Race Bridges
-The African American-
Heir of TWO Cultures
[background midi - Lou Rawls' immortal "You'll Never Find"]
Dedicated to
- AJS -
My old man's a white old man
And my old mother's black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I'm sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish her well.
My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder where I'm going to die,
Being neither white nor black?
Known during his lifetime as "the poet laureate of Harlem,"
Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri on February 1, 1902, second child of Carrie Langston
Hughes and James Hughes. His mother, Carrie, or Carolina, was born near Lakeview in
Douglas County, Kansas and attended school in Lawrence.
Her mother was Mary Sampson Patterson Leary Langston, who was prominent
in the African American community in Lawrence. Her first husband had died at Harper's Ferry
fighting with John Brown; her second husband, Langston's grandfather, was a prominent Kansas
politician during Reconstruction.
Shortly after her son was born James and Carrie divorced. Carrie brought her small boy to Lawrence where he spent much of the years 1903 to 1915 with his mother's mother. During the time Hughes lived with his grandmother, she was
old and poor and unable to give Langston the attention he needed. Growing older, Langston felt hurt by both his
mother and his father, and was unable to understand why he was not allowed to live with either of
them. These feelings of rejection caused him to grow up very insecure and unsure of himself.
Gifted, he began writing poetry in High School.
His father (practising law in Toluca, Mexico) promised to help sponsor his studies at Columbia -- if he pursued engineering. But very early he published "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" in The Crisis --- and was hooked on poetry.
He studied at Columbia
University from 1921 to 1922 before serving on a ship to Africa. (See the Blyden thesis: Africa's spirituality.) He then
worked for a time in Paris. After his return to the United States, he worked
as a busboy in Washington, D.C. There, in 1925, his literary skills were
discovered after he left three of his poems beside the plate of American poet
Vachel Lindsay, who recognized Hughes's abilities and subsequently helped
to publicize Hughes's work.
In New York City, Hughes merged into the Harlem arts scene, associated with the premier writers and many of the top blues and jazz musicians of the time, and soon rose to the top in the eyes of the public.
His name is thus connected with that historic movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, and he is generally considered its most representative poet, with others (like Countee Cullen) not far behind. He died in 1967.
For more
Langston Hughes info.
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes
comes around
| Sandy Carillo writes: "Interracial couples and familes should no longer feel and carry on as if discretion is the key to survival in a racist society, If we don't make ourselves seen and heard, then how can we really expect for others to learn to accept us and our choices as normal and as natural as theirs." Let Your Light Shine |
| By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward. [Hebrews 11: 24-26] |
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Have we not all one father? Hath not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, By profaning the covenant of our fathers? Malachi 2:10 Are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians unto Me, O children of Israel, saith the Lord. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, And the Philistines from Caphtor, And Aram (Syria) from Kir. Amos 9: 7 |
G Praxeis Apostolon Epoiesen te ex enos haimatos pan ethnos anthropon
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Our glorious melting pot nationAmericaCrevecoeur writes [1782] to tell from whence come Americans. He offers a list of old world countries and regions that gave birth to this "mixture" -- or, as he also calls them, "this promiscuous breed, that race now called Americans." He praises their character, describing the wholesome motives driving them to escape their previous conditions, and how the new world has regenerated them. "What, then, is the American, this new man? He is neither an European nor the descendant of an European; hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country." He has left behind the ancient prejudices and manners of whatever old world locale he comes from, and has received new ones on these shores. "Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world."
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