Useni Eugene Perkins

Poet, playwright, and activist Useni Eugene Perkins was born in Chicago, Illinois. He was a prolific writer with a wide oeuvre that included poetry and plays for adults and children as well as nonfiction books on African American youth connected to his work as a social worker and an activist. Perkins published more than a dozen books in his lifetime, including Rise of the Phoenix: Voices from Chicago’s Black Struggle 1960-1975 (Third World Press, 2017), Memories & Images: selected poems (Third World Press, 2002), and Harvesting New Generations: the positive development of Black youth (Third World Press, 1986).

Perkins is best known for his poem “Hey Black Child,” which was originally a song performed as part of Black Fairy, a play Perkins wrote in 1974. Perkins's brother Toussaint Perkins published a poster with the lyrics to "Hey Black Child" but cited only Perkins’s first name on the poster. The poem quickly became a staple in classrooms across the United States, but it is often misattributed to other poets.

Perkins’s parents, Eva and Marion Perkins, raised him in Bronzeville, Chicago’s “Black Metropolis.” His father was a notable sculptor and teacher, and through his involvement in the local art scene at the South Side Community Art Center, Useni was exposed to the arts and activism from a young age. His first published poem appeared in the Chicago Tribune when he was 11 years old. Perkins edited the Wendell Phillips High School newspaper as a student. He went on to earn a BS in social work and an MS in administration from George Williams College in 1964.

In the 1960s, Perkins was a leader in the Black Catalyst Movement, dedicated to advancing the rights of Black people. “We were social workers, artists, and teachers,” said Perkins’s friend Carol Adams, who also took part in the movement. “We were a collective of thinkers and doers who shared the same sense of purpose, and we’d get together and go out in the community and work.” Perkins’s creative work was greatly influenced by the Black Arts Movement, which grew out of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s and 1970s. He was an early and influential activist in the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), a Chicago-based expression of the Black Arts Movement.

Perkins dedicated the majority of his professional career to the social development of urban youth. From 1966 to 1982, he served as director and, later, executive director of the Better Boys Foundation Family Center in Chicago. He went on to serve in leadership roles at the Chicago Urban League, the Urban League of Portland, and the Family Life Center at Chicago State University. He found a mentor in Dr. Margaret Burroughs, a fellow Chicago poet and cofounder of The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, where Perkins served as interim president. 

The Chicago Public Library holds Perkins’s papers. In the biographical note for the collection, archivists observe that “In viewing this collection as a whole it is clear that Perkins worked wonders to fuse his professional career as a social worker with his creative expression as a writer. His plays were primarily focused on presenting positive role models and lessons geared toward urban youth.”