In 1950, Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American writer to win the Pulitzer Prize. She was a successful poet during the fifties, particularly with the publication of A Street in Bronzeville and Annie Allen, and continued to be so into the sixties when her work began to reflect the politicized discontent of a minority people and the problems of color and justice. Riot was written in response to the disturbances in Chicago after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Ms. Brooks was accused of celebrating violence, but she preferred to think of Riot as a contribution to a "healthy rebellion."