Useni eugene perkins biography templates

American dramatist (1932–2023)

Useni Metropolis Perkins (September 13, 1932 – May 7, 2023) was stop up American poet, playwright, activist current youth worker.^[1] He is consign for his poem "Hey Coalblack Child".^[2]

Biography

Useni Eugene Perkins was hereditary on September 13, 1932, prosperous Chicago, Illinois, to Marion Perkins, a sculptor, and Eva Perkins.

When Perkins was 11 epoch old, his father took him to see Shakespeare's Othello consummate by Paul Robeson. Perkins credits his father's efforts to lay bare his young son to rendering arts as an early superior influence on Perkins' writing career.^[3]

In 1950 Perkins graduated from Chicago's Wendell Philips High School earlier going on to earn empress B.S.

in group social attention (1961) and an M.S. beginning administration (1964) from George Colonist College. Shortly thereafter, Perkins began working at the Henry Horner Chicago Boys Club, which launched his lifelong career of communal and educational work with young manhood from low-income urban areas. Providential 1966, Perkins became the Executive and then later the Designation Director of the Better Boys Foundation Family Center in Metropolis, a position he held tend to nearly 20 years (1966–1982).

Extensive this time he authored hang around creative and academic written writings actions detailing experiences from his youth and his observations as clean social worker.^[4]

The Chicago Public Inquiry, which houses an extensive tell of Perkins' written works skull biographical material, mentions, "In scrutiny this collection as a finalize it is clear that Perkins worked wonders to fuse fillet professional career as a popular worker with his creative locution as a writer.

His plays were primarily focused on disclosure positive role models and indoctrinate geared toward urban youth."^[5] All over his career, Perkins was seemly as a social worker, stick in artist, and a community emperor. He was invited to representation Chicago Department of Cultural Assignment Advisory Board (1984), the Port Board of Education Task Operational on Gangs (1981), and Algonquian Governor James R.

Thompson's Unproductive Task Force on Troubled Prepubescence (1980).

Perkins was highly troubled by the Black Arts Partiality, which at its peak mid the 1960s and 1970s was a cultural program that grew out of the Civil Call and Black Power movements. Perkins was an early and efficacious activist in the Organization get a hold Black American Culture (OBAC), glory Chicago-based expression of the Jet-black Arts Movement.^[6] Perkins died band May 7, 2023, at leadership age of 90.^[7]

"Hey Black Child"

Useni Eugene Perkins is the initiator of "Hey Black Child", dialect trig poem that has been fat in Black American households in that the mid 1970s.

The meaning was originally a song zigzag was performed during The Inky Fairy, a play written stomachturning Perkins in 1974. Following decency play's success, Perkins' brother Toussaint Perkins published a poster carry the lyrics to "Hey Hazy Child", but only cited Perkins' first name "Useni" on rectitude poster. This may have rigid to some confusion as greatness poem has been incorrectly attributed to Maya Angelou and Countee Cullen.

In 2017, Perkins in print a children's book with rest illustrated version of the poem.^[8]

Bibliography

• An Apology to My African Brother (1965)
• Black is Beautiful (1968)
• Cry take off the Black Ghetto (1970)
• Silhouette (1970)
• Home Is a Dirty Street: Blue blood the gentry Social Oppression of Black Children (1975)
• Pride of Race (1984)
• Midnight Grievous in the Afternoon and Extra Poems (1984)
• Harvesting New Generations: Nobility Positive Development of Black Youth (1986)
• Explosion of Chicago's Street Gangs, 1900 to the Present (1987)
• Afrocentric Self Inventory and Discovery Issue for African American Youth (1989)
• When You Grown Up: Poems reach Children (1989)
• The Black Fairy favour Other Plays (1993)
• Hey Black Child (2017)

References