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Rhyme and Reason:  Langston Hughes' Poetic Revolution

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 3 months ago

 

Poetry and Modern American History


The twentieth century in America was a time and place full of changes.  It was a time of inventions, industrial progress, international crises, and internal conflict.  This internal conflict is evident in any quick survey, bringing much social change.  These social changes are documented in many ways beyond encyclopedias and textbooks.  Americans expressed themselves and explored their experience through painting, sculpture, song, photography, prose, and poetry. 

 

On his book's cover, E. Ethelbert Miller discusses African American poetry as "a vehicle, a bridge, a device by which history and values are conveyed from one generation to the next," and that it "preserves the cultural memory and glorious history of a people, both of which continue to be made" (Miller, cover).  Poetry has many functions, both in its writing and its reciting, for the poet and his reader.  Poetry is written to inspire, to grieve, to celebrate, to commemorate, to praise, to condemn, to document the history and heritage of a people, place, and time.  Its functions are many, as are its forms, rendering a multiplicity of expressive possibility.

 

 

Our nation's history may better be understood by the inclusion of its poetry.  In the introduction to Adoff's Darker Brother, Rudine Sims Bishop states:

 

"If these poems illuminate the Black experience in America, they also place that experience in the context of American literature and social history.  They are reminders, in this era of controversies over multiculturalism and affirmative action, that the song of America, which invariably includes some dissonance, requires a multi-voiced chorus; and that, as Langston Hughes notes in the title poem the 'darker brother' (and I would like to add, the darker sister) sings America too."  (Rudine Sims Bishop, qtd in Adoff 13-15)

 

Poetry is an expression that carries meanings spiritual, soulful, and social.  This makes poetry an appropriate resource for the study of American History.  As a primary document, poetry captures the voice of the poet as he tells his experience and its impact.  Beyond facts and figures, this style of documentation records feelings - the fossils of social history that do more than educate or inform - they enlist and involve the reader emotionally.  In order to read a poem effectively, one must refuse passivity and become an active participant, engaged and empathetic to the poet, regardless whether she agrees with the sentiment.  This empathy acts as a porthole through which to view the poet's story in context.  Langston Hughes was an American poet whose ability to convey the experience of Black* Americans in the early twentieth century is heralded today.

 

(1936 photograph of Langston Hughes by Carl Van Vechten on public domain at the Library of Congress at http://memory.loc.gov).

 

 

Poetry as Primary Source Material


 

Primary documents, according to Gene Wise in his article in American Historical Explanations, are "produced in the time under investigation, preferably by someone(s) involved directly in what's being investigated," and it is "the purest thing one can find in history research" (Wise 72).   His explanation includes the widely held belief that a primary document is history unfiltered by the human (scholarly) mind, and then a challenge to that belief.  He points out that

 

"a primary document is not the original experience.  It may be an original experience - but only for the framer(s) of that document.  Which means it's already filtered by the time the historian gets to it.  It's not the full happening, it's someone's particular image of that happening." (73) 

 

 

Understanding primary documents in this manner helps us better view poetry as primary documentation.  Poetry is a form of literature that permits the writer to convey messages in the form of voice, structure, dialect, tone, and many other literary devices.  Metaphor can be a powerful device in educating later peoples as to the conditions and concerns of one's time.  Poetry is unique in that it can capture a large body of knowledge in a small package.  The package includes cultural information, language diversity, folklore reference, mythological clues, and historical fact, wrapped carefully with emotive data that better equips the reader to grasp the meaning. In defense of his challenge to what has become "common sense" assumptions in the social historical realm, Wise says,

 

"We haven't denied that there are no objective facts in the world, but we have contended that there are no unperspectivistic, or locationless, views of those facts.  Any view must come from somewhere, at some time, by someone, through some form." (57)

 

Why not let poetry stand as some form by which to view history?  Poetry is believed to predate literacy, and is part of many oral traditions.  Poetry is a vehicle of communication capable of expressing not only factual data, but also the writer's response to events - the part of history alive with feeling and thought.  As such, poetry provides a glimpse into the real stuff of history - the reactions of the people who lived it.  Through reading poetry, we can better understand time periods and experiences we have not ourselves lived.  Through reading poetry, we learn to empathize with the poet's pain and pleasure. 

 

In the Treasury of American Poetry, Sullivan declares America's poems "are the definition of a country characterized by diversity, power, stability, and strife" (xxi).  She says "America's poets have been both traditionalists and revolutionaries, but even the most revolutionary of them has been deeply influenced by the very traditions they sought to escape" (xxii).  In fact, she writes,

 

"In 1855 the idealistic Walt Whitman in his Preface to Leaves of Grass could say, 'The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem' and though whistling in a poetic dark he could dream:  'The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.'" (xxiii)

 

Emerson too saw America as a poem, Sullivan shares, "a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination and it will not wait long for metres" (xxxiii).  Not only did Emerson see America as a poem that would "not wait long" for the inevitable verses attesting its greatness, he wrote of poets:

 

 

"The poet has a new thought; he has a whole new experience to unfold; he will tell us how it was with him, and all men will be the richer in his fortune.  For the experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet." (xxiii)

 

 

 

The new confession that comes with each new age attests to the aspects of that age, unfolding the experience of the age like a carefully wrapped gift, is the poet.   Robert Frost wrote in 1939, "The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom.  The figure is the same as for love" (xxiv).  How might a poem end in wisdom lest it be a vessel of the same?  That wisdom is born of life experience, personal and collective history recorded in verse. 

 

Of course, as poets (including Langston Hughes) write about not only their own experiences, but sometimes those of others, so poetry can be used as secondary, or even tertiary sources.  Langston Hughes' poetry in the female voice explores feminine culture, even though Hughes was male.  His poems of slavery must all derive from second-hand understanding, as learned through the community, his education, cultural lore, and words of people who endured such experiences.  Certainly not all poetry is primary documentation.  Some is mere entertainment, moral education, or musings of various purposes.  Poetry is, however, important to a socially historic understanding of the world as we know it, the understanding of the world as others have known it.

