Biography dudley randall

1914–2000

Poet, publisher, editor

In his roles as poet and publisher, Dudley Randall was the leading exponent of the new black poetry movement of the 1960s.

Biography dudley randall

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 p