Like Harlem, the city of Chicago had its own renaissance during which political, geographic, economic, and social forces collided, leading to an outpouring of creative work and social action by its Black residents. While the Harlem Renaissance is associated with the 1920s, many of the most famous writers of the Chicago Black Renaissance were active during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Gwendolyn Brooks is among these writers, and “The Ballad of Rudolph Reed” reflects themes of the Chicago Black Renaissance.

The Chicago Black Renaissance emerged from the Great Migration, the mass movement of Black Americans from the rural United States and the South to cities, including Midwestern ones such as Chicago. Discriminatory laws and neighborhood covenants forced many Black migrants to live roughly south of the Chicago River and the city business center. The South Side is and was home to storied Black communities such as Bronzeville, the geographic setting for the poems in A Street in Bronzeville (1945), Brooks’s first poetry collection. Brooks was a working poet who took inspiration from the struggles and dreams of her neighbors. Like her fellow writers Margaret Walker and Richard Wright, Brooks centered the experiences of Black people in her writing, particularly their struggles to deal with the racial discrimination and inequality they encountered in Chicago.