Madgett was born as
Naomi Cornelia Long in
Norfolk, Virginia, in July 1923. She was the only daughter and the youngest of the three children of Baptist minister Rev. Dr. Clarence Marcellus Long and Maude Selena Long (
née Hilton). Naomi was 18 months old when the family moved to
East Orange, New Jersey, where her father was pastor of Calvary Baptist Church. having her first published poem published in the
Orange Daily Courier when she was 13 years old. She graduated from Ashland Grammar School and began attending
East Orange High School, until in 1937 her family moved to
St. Louis, where for the following four years her father served as pastor of Central Baptist Church. but that year moved to
Detroit,
Michigan, after marrying Julian Fields Witherspoon, whom she had first met at Sumner High School. In 1949 Madgett's poem "Refugee" appeared in
The Poetry of the Negro, an anthology edited by
Arna Bontemps with
Langston Hughes, who was an early mentor of Madgett's, after at the age of 15 she had met him at a poetry reading of his in St Louis. In 1955, she graduated from
Wayne State University with a M.Ed. Her poem "Midway", from her 1956 collection
One and the Many, attracted wide attention as it portrayed black people's struggles, and victories, in a time when racism was prevalent in the United States. The imprint published Black writers such as Herbert Woodward Martin,
Dolores Kendrick,
James A. Emanuel,
Gayl Jones,
Haki Madhubuti,
May Miller,
Toi Derricotte, and
Dudley Randall, and for many years was run by Madgett from her basement mostly single-handedly – though in the early years she invented an editorial assistant named Connie Withers "to give the imprint corporate heft." Madgett would continue to serve as publisher/editor of the company until 2015 when Lotus Press merged with Dudley Randall's Broadside Press to become
Broadside Lotus Press. The many honors Madgett received included 1993's
American Book Award and the George Kent Award in 1995. In 2012, Kresge Arts in Detroit presented her with the 2012 Kresge Eminent Artist Award, a $50,000 prize to recognize Madgett's "decades of commitment to originating, illuminating, and preserving poetry by African-Americans, and promoting the study and appreciation of African-American literature in schools and universities". Madgett's last poetry collection,
You Are My Joy and Pain: Love Poems, was published in fall 2020. She died on November 4, 2020, at her home in
West Bloomfield, Michigan, aged 97. == Awards ==