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Kalamu ya Salaam's information blog

Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, February 1, 1902 and is widely considered the leading writer of the celebrated Harlem Renaissance. He moved to New York City as a young man, but traveled, literally, worldwide during his lifetime. He had drama produced on Broadway and worked as a screenwriter in Hollywood, in terms of his establishment credentials. However, Hughes was most famously admired as a poet.

Back in the 1950s when I was in junior high school, Mrs. O. E. Nelson, my English teacher, said one day, “Put your books away. I want you to hear something.” She took out a small portable record player and put on a recording of Hughes reciting his poetry backed by a jazzy piano.

I will never forget the last line of one of the poems that knocked me out that day. Ballad of the Man Who’s Gone was a threnody about a poor couple in Harlem. When her husband died, the wife was reduced to begging on the street to raise money to bury her beloved. Hughes ended his deep blues poem with the words “A poor man ain’t got / No business to die!”.

You could have called me Saul, because that was the day I became a writer, like Paul whom Jehovah both struck down and then raised up thereby resurrecting an inspired scribe. I didn’t immediately pick up a pen and start writing but I did high-tail it to the main library looking for Langston Hughes.

What I found in the stacks was a whole shelf of books by Langston Hughes, numerous books of poetry, anthologies of various kinds, including two of African authors, plus, Hughes had two autobiographies, The Big Sea and I Wonder As I Wander. Hughes also seemed to know every writer worth knowing in his era. He put me on the road to life long literary sleuthing. Via Hughes guidance, I read an amazing and rewarding range of writers from around the world–Hughes had been everywhere it seemed, east to west, north to south. I mean the entire globe. Cuba, Russia, France, Japan, and a thousand other places, some of which I had never heard of before Hughes’ invaluable introduction.

I bought tons of Langston Hughes books, sometimes two and three times over. And long after his demise on May 22, 1967, new works by and about my main man seemed to be published year after year. Even a hundred years after his birth, fresh discoveries were revealed. By 2019 I thought I had read or been made aware of Hughes’ entire literary output.

I knew that Langston was conversant in a number of languages. Once when I was in Cuba, and I accompanied Sonia Sanchez, when we had a private audience with noted poet Nicolas Guillen (July 10, 1902 – July 16, 1989). After warmly greeting us, one of the first words out of his mouth was “where is Langston”? Even after his death, Langston Hughes was constantly turning me on to new experiences, and a plethora of writers both known and previously unknown.

Imagine my joy and wonder, when I recently read about a 1933 Hughes essay, previously unpublished in English. The focus was on an escapee from a Georgia chain gang. This was another side of the multifaceted Langston Hughes. I had no idea Hughes had written about the chain gang.

Of course, I had a long history of interest in prison issues. My two barbers had both been incarcerated in Louisiana’s infamous Angola prison, plus I had edited Go To Jail – Confronting A System Of Injustice, a forthcoming collection of writings by inmates, students, family and friends of imprisoned men and women.

But then I should not have been surprised because most of us are but two or three degrees away from life on the inside of American gulags.