Take a Break and Read a Fucking Poem: "RIOT" by Gwendolyn Brooks

by Rich Smith
In the spring of 1968, James Earl Ray's assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. sparked uprisings across the country. Protestors in Chicago, tired of putting up with racist bullshit every second of their lives, burned and looted the west side for over two days, racking up millions in property damage and leaving at least nine dead.At that time, Haki Madhubuti, then don l. lee, was running a magazine called Black Expressions. According to D.H. Melhem's Gwendolyn Brooks: Poetry and t