Taken as a verb in Brooks’ sense, to jazz conjures a history of oppression and defiance, a way of being in the world that threatens the sunny disposition of those in power and could cost you your life, your we.

The inimitable fusion of African polyrhythms with European instruments in mid-18th-century New Orleans, jazz was first recognized at city-designated Congo Square, “ an official site for slave music and dance,” nearly two hundred years after the first Africans were sold into slavery in America. “We find this statement,” they wrote, in an open letter undersigned by hundreds more, “to be worse than the bare minimum.” Just what did they mean, exactly, by “stand in solidarity with the Black community,” the swift response from 30 poets wanted to know. But somehow one of the largest literary institutions in the world, with a flagship poetry magazine predating any in the language (founded by Harriet Monroe in 1912), missed all this when they offered four measly sentences that raised more questions about their commitment to racial equality and social justice than they did answer. Of course, these are not just issues of the day but of decades, decades upon decades going back to 1619, and the unforgivable legacy of racialized practices, both institutional and personal, weighs heavily on the day in question the case for reparations is being made. In a “Message to Our Community & Contributors,” the June 3 note for “Immediate Release” (in that cringey PR-style) took a public stance on the issues of the day: systemic racism, police brutality, violent anti-protest initiatives, and widespread injustice.

What did gwendolyn brooks write about