Brent Staples

Staples was born in 1951 in Chester, Pennsylvania, the oldest of nine children. His parents moved from rural Virginia to Chester, as part of the Great Migration of southern blacks to industrial cities in the North. His father was a truck driver and his mother a homemaker. By the time Staples was in the 8th grade, his family had moved within Chester seven times, often due to their inability to pay the rent.[10] His family had no money for tuition, his grades were average, and he had taken only a few high-level academic courses in high school. The expectation was that he would go straight to work, most likely at one of the shipyards in Chester.[11]

He was convinced to attend Widener University (then known as Penn Morton College) by the only African-American professor at the school as part of a program named Project Prepare. He graduated from Widener University with a B.A. degree in 1973. He was awarded two doctoral fellowships from the Danforth Foundation and the Ford Foundation.[12] Staples received a master's degree in psychology in 1976 and a PhD in psychology in 1982 from the University of Chicago.[13][14]

In 1983, his younger brother, Blake, a cocaine dealer, was murdered by a client,[15] which caused Staples to reconsider his own success and his inability to stop his brother's life choices.[16]

Staples taught psychology at Widener University and other institutions in Chicago from 1977 to 1981. In 1983, he was hired as a science writer for the Chicago Sun-Times.[9] In 1985, Staples joined the staff of The New York Times as an editor of the Book Review and subsequently became assistant metropolitan editor.[17] In 1986, his essay "Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space", published in Ms. Magazine,[18] was so influential it became required reading in numerous college courses.[9] In 1990 he was appointed to the newspaper's editorial board.[17]

In a 1994 interview with Paul Galloway of the Chicago Tribune,[19] Staples reflected: "Being black enriches my experience; it doesn't define me .... I'm writing about universal themes – family and leaving home and developing your own identity – which all Americans can enjoy and understand." As a writer, he works to correct the myth that the American "black experience" is defined only by poverty, violence, and crime.[13] In the same interview, he stated: "I despise the expression ['black experience']. There is no such thing. Black people's lives in this country are too varied to be reduced to a single term."[13]

In 2000, Staples received an honorary Doctorate degree in Humane Letters from Mount Saint Mary College. He has served as an visiting fellow for institutions such as the Hoover Foundation, University of Chicago and Yale University.[9]

In 2019, Staples was a Pulitzer Prize winner for editorial writing.[20] His editorials highlighted the history of racism in the United States and were described by the Pulitzer Prize committee as being "written with extraordinary moral clarity".[9]

• Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Spaces, Ms. Magazine, 1986
• Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and White, Pantheon Books, 1994, ISBN 0-679-42154-8
• An American Love Story, Random House, 1999, ISBN 0-375-50299-8