Birthday profile

Lucille Clifton

Lucille Clifton, American author and poet (died 2010)

Born
June 27, 1936
Died
February 13, 2010
Zodiac sign
Cancer
Birth year
1936

About Lucille Clifton

Lucille Clifton was an American poet, writer, and educator from Buffalo, New York. From 1979 to 1985 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland. Clifton was a finalist twice for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. In a Christian Century review of Clifton's work, Peggy Rosenthal wrote, 'The first thing that strikes us about Lucille Clifton's poetry is what is missing: capitalization, punctuation, long and plentiful lines. Her first poetry collection, Good Times, was published in 1969, and listed by The New York Times as one of the year's ten best books.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Lucille Clifton was born

Lucille Clifton was born in 1936. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1936

  • #1 song"The Way You Look Tonight" – Fred Astaire
  • Top movieModern Times (Charlie Chaplin)
  • Top TV showBBC Television Service launches
  • Best-selling bookGone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentJesse Owens wins 4 gold medals at Berlin Olympics
  • Top headlineJesse Owens dominates the Berlin Olympics
  • Technology milestoneBBC launches the world's first regular television service
  • Defining fadSwing dancing
  • Notable inventionSun glasses (mass-produced)
  • World population2.26 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderFranklin D. Roosevelt
  • Sports championNew York Yankees (World Series)
  • U.S. population128.1M

1936 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Lucille Clifton's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19362026
Gas$0.19$3.45/gal
Average home$5,100$435,000
Average income$2,900$67,500
Minimum wage$0.25$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.25$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population128.1M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.