Last Edited
Black History Month begins this week and what better way to introduce your students to Black History Month than to begin with a great poem "Aunt Sue’s Stories", by a great African American Poet and Activist Langston Hughes. Did you know that his birthday is February 1? I find both the man and his poetry a beautiful picture of Black America. I know you and your students will find his life fascinating and his poetry absolutely wonderful.
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This is a useful list that came up when the Library's search engine suggested Langston Hughes and His Poetry: https://www.loc.gov/search/?in=&q=Langston+Hughes+and+His+Poetry.&new=true&st=
And here is a unique item from the Manuscript Division - a request for help with tuition from Langston Hughes:
"Walter White, the NAACP’s Assistant Secretary and himself an aspiring novelist, worked tirelessly to promote the careers of Harlem Renaissance writers, artists, and performers. Poet Langston Hughes was employed as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C., when he wrote this letter to White requesting a loan from the NAACP to pay his college tuition. Hughes also reported on the progress of The Weary Blues and his new autobiography, Scarlet Flowers.... In his reply letter White retorted that the latter 'sounds like Louisa M. Alcott.' Hughes agreed and eventually published his autobiography under the title The Big Sea (1940)."
The request letter is considered one of the Library's Treasures.
Edited
What a letter and a find! The Library of Congress has an interesting page on the NAACP that includes Walter White's contribution (NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom. The New Negro Movement). White also figures prominently in the New Georgia Encyclopedia as an important force in the Civil Rights movement. The reference to [Clarence] Darrow is intriguing (at least I am assuming it is a reference to the Scopes monkey trial). The other possibility could be the Sweet Murder Trials.
Thank you, Mary Johnson, for the wonderful additional details (and resources) as to how Scarlet Flowers became The Big Sea. There are so many possibilities for more research on Langston Hughes as an activist.
No, I did not know his birthday was February 1! Thank you for that. I enjoyed your choice of images and the article in your album. The link to the Poetry Foundation is often a go to for me. Langston Hughes is one of my favorite poets, especially "Mother to Son", the voice of encouragement for the next generation. Happy Birthday, Langston Hughes, indeed. Thank you, 
Cheryl Best
for the timely reminder and your choice of resources.
That's my favorite too!
There's a brand new anthology of poetry (released yesterday!) titled This Is the Honey, edited by best-selling author/poet Kwame Alexander. In the past few days, I've heard three interviews with Alexander, and in one of them, he talked about Langston Hughes. The poems that Kwame Alexander read during the interviews were wonderful, both because of their words and because of his amazing speaking abilities.
If I were still working in my school library, I think I would go right out and buy this anthology and encourage all the English teachers I know to use it in their K-12 classrooms. As the publisher describes it, it is "A breathtaking poetry collection on hope, heart, and heritage from the most prominent and promising Black poets and writers of our time...." It features "work from well-loved poets such as Rita Dove, Jericho Brown, Warsan Shire, Ross Gay, Tracy K. Smith, Terrance Hayes, Morgan Parker, and Nikki Giovanni."
You'll also find a number of the anthology's poets featured on the Poetry and Literature pages of the Library of Congress website. Not to get too off track, but I found one delightful 2021 video of Nikki Giovanni talking with Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, about her picture book, A Library, in which she and Illustrator Erin K. Robinson "craft an ode to the magic of a library as a place not only for knowledge but also for imagination, exploration, and escape." Kind of like poetry itself, right?
Book cover art from the publisher website
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