Randall, Dudley, 1914-2000

Dudley Randall (January 14, 1914 – August 5, 2000) was an African-American poet and poetry publisher from Detroit, Michigan.[1] He founded a pioneering publishing company called Broadside Press in 1965, which published many leading African-American writers, among them Melvin Tolson, Sonia Sanchez,[2] Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks,[2] Etheridge Knight, Margaret Walker, and others.[1]

Randall's most famous poem is "The Ballad of Birmingham," written in response to the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in which four girls were killed.[3] Randall's poetry is characterized by simplicity, realism, and what one critic has called the "liberation aesthetic."[4] Other well-known poems of his include "A Poet is not a Jukebox", "Booker T. and W.E.B.", and "The Profile on the Pillow". Dudley Randall was born on January 14, 1914, in Washington, D.C.,[5] the son of Arthur George Clyde (a Congregational Minister) and Ada Viola (Bradley) Randall (a teacher). Randall was the third of five children, including James, Arthur, Esther, and Phillip.[6] His family moved to Detroit in 1920, and he married his first wife Ruby Hands in 1935, and soon after had a daughter, Phyllis Ada. This marriage dissolved, and Randall married Mildred Pinckney in 1942, but this marriage did not last either. In 1957, he married Vivian Spencer. Randall developed an interest in poetry at a young age. In 1927, at the age of 13, his first published poem, a sonnet, appeared in the Detroit Free Press.[7][2] The sonnet won the first prize of one dollar on the "Young Poets Page." Early

Randall (1914-2000) created the Broadside Press in 1965 in Detroit (Mich.). He ran the press out of his home on limited funds, managing to publish the major African-American poetry of the period. Randall supported himself as a librarian at the University of Detroit. He put all profits back into the press. In 1978, Black Enterprise magazine called Randall "The father of the black poetry movement." He sold the press in 1985. Randall died in Aug. 2000. The Clarke Historical Library has a large collection of Broadside Press publications and a webpage about the Press. Miles was a librarian and English Professor at CMU from the 1960s until 1999.