 

Poetry as Popular Culture


John Fiske in his book, Understanding Popular Culture, says that popular culture is "of the people" and that it must "bear the interests of the people" (Fiske 23).  Popular culture has its appeal and its validation in that it is created within the context of the culture, either in celebration of it or in contrast with it.  Either way, it reflects what is going on in its social and historical context along with the prevailing attitudes held by the people with whom it is popular.  Fiske says popular culture must be "relevant to the immediate social situation of the people," thus the popular poetry and song of the day bear witness to the beliefs, values, and conditions within a time and place - history (25).  This history is not monotone nor is it without bias, but what is history if not about people's relations with one another including the events and emotions they encounter?  History has always been, beneath it all, a recording of humanity.  As such, it is reflected in the humanities, to include its literature.  As popular culture is a "struggle over the meanings of social experience," it is also a lens through which to see more fully the social experiences of the people (28).  Within this context peotry gains another grain of credibility as historical source material. 

 

Lawrence Levine studied popular culture and the processes involved in transmitting and receiving cultural products.  His article asserts that popular culture is connected to folk culture, in that it is only through an accepting populace that items become part of the patchwork quilt of culture.  He says popular culture "functins in ways similar to folk culture and acts as a form of folklore" in societies like America's (Levine 1372).  During the Harlem Renaissance, the 1920s and early 1930s, popular culture was not the same beast as it is today.  These were times of radio and early motion pictures, making poetry recital and story telling important facets of life in American communities.  Folk culture was finding its way to the center stage across the country, and especially in Harlem.  The time was ripe, with new technology being created at amazing speed, for America to experience an outpouring of cultural products.  The products reflect the hopes and fears of the folk - the people.

 

Poet Historian


A poet creates a narrative within his words, describing in detail his or her experience and the factors necessary for at least a base understanding of that experience.  To study these verses is to study social history in the words of its constituents.  Writing about social science, Bellah, et al discuss the history and potential development of social science and its components.  They include in the appendix their concern with inclusion of "the language people used to think about their lives and the traditions from which that language comes" (306).  In their research, they had "conversations" with people and "In the words of those we talked to, we heard John Calvin, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, as well as Winthrop, Franklin, Jefferson, Emerson, and Whitman," the last of which were poets (306).  Poetic discourse is a way of managing life and tradition by utilizing a language relatable within the time and community of the poet. 

 

"Yet what we need from history, and why the social scientist must also, among other things, be a historian, is not merely comparable information about the past, but some idea of how we have gotten from the past to the present, in short, a narrative.  Narrative is a primary and powerful way by which to know about a whole, in an important sense, what a society (or a person) is, is its history" (Bellah, et al 302).

 

History's function, if this is true, is to assist its student in comprehensive cultural learning of the happenings in a given place over time and the factors involved.  Thus, American history's form especially must, given the complex and vast diversity it contains, be that which reflects diversity.  Forms of history to be analyzed must include not only the great binding documents of our political history, but also the diaries, the sketches, the poems of our social history.   The poet has his place in history, has a voice often dismissed or silenced.  The poet tells us things about ourselves which might not flatter, things which might condemn or call for radical change. The poet becomes the town crier, proclaiming to all who are within earshot the state of the community and announcing his dream for change.  Much like the sentiment expressed in the speech given later by Martin Luther King, Jr in his "I Have a Dream," the following poem by Langston Hughes describes in poetry his own dream of America's interracial social wrongs made right.

 

I Dream a World by Langston Hughes

I dream a world where man

No other man will scorn,

Where love will bless the earth

And peace its paths adorn.

I dream a world where all

Will know sweet freedom's way,

Where greed no longer saps the soul

Nor avarice blights our day.

A world I dream where black or white,

Whatever race you be,

Will share the bounties of the earth

And every man is free,

Where wretchedness will hang its head

And joy, like a pearl,

Attends the needs of all mankind -

Of such a dream, my world!

(Hughes, Langston in Vintage Hughes, pp. 72-73).

 

Proclaiming struggle, sorrow, and sacrifice - while also expressing optimism and hope - was Langston Hughes.  Problems of inequality and discrimination would take decades to reverse, but even in the first half of the twentieth century, Hughes believed in the promise of change.  He also recognizes the price of this utopia in his description of "joy, like a pearl."  While pearls are valuable and beautiful, they are borne of a painful process of endurance on the part of the oyster.  Somehow the suffering endured by socially-wounded races would benefit "all mankind" in Hughes' Dream. 

 

Wintz writes that the Harlem Renaissance centered on its artistic community joined to "create a revolution in African American culture," a unique revolution that has yet to resurface in the arts.  Only during the Civil Rights Era did African Americans and their white friends unite for a common goal, but then the focus was on human politics rather than the humanities.  He says of the Movement, "Thirty-five years earlier the Harlem Renaissance was another magic moment, filled with confidence, hope, and the dream that African American creative artists would free humankind and make real the dream of America" (Wintz 25).  The dream of America is an oft repeated metaphor for the creed-come-true, for all people to know equality, freedom, and justice.  It is an enduring word-picture of a land that is all America could - should - be. 

 

Self-proclaimed "Poet Laureate of the Negro Race," Hughes' professional dream was to develop a form of poetry specific to African Americans, and he succeeded with his jazz and blues poems (Rampersad 353).  Mining literary gold of the musings and music of the oral tradition of African American ancestry, Hughes' pursuit helped fortify a social  and cultural movement that brought value and vitality to a people who had often been downcast and disenfranchised socially, economically, and politically.  All this happened at a pivotal moment in American history - the days of the Harlem Renaissance. 

 

About the Harlem Renaissance


YouTube plugin error View a Discovery Channel Special on the Harlem Renaissance and its Influence on America and the World.

 

The Harlem Renaissance is generally agreed to be the time of 1919 through the 1930s, encompassing the Roaring Twenties, Jazz Era, and the Great Depression.  While many of the artists hailed from homes far from Harlem, New York, the city was a cultural ground zero for the artistic, musical, and literary movement.  The impact reached across oceans and into realms of the social, economic, and political life of America.  It provided a network of support, a community of interest, and a source of pride in the heritage of African Americans that had been stifled far too long.  In the tradition of the Negro Spiritual, an Exodus of expression found its way in the Harlem Renaissance. 

 

In The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, the Harlem Renaissance's conditions for existence are outlined.  The causes for any cultural phenomenon such as the Renaissance are many and complex.  For the purposes of simplicity, the discussion here will be more narrow in focus.  New York City had become a magnet city for many Blacks post-Reconstruction.  Legalized segregation in the South made Blacks' living conditions worse and worse, resulting in their migration north.  Industrial growth in northern cities also created a draw for Blacks ready for a new start and in need of work, which was plentiful as the country entered the first World War.  Of the several northern cities attracting these migrant workers, New York City and its Harlem district in particular presented special lure.  Elaborately overbuilt and experiencing economic necessity toward ending exclusionary practices in housing in the district, Harlem was ripe for new settlers.  The level of housing available now to Blacks there was far superior to that elsewhere in the country.  So strong was this draw that James Weldon Johnson noted it might well become "the Negro capital of the world" (930).  

