Langston Hughes: 100th birthday celebration of the poet laureate of Black America - Brief Article

Ebony, April, 2002 by Charles Whitaker

HE was the most American of American poets. His verse was infused with the rhythms of the country's first truly indigenous musical forms--jazz and blues. He wrote in a voice that was definitively African-American and defiantly pro-Black. Yet he spoke to all people--about about freedom, about dignity, about Black mothers and fathers, about Black American life and loves and dreams.

His voice still resonates today, with young people and old people, Black people and White people. The most celebrated band of the Harlem Renaissance is also the preferred poet of the hip-hop generation. And that is why the 100th anniversary of the birth of Langston Hughes--dubbed "the poet laureate of the Negro people"--has touched off a wave of national celebrations. For even now, some 35 years after his death, Langston Hughes remains a highly influential presence in American arts and letters.

"He really is America's most popular poet," says of Kansas English Professor Maryemma Graham director of one of the largest of a multitude on Hughes' life. "Hughes wrote for the common man. He speaks in a common voice. And even thou he uses Black culture as his base, no one can hear a Hughes poem and not be moved."

At the University of Kansas, as well as in countless venues across the country, writers, historians, actors and entertainers of all stripes gathered on February 1, the date of Hughes' birth, to celebrate the man who was voted "America's most popular poet" in an online poll conducted by the Academy of American Poets earlier in the year.

The symposium featured scores of writers hailing the genius and influence of Hughes, including Hughes biographer Arnold Rampersad and Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker. The Kansas event also marked the official unveiling of the new Langston Hughes postage stamp.

At Harlem's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where Hughes' ashes are interred beneath a colorful medallion in the middle of the foyer leading to the auditorium named for him, a festive birthday party was held on February 1. Notables ranging from Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee to writers Haki Madhubuti and Sonia Sanchez convened for cake, champagne and the pouring of ceremonial libations to the ancestors on Hughes' burial spot.

The American Academy of Poets has taken the occasion of the Hughes centenary to give long-overdue recognition to the poet whose popular appeal has sometimes been dismissed in White academic circles. Not any longer. The American Academy of Poets has dedicated the entire month of April to Hughes. Its festivities begin April 2, which the Academy has designated as Langston Hughes Poetry Day. The tributes conclude April 30, with a gala Hughes celebration at New York's Town Hall.

The flurry of activity surrounding the Langston Hughes centenary is a testament to the tremendous reach and staying power of the writer's work.

"Hughes had enormous range and an enormous impact on culture in the United States and around the world," says R. Baxter Miller, professor of English and director of the Institute for African American Studies at the University of Georgia and the executive editor of the Langston Hughes Review, the official publication of the Langston Hughes Society. "He represents our will to survive and our quest for social justice."

Hughes was born in 1902 in Joplin, Mo., but grew up in Lawrence, Kan. He attended Columbia University in New York and Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, which with a $120,000 donation from alumna Phyllis G. Woolley has just established the Langston Hughes Program for the Promotion of the Arts.

Three states actually claim Hughes as their own-Kansas, Ohio (he attended high school in Cleveland), and New York, where his literary reputation grew as he established himself as the preeminent writer of the Harlem Renaissance.

In Hughes' far-reaching career, he produced more than 62 major works, including volumes of poetry, novels, plays, essays, short stories and lyrics. He was a mentor and an inspiration to generations of Black writers and entertainers, from Gwendolyn Brooks to contemporary hip-hop artists.

"It's amazing how you can talk to all kinds of people and they will tell you how they've been touched by Langston," says writer and film producer Darralyn Hutson, whose documentary tribute, Langston Hughes' Dream Harlem, will premiere on the Black Starz cable network in April.

Hutson has subsequently moved into Hughes' Harlem home and is part of the effort to restore it and turn it into a museum. Her goal is to help ensure that the Hug . Hughes legacy lives on. But most scholars say there's little doubt that, Hughes and his work will endure.

"There s a reason why Hughes has had an four successive generations of R. Baxter Miller of the University of Georgia. "There is a kind of innocence in his voice--a smile, a wink--that lures people in, and once you're lured in, you're hooked. That's why people will never let Langston Hughes die."