“The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock” includes many references to the Bible that link the persecution of Jesus to the persecution of Black people. Brooks states in multiple interviews that she feels like she should have removed the last line of the poem, as it is the most distant and divine image of the poem, rather than a journalistic detail. Breaking from reporting events, the final lines connect the persecution of Jesus with the persecution of Black people in America. Lines 59 and 60 read: “The lariat lynch-wish I deplored. / The loveliest lynchee was our Lord.” Christ’s violent crucifixion is the subject of many religious ceremonies and art objects. The crucified Christ is seen in everything from huge church murals and statues to tiny pendants on delicate necklace chains. The alliteration of the letter ‘l’—the first letter of five words in two lines—connects lynchings, as well as the desire for lynchings, in the southern part of the United States with how Romans treated Jesus, according to the Bible. The connection formed by alliteration, as well as repeating the root word “lynch” twice, illustrates how the Black victims of lynchings were innocent like Jesus.
In addition to alluding to Jesus, the poem includes allusions to Mary, the virgin mother of Jesus. Mary is called the Madonna, with a capital M, as the mother of a divine being who was crucified. Other mothers of martyrs, or martyrs themselves, are called madonnas, with the lowercase m. The term madonna also refers to the iconography, or various created images in art and other media, of the mother of Christ. Brooks’s speaker describes a “coiling storm a-writhe / On bright madonnas” (Lines 53-54). This is an image of an attack—a storm—writhing on madonnas. In other words, mothers of lynching victims (or victims of other racially motivated, violent crimes) are being attacked. Referring to Black women as madonnas invokes images of the Black Madonna, which is iconography of the Madonna with dark skin. These links to the Biblical Mary further connect the persecution of Black people with the persecution of Jesus.
Prioritizing Civility and Supposedly Civilized Activities
Brooks’s poem also thematically highlights attitudes about civility and activities that are coded as civilized. The residents of Little Rock engage in activities that have been associated with civilized society, such as teatime. They drink “lemon tea” (Line 13), gesturing to the colonial history of white people consuming tea. British citizens have lauded their tradition of teatime as an activity that indicates their society is civilized, or polite. However, the tea industry in England was established through colonization, with the East India Company. This government-backed company used violence against Indian, Chinese, and Southeast Asian citizens, rather than civilized trade practices. So, the supposedly civilized practice of taking tea was founded in barbaric treatment of colonial subjects.
Furthermore, lemon tea, in the south, is traditionally a sweet tea, invoking the need for large quantities of sugar. The availability of cheap sugar has often been connected to the benefits of international trade, often ignoring the human rights violations conducted in cane-growing nations, such as Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and the British colonies of Antigua and Barbados. Sweet tea, which is usually served cold (an iced tea), is served by both white and Black southerners. This develops Brooks’s ambiguity regarding which residents the reporter is describing early in the poem—white or Black, racist or anti-racist.
Additionally, the residents of Little Rock also claim to value attitudes of politeness and civility. Their “business” (Line 39) is “be polite / To lies and love and many-faceted fuzziness” (Lines 40-41). In other words, it is important to respond to deception and obscurity with politeness. However, the residents of Little Rock, who engaged in violence against Black high school students, promoting this idea of civility are hypocrites. Many civil rights activists, as well as activists in the new millennium, have been criticized for tactics that do not seem to be civilized enough in the eyes of white Americans. The discourse surrounding polite responses to injustice minimizes and distracts from the violence of racism and other forms of discrimination.
Related Titles
By Gwendolyn Brooks