 

Harlem and the surrounding area became home to several organizations of Black interest, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), National Urban League, and Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association.  Also based in the area were publications relevant to Blacks, such as the NAACP's Crisis, whose editor was W. E. B. Du Bois; National Urban League's Opportunity, edited by Charles S. Johnson; and Negro World, edited by Marcus Garvey.  Of these publications, Crisis was the lead support of the cultural renaissance within the Black community, publishing works by Langston Hughes and others in great number (931). 

 

According to Wintz' Harlem Speaks, this was the "first concentrated involvement of African American artists, writers, musicians, singers, and intellectuals in an artistic and cultural movement that addressed the realities of the color line in all of its complexity" (Wintz 2).  The opening of Suffle Along, a musical play, "put Negroes back on Broadway," according to Eubie Blake (7).  More than breaking the color line there, Langston Hughes determined the show was the key to the fascination whites had with Harlem and African American arts he believed pivotal to the Harlem Renaissance.  Shuffle Along brought jazz along as it shuffled center stage, combining the music with choreographed jazz dancing to create a new item on Broadway (7).

 

 

During this time, from around 1919 through 1933, Americans were experiencing social changes as consequence of World War I, with a newfound efficacy and ownership felt by all Americans, including minority members who served or had family members serving in the war.  Another component of change was the role of women, many having lost husbands, fathers, and brothers in the war, who now faced the task of rearing children and earning wages at proportions previously not known to them before.  The "Roaring Twenties" into the "Great Depression," these were years of change for many, but for Black Americans, it was a decade of cultural awakening and revival unlike any other.  While much of the contributors to the Harlem Renaissance (like Hughes) were not born near Harlem, somehow poets, painters, actors, and musicians of various styles were drawn inevitably to Harlem during this time (Wintz 2).  Their story is our story, for the sentiments carried in their songs and sonnets tell a part of American history that might have gone untold if not for the poets.

 

YouTube plugin error

A Recital of Hughes' Response Writing to his Professor "Theme for English B," and Hughes' Thoughts on the Importance of the Renaissance.

 

Theme for English B by Langston Hughes

The instructor said,

 

        Go home and write

        a page tonight.

        And let that page come out of you -

        Then, it will be true. 

 

 

I wonder if it's that simple?

I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.

I went to school there, then Durham, then here

to this college on the hill above Harlem.

I am the only colored student in my class.

The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,

through a part, then I cross St. Nicholas,

Eight Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,

the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator

up to my room, sit down, and write this page: 

 

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me

at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what

I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:

hear you, hear me - we two - you, me, talk on this page.

(I hear New York, too.) Me - who?

Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.

I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.

I like a pipe for a Christmas present,

or records - Bessie, bop, or Bach.

I guess being colored doesn't make me not like

the same things other folks like who are other races.

So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white.

But it will be

a part of you, instructor.

You are white - yet a part of me, as I am part of you.

That's American.

Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.

Nor do I often want to be a part of you.

But we are, that's true!

As I learn from you,

I guess you learn from me -

although you're older - and white -

and somewhat more free. 

 

This is my page for English B.
(Hughes, Langston in The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, pp. 409-10).

 In this, one of his earlier poems, Hughes addresses issues most of America was content to pretend did not exist.  Racial relations, class disparity, and other forms of social stratification were concepts outside the ideal "America" of myth and revisionist memory.  He points out that "being colored doesn't make me not like the same things other folks like who are other races," pointing to the fact that Americans had far more in common in popular culture at least than they might have imagined (410).  He also tells his instructor they might both learn from one another, despite that "you're older - and white -/and someowhat more free" (410).  Diversity has lessons for everyone in America, given a platform.  As the only African American at the school, Hughes had a view of the project that highlighted the difference between him and his classmates, his instructor.  For him, in the social context of the school and the country, race was indeed a focal issue, explaining his thought pattern.  A deeper look also reveals that Blacks at that time were beginning to feel in a real way an "ownership" as Americans.  "You are white - yet a part of me, as I am part of you./That's American" (410). 

 

Adam I. P. Smith wrote that "American struggles have been caused by the tension between the promise of the American creed - equality, freedom, democracy - and the reality," referring to an argument by Myrdal (Smith 60).  For those whose "reality" was racial discrimination and the resulting inequality, lack of freedom, and questionable democracy, history's sources have been carefully tailored to include mostly white male history.  Poets of color and female writers alike deserve thier places in the pages of history in order to reveal the reality - the history - of the varied American cultures created within and because of these realities.  The twentieth century has been a revisiting of the American creed and a realizing of its equality, freedom, and democracy for a greater number of people.  Their stories must be heard, and if that be through lyrics and ballads, so be it.

 

The Harlem Renaissance rode a wave of relative prosperity - especially in the publishing industry, the theater, and the art world - until the 1929 Wall Street Crash marked its decline.  The Jazz Age of the 1920s was great fun, only to be drowned out by the death knell of the Great Depression.  Unemployment and unprecedented crime rates reduced Harlem's reputation and culminated in the 1935 Harlem Riot (Gates & McKay 936).  In its time, the Harlem Renaissance redefined an imagined community, created a mecca of cultural knowledge and expression, and renewed an efficacy that had been generations lost.  Its legacy is a brief history of hope ignited and the human spirit enflamed with creative fire.  It is a story about migration within a country of those whose ancestors were forced to migrate to that same country as slaves.  It is a story of cultures - Black and white - uniting to create something beyond themselves.  It is our priviledge as historians to hear their echoes over the course of a century and applaud them for their accomplishments.

 

The Harlem Renaissance was a period in which many of the stories gained a voice, especially in the African American community, but also around the world.  Its literature, art, theater, and music have left a lasting impression on the cultural landscape of America.  While it had many icons of merit, the artistic community would have been significantly altered were it not for the inclusion of Langston Hughes.

