In today’s moment in Black History, we will highlight Langston Hughes, born February 1, 1901, in Joplin, Missouri, and who passed on May 22, 1967, in New York City.
He grew up listening to his grandmother’s stories of slavery and freedom, bounced between relatives, and landed in Harlem just as it was catching fire. Hughes dropped out of Columbia after a year (he was studying engineering to please his dad, not because he wanted to), sailed to Africa and Europe, then came back home to write like nobody else. He took the blues and jazz he heard on the streets and turned them into poetry that actually sounded like everyday people…laughing, hurting, hoping, surviving.
His first book, ‘The Weary Blues’, hit in 1926 and people couldn’t put it down. Lines like “My soul has grown deep like the rivers” made us feel ancient and brand-new at the same time. And when he asked, “What happens to a dream deferred?” in “Harlem,” the whole country felt the ache.
Fun fact: For decades everyone thought he was born in 1902…until 2018, when a poet digging through old newspapers found proof he was actually a year older, thanks to a little notice about “Little Langston Hughes” getting over an illness back in late 1901.
Hughes never wrote to impress the establishment or chase approval from outside his community. He wrote to celebrate and honor the lives of working people…the porters, the mamas, the kids with big dreams and small chances. He believed those stories were beautiful exactly as they were.
That’s why we still read him. That’s why his words still hit.
Remember…Education is freedom of mind and never should be colorblind.
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