A month after Shirley Bradley LeFlore ended her term as the second-ever poet laureate for the City of St. Louis, the region is mourning her passing. LeFlore died on Mother’s Day morning (Sunday, May 12) surrounded by family and friends in her Frontenac home. She was 79 years old.
When she was installed as poet laureate at City Hall last November, LeFlore became the first black and first woman to be appointed.
“Tributes only scratch the surface as far as her iconic place in our community as a poet, teacher, mentor and inspiration to so many,” inaugural St. Louis Poet Laureate Michael Castro said of LeFlore during her installation ceremony.
Also among those giving tribute that day were LeFlore’s daughters.
“Growing up we used to try to imitate you, but we could never duplicate you,” daughter Lyah Beth LeFlore-Ituen said. She also read one of LeFlore’s notable works, “I Am the Black Woman.”
“You made us who we are,” LeFlore-Ituen said.
A gifted word warrior with an instinctive connection with the rhythm of language, LeFlore spent more than five decades using it as her instrument – often inspired by her blackness and her womanhood.
In “I Am the Black Woman,” LeFlore famously proclaims the black woman as “natural to the bone.”
Jazz legend and longtime collaborator J.D. Parran remembered how LeFlore used to write poems for parents when children were born and for bereaved families when a person died.
“That always impressed me,” Parran said. “I mean, she did it for everybody. I always hoped that all those poems for all those people would be turned into a book one day.”
Her gesture moved him so much that he wrote a poem about LeFlore when he learned of her passing and submitted it to her daughters.
The poem, entitled “Drum Woman,” Parran refers to LeFlore as “Empress Laureate.” The piece is a tribute to her creative legacy and encapsulates his experiences of seeing her perform her words in sync with live music and the impact she had on her audience.
“Yeah Shirley…tell it girl,” Parran wrote in the poem. “Speak the truth Sista.”
“I’m not the poet that she is,” said Parran. “But I feel like I’m doing the same thing that I perceived her to be doing with those type of poems – which is communicate to the bereaved family, and others, what she meant to me.”
Birth of a poet
She was born Shirley Joyce Bradley on March 6, 1940 in St. Louis to Annetta and Monroe Bradley. She often spoke with pride about her days growing up in the city and could still remember the exact address of the home she lived in on Aldine Avenue as a small child.
“I lived in the most prominent black neighborhoods,” she said last fall while discussing her appointment as poet laureate. LeFlore spent many of her formative years in Carr Square Village.
She traced her love of words back to listening to women pour out their souls while getting their hair done at her mother’s beauty shop. She would listen to the language, soaking it all in before pouring it back out onto the pages of her composition books.
“If a person struck my fancy, I would want to share what they said,” LeFlore said. “So, I would go to one of my little books and write it down.”
The life experiences of those women became the foundation for her art.
“I think black people have a special way with language – in every part of the world – but especially in St. Louis,” LeFlore said.
As LeFlore wrote in “Rivers of Women”: “I have known women to steal your money, your honey and unlaugh your funny.” That poem was the title of one of her books and later adapted into a stage play by LeFlore-Ituen.
A graduate of Sumner High School, she attended Lincoln University and completed her undergraduate studies at what was then Webster College. She then received a master’s degree in Psychology from Washington University.
She was active in the Civil Rights Movement, participating in the 1963 March on Washington and the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign.
“She was a gifted artist and a committed activist,” said Donald M. Suggs, publisher and executive editor of The St. Louis American. “Her poetry informed the movement and was a source of inspiration and empowerment.”
LeFlore was one of the last surviving charter members of the famed Black Artists Group (BAG), cofounded by her late husband, noted jazz musician Floyd LeFlore in the late 1960s.
“Her work ethic was an influence for me,” said fellow BAG artist Oliver Lake, a composer, saxophonist, painter and poet. “She was constantly working and improving her skills as a poet and a writer.”
He fondly recalled their days together in BAG.
“She was always so creative – which was very inspirational to whoever she worked with,” Lake said. “She wrote some great poems, was a great performer, and her presence was strong every time she appeared.”
In addition to Lake and Parran, LeFlore performed and recorded with musical legends such as Hamiet Bluiett, Fontella Bass and Don Byron. She also worked with many noted local jazz musicians, including Ptah Williams, Darryl Mixon, Papa Wright, J. Dubbs and George Sams.
“You know, she was one of the most beloved artists – by everyone,” Parran said. “Everyone who worked with her – or even just knew her – felt the same way.”
In 1981, she gave platform to a new era of artists when she founded the Creative Arts and Expressions Lab in St. Louis, a local arts consortium and incubator for poetry, dance, music, and visual arts.
“Shirley has been interwoven into the fabric of this city, of this nation and this world,” U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay (D-St. Louis) said. “She has shared her talent with the rest of us, and we are better off because of it.”
‘She saved my life’
LeFlore also touched countless lives through her work as an educator. She was the first African-American assistant dean of Students at Webster College (now Webster University) and held adjunct professorships at numerous institutions of higher education, locally and nationally.
“She saved my life,” film and television star Jenifer Lewis said while discussing her memoir “The Mother of Black Hollywood,” which mentions LeFlore. She was Lewis’ advisor during the “Black-ish” star’s undergraduate years at Webster. “I used to come in her office and fall out crying over whatever I thought was the end of the world at the moment,” Lewis said. “She had a way of bringing me back – every single time.”
LeFlore is survived by her daughters, Hope Lindsay, Jacie Price and Lyah Beth LeFlore-Ituen and her grandchildren Noelle Lindsay-Stewart, Jullian Baez, Jordan Lindsay, and Bella Ituen.
A wake for Shirley LeFlore will take place from 4-7 p.m. Thursday, May 16 at the McClendon Mortuary, 12140 New Halls Ferry Rd. in Florissant. The funeral will take place at noon (with an 11 a.m. visitation) on Friday, May 17 at Christ Church Cathedral, 1210 Locust St.