 

About Langston Hughes


One writer who did not drop from the literary scene, but managed to support himself financially through his writing until his death was Langston Hughes. Born February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri into a lineage of strong Black men, Hughes grew up with his mother in Kansas after his parents divorced.   His father expatriated to Mexico.  As a child, Hughes was lonely and found solace in his "wonderful world of books."  His upbringing was within the social confines of segregation (Wintz 56).  In 1915, Hughes' grandmother died and he and his mother moved to Lincoln, Illinois, where he was dubbed Class Poet by his classmates, nearly all of whom were white.  A year later, he moved to Cleveland, Ohio and finished high school there.  He published some writing in the school newspaper there and met several friends of various backgrounds, as he developed an affinity for cosmopolitanism and socialism that directed his politics for the rest of his life.  He graduated high school as editor of the school's annual magazine and Class Poet of Central High School's class of 1920 (57). 

 

He learned Spanish while in Toluca, Mexico with his father.  Hughes' father disliked fellow Blacks and was materialistic, so Hughes did not find companionship or comraderie with his father.  He moved to New York City, convincing his father he would study for a mining degree at Columbia University and return to exploit abandoned silver mines with him.  Hughes' interests were more toward mining his own soul as a writer than in digging for silver and in 1921, he sent a poem to W. E. B. Du Bois' Crisis that would gain him a lasting association with the publication.  "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is still one of his most famous works (Wintz 58).  He left Columbia after his freshman year, along with his upper-class associations working as a delivery boy for a florist and as a farmer, his sites now set on the sea and the prospect of seeing the world. 

 

Hughes sailed to Africa on a freighter in 1923 and symbolically cast to sea his middle-class connections as he dumped his schoolbooks overboard.  He worked as assistant to the ship's cook and traveled the coast of Africa, gaining greater understanding of the impact of European colonialism on Africa.  Hardly getting home, he was out to sea again, bound for Paris.  He worked in American-owned Le Grand Duc in the kitchen, marked by the rhythms of jazz bands there.  It was on a visit to Italy that he lost his passport and was stranded in Genoa where he composed "I Too," featured below on this webpage.  When he returned to the United States in 1924, he remained for a year in Washington, D.C. where his mother now resided.  He did menial work with the exception of a few weeks with Carter G. Woodson, founder of Negro History Week, the precursor to Black History Month (Wintz 59).  

 

In May, 1925, Hughes came out with his "Weary Blues" and won first prize in poetry in Opportunity magazine's competition.  It was at the award ceremony Hughes met Carl Van Vechten, who organized and orchestrated with his own publisher Hughes' first book of poetry.   Awaiting the release of The Weary Blues, Hughes worked as a busboy at Wardman Park Hotel.  Vachel Lindsay, a famous poet, announced that he had discovered a new poet.  The "busboy poet" had placed a few of his pieces with Lindsay's just prior to a scheduled reading of Lindsay's poetry at the hotel.  The busboy's first book of verse, The Weary Blues finally appeared in January, 1926.  Meanwhile, Alain Locke had incorporated some of Hughes' poetry in his anthology, The New Negro which was called the "bible of the new cultural movement" (Wintz 60-1). 

 

In 1926, Hughes borrowed money from his white friend, Amy Spingarn, to attend Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where for the first time, he lived with other young Black men. He continued to make trips to New York to maintain his publishing career and was part of the work of FIRE!!, a work edited by Wallace Thurman.  The magazine's first issue was also its last due to its radical displays of "sexual freedom," but that did not deter Hughes or his cohorts.  Soon after the magazine folded, another magazine, Nation, published what is lauded as the "single most important statement about Black youths and the Harlem Renaissance," the essay, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," which asserted the right and obligation of young Black writers to write freely however they saw fit (Wintz 61-2).

 

Hughes' earliest poetic influences were the writings of Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg.  In fact, Hughes called Sandburg "my guiding star," inspired and encouraged by Sandburg's 1919 book of poetry, Jazz Fantasies.  He adored Black music as "the major art form of the race," according to Gates & McKay (Gates & McKay 1252).  He adapted his poetry first to jazz music and then to the blues, experimentally using vernacular forms of language when he did.  His "Weary Blues" poem was the first ever of its kind in blues format (1252).  Claude McKay was for Hughes a role model as a confident Black poet.

 

Hughes' second book of poetry, Fine Clothes to the Jew, published in 1927,  received harsher reviews than any other book of American poetry except Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.  Using words like "trash," "gutter," "sewer," "insanitary," "insipid," and "repulsing," black reviewers expressed complete disgust with the book (Gates & McKay 1252).  Wintz quotes the Chicago Tribune as having called the book "a study in the perversions of the Negro."  Hughes "looked for poetic material in what others regarded as unsavory aspects of Black urban culture, involving sex and violence" (Wintz 63). 

 

A major patron of the time, Mrs. Charlotte Osgood Mason entered the life of Langston Hughes while he was at Lincoln University.  White, eccentric, and elderly, she believed white culture was in spiritual and esthetic decline and that non-white cultures including Native American and Black culture could help regenerate it.  Based on this she began financing Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.  In return for her benevolence, she sought the control of personal and artistic lives of her wards.  She enjoyed the title "Godmother" when addressed, and both lavished and encouraged her elect group.  In 1930, Hughes could no longer tolerate the controlling Mrs. Mason, and thier association ended bitterly, with neither Hurston nor Alain Locke willing to lose her favor and financial assistance to support his stance.  Disillusioned by this falling out, Hughes left for the Black republic of Haiti, taking with him $400 and a gold medal prize for his novel Not Without Laughter (Wintz 63-4). 

 

After his return to the states, Hughes traveled by car, visited the Scottsboro Boys in prison in Alabama, and then left for the Soviet Union in 1932 (see Political Hughes below).  The film about race relations in America never materialized, but Hughes stayed for a year there.  It was during this year in the Soviet Union that he wrote some "ultraradical poems" that would be his albatross as anti-communism prevailed in the United States.  "Good Morning Revolution" and others like it were used as evidence of his socialist views (Wintz 64-5).  Hughes spent time in Soviet Asia, spending several weeks with Arthur Koestler, according to Rampersad & Roessel (10). 

 

 

In 1933, Hughes visited China and Japan on his way home.  Noel Sullivan, another white patron who was less controlling, helped him as he lived in Carmel, California.  Enraged by racism and capitalist excesses, he wrote bitter stories and published them in 1934 as The Ways of White Folk.  Radical poetry and playwriting became his primary outlet during the 1930s, his most successful play being Mulatto, about miscegenation.  Mulatto held the record for nearly three decades as Broadway's longest running play written by a Black American (Wintz 65). 

