Dudley Randall was born in Washington, D.C, in 1914. He is the author of seven poetry collections, including Cities Burning (1968), After the Killing (1973), and A Litany of Friends: New and Selected Poems (1981). Randall worked as a librarian for most of his life, at Lincoln University in Missouri and Morgan State College in Baltimore, and at the University of Detroit until his retirement in 1974. He established Broadside Press in 1965, which published such African-American poets and political writers as Gwendolyn Brooks and Audre Lorde. In 1981 he was named Detroit’s first Poet Laureate by Mayor Coleman Young. Dudley Randall died in 2000. The Dudley Randall Poetry Prize was established in Randall’s honor in 1971, and is awarded each year to a University of Detroit student.
Audio Recordings with Dudley Randall
- Dudley Randall reading his poems in Studio B, Recording Laboratory, Oct. 23, 1975
- Dudley Randall reading his poems in the Whittall Pavilion, Feb. 6, 1978