You can read this quote by Gwendolyn Brooks, from her poem “A Song in the Front Yard” (1945), in Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations. Read the quote in its full context here.
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Here’s 100 years of the Best Black Dandyism Heading Into Met Gala 2025
Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and founding director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is also the editor-in-chief of The Root. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
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