 

Pittsburg's Courier sent Hughes to Spain in 1937 to cover the civil war.  When he returned the next year, his radicalism fortified, he founded the Harlem Suitcase Theatre, its opening play his own Don't You Want to Be Free?  After more than one hundred performances and the payment of his mother's burial expenses, Hughes was none the richer, so in need of money, he took a job in Hollywood.  Helping write a screenplay, he employed some unpopular stereotypes about Blacks in the South common to other Hollywood movies.  The film resulted in his beind disowned by the leftists in the press.  The next year, his autobiography, The Big Sea, was published, but enjoyed only limited success because it was seen as too simple (Wintz 66).  According to Rampersad & Roessel, Hughes appeared in Pasadena for The Big Sea and found the event picketed by a group mentioned in Hughes' 1932 poem, "Goodbye Christ."  He fled Los Angeles for Carmel and publicly denounced the poem as an error of his youth, and was subsequently attacked by the communist press (12).

 

 

World War II and urging from the right steered Hughes more toward moderate in his political stance.  He quit writing radical verse and revisited his blues-inspired poetry, published in Shakespear in Harlem in 1942. This also began his quest for civil rights for American Blacks.  It was during this time, with his column in the Chicago Defender newspaper, that Hughes introduced Jesse B. Semple, or "Simple."  The armed forces were segregated then and Simple helped promote the war effort.  Simple's antics were featured for the next twenty years, collected into five volumes of stories beginning with Simple Speaks His Mind, published in 1950 (Wintz 66).  (For more information, and a sample of Simple, see the section on this character below on this webpage.)  In 1943, Hughes and his "guiding star," Carl Sandburg received honorary doctorates from Lincoln University (Rampersad & Roessel 13).   The next year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation increased surveillance on Hughes, whom they had suspected of communist activity since 1940.  The Special Committee on Un-American Activities of the House of Representatives attacked him, closely followed by an assault from newspaperman George Sokolosky (14).

 

 

At forty-five years old, Hughes was able to buy a home for himself after writing the lyrics for Street Scene, a Broadway musical play, in 1947.  The townhouse at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, was his residence the rest of his life (Rampersad & Roessel 14).  In 1951, Montage of a Dream Deferred was published as a result of the inspiration of the move to his new home.  He called the book one long poem capturing the Harlem community's "hopes and disappointments, its successes and its failures, its accomplishment but also poverty, crime and shiftlessness spawned largely by racism," according to Wintz.  The book utilized bebop, a musical form that was a "sometimes harsh and discordant type of jazz that reflected the gritty realities of modern Black urban life" (Wintz 67). 

 

The success, personal and professional, being experienced by Hughes was tempered by the indignity of Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist committee.  March 21, 1953, Hughes was summoned at home to appear in Washington, D.C. for questioning (Rampersad & Roessel 15).  Giving no names of communists, he was still a cooperative witness.  Mainly this was to protect his career and connections to the Black community.  Paul Robeson is one example of a career ruined by opposition to McCarthy.  McCarthy exonerated Hughes after Hughes renounced his radical writings, but Hughes continued to suffer attacks from the right.  Nonetheless, the 1950s were productive years for the writer in a variety of styles of writing and theater work (Wintz 67).  

 

In the 1950s and 1960s, Hughes worked to costruct the gospel musical play including Black Nativity, especially popular during the Christmas holiday.  Reflecting rising racial tensions, Hughes' 1961 book-length poem, Ask Your Mama:  12 Moods for Jazz contained verse accented with musical cues and notes for performance.  Hughes continued to produce poetry, prose and plays until his death in 1967.  After his unexpected death, his The Panther and the Lash, a collection of old and new poetry, was released, a timely message to a country torn by racial strife.  1954 was the year racial segregation was

 

 

 Vernacular Tradition Reflected in Langston Hughes' Verse

 


According to The Literature of the American South, the term vernacular is derived from Latin's vernaculus, meaning "native," and verna means "a slave born in his master's house."  Vernacular traditions are considered "native or indigenous to the people of a particular place," enabling people to "articulate and perpetuate those values, beliefs, ideals, and experiences that were essential to their view of themselves and enabled them to cope with the changing world around them" (Andrews 1095).  It is within this context, and the premise that this folk-speak is a frequent vessel of meaning for those less able to access education levels conducive to more standard forms of expression, that this term is used with honor toward the users of various vernacular traditions as beautiful facets of language in America. 

 

In a voice that would resonate with his matriarchal culture, Hughes wrote "Mother to Son" in vernacular form, celebrating his Blackness and encouraging people to rise above the present woes and worries to work toward progress for themselves and their neighbors.  The voice, a woman to her son, sounds aged, wise and weary, but strong and resilient, like a tree that has been windtossed and weathered.  She describes her life and its path as the opposite of the ideal - the crystal stair.  For this woman, there have been perils and painful experiences, described by "tacks," "splinters," and the stark, single-syllable line, "Bare."  There was "no carpet" to cushion her passage through life, but she persisted to climb, celebrating her triumphs proudly.  The voice is obviously that of ancestry centuries long, carrying the message of people including slaves and freedmen, sharecroppers and others who share the climb to a better "landin'" where the floor is level for all.  The son is the current generation and all who would follow, those who need to be encouraged, to persevere.

 

Mother to Son by Langston Hughes

Well, son, I'll tell you:

Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

It's had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor -

Bare.

But all the time

I'se been a-climbin' on,

And reachin' landin's,

And turnin' corners,

And sometimes goin' in the dark

Where there ain't been no light.

So boy, don't you turn back. 

Don't you set down on the steps

'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.

Don't you fall now -

For I'se still goin', honey,

I'se still climbin',

And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

 

(Hughes, Langston in Miller's In Search of Color Everywhere:  A Collection of African American Poetry, pg. 69).

 

 In this poem, the mother tells her son about her own personal history, and in so doing, tells about the country's history.  That it has been difficult and wearisome to advance as an individual and as a race is evident in her language, but that it is vital he learn from her endurance and take up the battle for himself - he and his generation - is also evident.  This is the spirit of community encouragement, even with trials and unfair rules of engagement, that is a constant strain throughout the artistic renderings of all aspects of the Harlem Renaissance, including the singing of the blues.

