Dudley Randall

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".