Dudley Randall (1914-2000) was an American poet and publisher. He published his first poem in a local newspaper
when he was thirteen years old.
In his earlier years, Dudley worked in a foundry, at a post office, and he briefly served in the military. He earned degrees in English and library science, was a librarian, a teacher, and then finally founded his own publishing company: the Broadside Press where he published other writers works as well as his own.
Dudley would go on to write many well-known poems and would finally be awarded a fitting recognition at the age of 67 (Chicago Poet Laureate, 1981).
Dudley achieved great things, but he tried to never forget where he came from. His poem Ancestors shows this:
Ancestors
by Dudley Randall
Why are our ancestors
always kings or princes
and never the common people?
Was the Old Country a democracy
where every man was a king?
Or did the slavecatchers
take only the aristocracy
and leave the field hands
laborers
streetcleaners
garbage collectors
dishwashers
cooks
and maids
behind?
My own ancestor
(research reveals)
was a swineherd
who tended the pigs
in the Royal Pigstye
and slept in the mud
among the hogs
Yet I'm as proud of him
as of any king or prince
dreamed up in fantasies
of bygone glory.