 

Happy to Have the Blues


The blues as a genre emerged from a culture already accustomed to oral recital of its history.  In his article on oral history, Trevor Lummis addresses this aspect of American history.  His research concerned the efforts since 1940 to preserve a record in the form of recorded voices and transcriptions from the history-tellers themselves.  Much of historical data has not been manifest in American history books for the simple fact that "although part of a literate society and even literate themselves, did not leave much documentary evidence of their own creation" (Lummis 93).  He goes on to reflect that, "Relative economic, social, and political power affects the access particular groups have to the production and the preservation of documentary sources of all types" (93).  This access has caused our history to be incomplete, and thus inaccurate, especially when dealing with a culture with an oral tradition, such as African Americans. 

 

The blues is a folk tradition whose name was coined by W.C. Handy (1873-1958) but whose birth predates its namer.  According to The Literature of the American South, blues songs predated the 1870s, when circumstances caused roustabouts and slaves to sing in ways that reflected their lot.  A relaxed singing style with "scoops, ""swoops," and "slurs," the blues employs "falsetto, shouting, whining, moaning, and growling" to convey its message (Andrews 1123).  Blues music has been defined as, "laughing to keep from crying," as the blues singer "sings his or her blues away" (1124).  Citing Langston Hughes' "Weary Blues," William L. Andrews contends that, "not only does the singer shape the song during performance but the performance becomes cathartic" to the point of lulling the singer to sleep (1124).  He also points out the merits of the blues as a "means of singing about the societal ills that the blues people did not have political power to deal with directly" (1124).

 

Lawrence Levine commented that the blues, as popular culture, "piled crisis upon crisis upon crisis to the point of unreality, but the crises - infidelity, jealousy, failed ambition, sickness, economic distress, betrayal, loneliness - were common enough," noting, "in the blues, people learned to handle their frustrations, adversities, and misadventures and cope with life" (Levine 1383).  The blues "fostered a sense of community, a sense of sharing troubles and solutions" (1383).

 

Through a long lineage of folk music and vernacular tradition was born the blues.  Incorporating various instruments and encompassing numerous topics from personal sorrow and loss to political and social wrongs, the blues gives its singers a way of expressing what is on their minds in a fashion that is safe and even soothing.  Singing the blues does more than express grief, frustration, or sorrow.  Beyond the pain and passion, the blues carries with it a strong beat and subtle hope in improvement by and by.  That has made it a lasting genre that continues more than a century after the first mournful, mirthful tones were mouthed by the early blues musicians. 

 

For an example of the blues, which have been said best sung by women, please enjoy this rendition of the "Freight Train Blues" and note the community feel of the music, the smiling, the laughter of the listeners.  The clip is excerpted from the 1988 film, "Travelin' Trains."  W.C. Handy gave the blues its name and Ma Rainey gave it her heart, perhaps validating their titles as, respectively, Father and Mother of the blues.  The clip below is performed by Ma Rainey's granddaughter, Rosemary Rainey, acting the part of Ma Rainey.  The scene depicts what such a performance might look like, were we to step back into time, into the smoky room, into the air thick with music - the sounds of the blues.

 

YouTube plugin error Rosemary Rainey, granddaughter of Ma Rainey performing "Freight Train Blues" excerpted from "Travelin' Trains."

 

In The Literature of the American South, William L. Andrews calls Ma Rainey (1886-1939) the "mother of the blues."  She used the blues as a platform from which to speak against such historic wrongs as the exclusion of Black passengers from the Titanic.

 

 

Andrews says there are three stages of blues development, including country blues featuring a lone man accompanied by his guitar.  Country blues also had string bands including instruments like fiddles, guitars, banjos, mandolins, and basses, or jug bands that utilized crockery jugs, banjos, harmonicas, mandolins, washboards, and kazoos.   The second stage (1920-1940) is called city blues and incorporated African American women and piano or orchestra music.  Urban blues (1940 and beyond) is the third stage and included electric guitars and basses, drums, and brass instruments, and excluded harmonicas and other country instruments (Andrews 1124). 

 

Already a popular form of expression, the blues has a great lineage in African American history.  The legacy of African American folk music gave proper form to the poetic creations of Langston Hughes and others.  Folk poetry, says Duncan Emrich,  "is a language that has nothing to do with the brittle and self-conscious poets who strive with terrible concentration to be unique.  It is natural and of the earth...The poetry of those who have a great and innate sense of poetry, but who do not know the firm meaning of the word" (Emrich xxvii).  He continues, "Folk poets are essentially anonymous.  And the reason, of course, lies in the transmission of this poetry.  It moves from one person to another without any attribution of source.  There is no findable or fixable source" (xxviii)  The only source must then be the human spirit afloat on the waves of events and emotions.  Conditions of slavery kept work songs and some spirituals alive by oral repetition.  Persistant social wrongs breathed steamy life into spirituals and hymns.  Economic and social woes fed and watered the blues until they became a tree under which to rest a while.  This is where we find our Harlem Renaissance poet - Langston Hughes - as he sought to find a distinctively Black voice for African American poets and readers to come.  This is the shade tree under which blues and jazz poetry spread its soulful wings.

 

When Hughes first weaved his poetry in blues fashion, it was with "The Weary Blues," which was also the title of his first book of poetry, published in 1926.  First published in Opportunity in May of 1925, Hughes said of the poem that,

 

"It was a poem about a working man who sang the blues all night and then went to bed and slept like a rock.  That was all.  And it included the first blues verse I'd ever heard way back in Lawrence, Kansas, when I was a kid.

I got de weary blues

And I can't be satisfied.

I got de weary blues 

 

And can't be satisfied.

I ain't happy no mo'

And I wish that I had died.

That was my lucky poem - because it won first prize."  (Rampersad & Roessel 626)

 

 

(Weary Blues Book Cover Image accessed online at www.poets.org).

 

 

                    The Weary Bluesby Langston Hughes

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,

Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,

    I heard a Negro play.

Down on Lenox Avenue the other night

By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light

    He did a lazy sway....

    He did a lazy sway....

To the tune o' those Weary blues.

With his ebony hands on each ivory key

He made that poor piano moan with melody.

    O Blues!

Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool

He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.

    Sweet Blues!

Coming from a black man's soul.

    O Blues!

In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone

I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan-

    "Ain't got nobody in all this world,

    Ain't got nobody but ma self.

    I's gwine to quit ma frownin'

    And put my troubles on de shelf."

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.

He played a few chords then he sang some more-

    "I got de Weary Blues

    And I can't be satisfied.

    Got de Weary Blues

    And can't be satisfied

    I ain't happy no mo'

    And I wish that I had died."

And far into the night he crooned that tune.

The stars went out and so did the moon.

The singer stoped playing and went to bed

While the Weary Blues echoed in his head.

He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.

 

(Hughes, in Dream Keeper 30-31)

 

Just what would a man be "weary" of that he can't be satisfied and how is it that he slept so peacefully after his singing of the "Weary Blues?"  The blues is a therapeutic genre that heals a wounded heart while it wallows in its woeful tones.  The fact it is overheard and quoted so precisely - down to the dialect of the singer - suggests a shared sentiment of the narrator with the blues singer.  Not only did the narrator listen closely, but also paid attention to the stillness and completeness of the singer's slumber.  Did the singer pacify himself enough with the blues singing to sleep peacefully or was it more like an infant crying himself to sleep precisely because he "can't be satisfied?"  This is for the reader to guess, but he slept.

YouTube plugin error Enjoy Langston Hughes Reading "The Weary Blues" With Music in the Background, and Watch Footage from the Era.

 

All that Jazz...Poetry


About jazz, Wintz writes in Harlem Speaks, that its origins are "found in the creative musicians who played in the bars and brothels of the infamous Storyville district of New Orleans" (Wintz 9).  Often the invention is attributed to Jelly Roll Martin in 1902, but more likely it was a collaborative creation of which there cannot accurately be named an inventor.

 

Coinciding with prohibition, the Jazz Age, from 1918 to 1933, heavily influenced the Harlem Renaissance.  Its musicians were its heroes and its offspring in the literary were prodigies.  Jazz has its roots in the blues, mixed with other forms of music and folk culture, such as call-and-response.   In jazz first, Hughes found means to create a poetry specific to African American poets.  Often, he read his poetry publicly to the backdrop of a bluesy-jazz beat.  He wrote describing jazz and lauding it.  Celebratory of Blackness and all its virtues, jazz was an easy match for Black poets, and several added their verse to the collective.  

 

Political Hughes


 

Toward the end of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes followed his political leanings left toward the socialism he had always favored and featured in his verse.   In New Masses (published and controlled by the Communist Party), Hughes published verse and essays.  He toured the South and the West, taking poetry to the people, conducting readings in churches and schools.  In 1932, he sailed to the Soviet Union as part of a group who were to produce a film about American race relations(Gates & McKay 1253).  

 

 

In Hughes' writing, especially his poetry, there are three waves of progression, according to Arnold Rampersad.  The first comes of Hughes' sense of sorrow and loss as he wrote about death and suicide.  At times, he connects this loss to "cultural loss, to passages of historically induced sorrow" (Rampersad 366-7).  

 

The second wave is that of "open protest," with "a plaintive call for admission to the American family and stretching far toward revolution" (369).  It is during this time of his development, Hughes penned his "I, Too," a modification of Whitman's assertion, "I, too, sing America."  Possibly his best known protest poem, "I, Too" was written as Hughes watched American flags sail by on ships refusing him board due to the color of his skin, leaving him stranded in Genoa (369).

 

                    I, Too by Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.

 

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

 

Tomorrow,

I'll be at the table

When company comes. 

Nobody'll dare

Say to me,

"Eat in the kitchen,"

Then.

 

Besides,

They'll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed -

 

I, too, am America.

 

(Rampersad & Roessel 46)

 

Defiant and determined is the voice of the poem.  Outcast in his own home, his own country, as expressed by the symbolism of "the table," the person vows to see a "Tomorrow" when he will be welcomed, even celebrated.  It is as though there is a veil covering the speaker's beauty and worth and that that veil will be lifted, like a tablecloth from the table, to make known the wrongness of segregation and class reproach.  Hughes undoubtedly looked for that day when people could find virtue in diversity and value in the multicolored face of America.

 

Rampersad contends that the best of Hughes' writing is that in which he "retains his racial or other social concerns but transcends overt rage and a sense of hurt by explorations of human nobility and beauty" (Rampersad 371).  This third wave of Hughes has within it an understanding that the best tribute to his race was held within its folksongs and folklore.  It was within this framework that Hughes found his pearl of great price - blues and jazz (372).  The blues are extemporaneous, improvisational, and orally shared.  Hughes' "greatest single literary endeavor," according to Rampersad, was to "resuscitate the dead art of Afro-American, and American, poetry and culture by invoking the blues" (372).  Cultural historian, Howard Mumford Jones noted that Hughes succeeded in his quest all the while elevating folk poetry to a level worthy of being called "literary art," saying that, "In a sense, [Hughes] has contributed a really new verse form to the English language" (Jones qtd in Rampersad 376).  

 

In Collected Poems, Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel state in the introduction that many readers have "found [Langston Hughes'] poetry altogether too radical politically, and a kind of affront to their sense of patriotism" (Rampersad & Roessel 3).  "Poetry," they write, "is a form of social action" (5).  Quoted above the introduction, Hughes' words encapsulate his philosophy about the political and social responsibility to declare truth:

 

Hang yourself, poet, in your own words.

Otherwise, you are dead.

~Langston Hughes, 1964~

 

 

Hughes practically did "hang himself" with his "own words" in many of his more radical poetry.  His was some of the most radical writing ever published by an American, lamenting the disparity between the America of theory and that of reality.  One such poem was "Let America Be America Again," written in 1935.

 

Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

 

(America never was America to me.)

 

Let America be the dream of dreamers dreamed -

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

 

(It never was America to me.)

 

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

 

(There's never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

 

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

 

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek -

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

 

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one's own greed!

 

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean -

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today - O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

 

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream

In that Old World whild still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That's made America the land it has become.

O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home -

And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa's strand I came

To build a "homeland of the free."

 

The free?

 

Who said the free?  Not me?

Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we've dreamed

And all the songs we've sung

And all the hopes we've held

And all the flags we've hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay -

Except the dream that's almost dead today.

 

O, let America be America again -

The land that never has been yet -

And yet must be - the land where every man is free.

The land that's mine - the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME -

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose had at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

 

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose -

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

 

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath -

America will be!

 

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain -

All, all the stretch of these great green states -

And make America again!

 

(Hughes in Vintage Hughes, pp. 41-4).

 

In an angry voice, tired of the status quo, Langston Hughes points to the harships suffered by America's people.  He lists the working class and minorities like a Who's Who of the Oppressed and in his last line of the poem, challenges them to join him in revolution to "make America again!"  This is not a dropped word.  It is a new message at the close of the poem, resolute in its stance.  When poverty and disparity prevail, it seems to be the point of his "oath" to effect change on America, calling it home to its advertised and admired ideals and principles.

 

Poems like "Goodbye Christ" and "One more 'S' in the U.S.A." continued to linger with Hughes like a bothersome pest long after their penning, used by some as manifestation of his Communist connections.   Near his death, he wrote "Politics can be the graveyard of the poet.  And only poetry can be his resurrection" (Rampersad & Roessel 4).  Sullivan wrote that "To write against the grain of American life is to write in its grain, since the American experience has always involved controversy and diversity" (Sullivan xxiv).  She notes that modern American poetry has been earmarked by cultural, political, personal, regional, sexual, and racial awareness (xxv).  That being the case, Hughes' politically radical ideas were merely an American writing in the grain of American life by writing against the grain.  Poets have a responsibility as social historians to record and regale the triumphant and tragic aspects of society as they see it, and Hughes did so.

 

 

Langston Hughes' Fictional Character Jesse B. Semple and His "Simple" Commentary on Society


Hughes devised a comical character through which to make statements on society and the condition of Black Americans.  This caricature of several stereotypes was named Jesse B. Semple, nicknamed "Simple."  In straight-man style dialogue between a conservative narrator and Jesse B. Semple, read by actor Ossie Davis, these stories circa 1943 were political protests published weekly in the Chicago Defender.  Simple was a Harlem everyman, according to Gates & McKay, whose comic persona permitted Hughes a platform from which to discuss serious themes, much as the blues had been a platform for singers to express their own issues (1254).   (While these took place a decade after the Harlem Renaissance, they attest to the poet's ability to convey his social consciousness, hence their inclusion.)

 

 

By courtesy of HarperAudio! (Internet Town Hall at town.hall.org), you may click the following links to hear several recorded performances featuring "Simple."

 

"Simple On Indian Blood"

 

"A Toast To Harlem"

 

"Last Whipping"

 

"Feet Live Their Own Life"

 

Links to Langston Hughes, Jazz/Blues Poetry, and Harlem Renaissance Websites for More Information


Langston Hughes

    Founder of Jazz Poetry

Hughes' "Weary Blues"

    Analysis from Literature and Social History online course at U. C. Davis

Brief and Helpful Guides

    Defining Jazz

    Informative Articles on Aspects of the Harlem Renaissance, Jazz/Blues Poetry Genres, and Poets

Listen to and Read Poetry by Langston Hughes Set to Jazz Music

    In English and Spanish

The Harlem Renaissance

    Pittsburg State University Page with Various Resources Related to the Era and Culture

 

Works Cited


Adoff, Arnold, ed.  I Am the Darker Brother:  An Anthology of Modern Poems by African Americans, Revised Edition.  New York:  Simon & Schuster,  1997.

 

Andrews, William L., ed.  "Vernacular Traditions."  The Literature of the American South:  A Norton Anthology.  New York:  W.W. Norton & Company,  1998.

 

Bellah, Robert N., et al.  "Appendix:  Social Science as Public Philosophy."  Habits of the Heart:  Individualism and Commitment in American Life, Updated Edition.          Los Angeles:  University of California Press,  1996.  297-307

 

DiYanni, Robert.  "Langston Hughes."  Modern American Poets:  Their Voices and Visions, 2d ed.  New York:  McGraw-Hill, Inc.,  1987.

 

Emrich, Duncan.  American Folk Poetry:  An Anthology.  Boston:  Little, Brown & Company,  1974.

 

Fiske, John.  "Commodities and Culture."  Understanding Popular Culture.  Boston:  Unwin Hyman.  1989,  23-33.

 

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. & McKay, Nellie Y., Eds.  The Norton Anthology of African American Literature.  New York:  W.W. Norton & Company,  1997.

 

Hughes, Langston.  The Dream Keeper and Other Poems.  New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.,  1994.

 

Hughes, Langston.  Vintage Hughes.  New York:  Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, Inc.,  2004.

 

Internet Town Hall.  HarperCollins  Publishers, Inc.  Scranton, PA.   <http://town.hall.org/radio/HarperAudio>.   Accessed online 25  Nov 2007.

 

Levine, Laurence W.  "The Folklore of Industrial Society:  Popular Culture and its Audiences."  The American Historical Review, Vol. 97, No. 5.

        (Dec., 1992),  1369-1399.

 

Lummis, Trevor. "Oral History." Folklore, Cultural Performances, and Popular Entertainments.  New York:  Oxford University Press,  1992.  93-97.

 

Miller, E. Ethelbert.  In Search of Color Everywhere:  A Collection of African-American Poetry.  New York:  Stewart, Tabori & Chang, Inc.,  1994.

 

Rampersad, Arnold.  "Langston Hughes," in Vendler, Helen, ed. Voices & Visions:  The Poet in AmericaNew York:  Random House,  1987.  353-93.

 

Rampersad, Arnold & Roessel, David, Eds.  The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes.  New York:  Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, Inc.,  1995.

 

Smith, Adam I. P.  "American Political Culture."  A New Introduction to American Studies.  New York:  Pearson Longman,  2006.  50-74.

 

Sullivan, Nancy.  The Treasury of American Poetry:  A Collection of the Finest By America's Poets.  Garden City, New York:  Doubleday & Company, Inc.,  1978.

 

Wintz, Cary D., Ed.  Harlem Speaks:  A Living History of the Harlem RenaissanceNaperville, Illinois:  Sourcebooks, Inc.,   2007.

 

Wise, Gene.  "The Book-Form:  Historians and "Primary Documents."  American Historical Explanations:  A Strategy for Grounded Inquiry

        Minneapolis:  University of Minnesota,  1980.  57, 72-73.

 

Explanation of the term Black as used on this webpage


 

*  In Darker Brother, Arnold Adoff explains his use of the term Black.  He points out that the term had once been used to describe "Negroes" as inferior, but the Civil Rights Movement and independent status of African nations served to diminish the negative use of the term Black.  He notes that, since the Movement, African Americans have used this "simple and direct word" with pride and a sense of "radial identification with Black peoples all over the world" (Adoff 173).  It is with this understanding of the term Black that it is used here, celebrating the progress of the Black community and its literary heroes, such as Langston Hughes.  The term is capitalized by the author of this webpage in order to honor and to clarify its status as a distinct culture.


 

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