Happy Birthday -- Lets bury the History of uncleTomism 2017 before 2018

Happy Birthday for a Great American Poet ---- and History Day

hey folks EVERYONES' thoughts are OK with me but this tomism 2015 of some commentators is RUDE and Vulgar at an African American Family site

Commentators at Me, GREAT----but a negro or 'black' DOING a BoJangles for the selfProfessed is olde Negro Stereotypical----

Langston writes it better than I-----" The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves."

Excellent post as well as thought provoking. It's only in America, people want to shy away from who they are to be what they're not which in my opinion is the biggest shiest of all time. I've been thinking about how shallow and selfish we can be as a people when we are not able to see the bigger picture...
That being we are all connected in some way. I'm proud to be who I am and my ethnicity is a part of that larger picture or piece of fabric that the Creator has woven.

Having said, I'm a happy American negro married to an African man and together we've produced an amazing Nigerian-American off spring!

as always Inspirational jeniFa----thank you

-----DONT forget you are a Great American Medical Professional And Outstanding BIA commentator

Oui oui that, too.

A great messenger poet.
Role model for a poets today as well.

„à"Most of my own poems are racial in theme and treatment, derived from the life I know. In many of them I try to grasp and hold some of the meanings and rhythms of jazz. I am as sincere as I know how to be in these poems and yet after every reading I answer questions like these from my own people: Do you think Negroes should always write about Negroes? I wish you wouldn't read some of your poems to white folks. How do you find anything interesting in a place like a cabaret? Why do you write about black people? You aren't black. What makes you do so many jazz poems? But jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America; the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul¡Xthe tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile."„á

Langston Hughes

James Mercer Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was a young child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Lincoln that Hughes began writing poetry. After graduating from high school, he spent a year in Mexico followed by a year at Columbia University in New York City. During this time, he held odd jobs such as assistant cook, launderer, and busboy. He also travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D. C. Hughes’s first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, (Knopf, 1926) was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter, (Knopf, 1930) won the Harmon gold medal for literature.

Mother to Son

Well, son, I’ll tell you:

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

It’s had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor—

Bare.

But all the time

I’se been a-climbin’ on,

And reachin’ landin’s,

And turnin’ corners,

And sometimes goin’ in the dark

Where there ain’t been no light.

So boy, don’t you turn back.

Don’t you set down on the steps

’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.

Don’t you fall now—

For I’se still goin’, honey,

I’se still climbin’,

And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

By Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes was a Genius of the English Language and of American letters.

He is perhaps best known for poetry, which captures the experience of Americans in a country determined to make life for men such as Hughes difficult.

But Hughes, who was born in 1902 and lived until 1967, was also the author of novels, essays, and short stories.

He was a playwright, and wrote a newspaper column for 20 years-Much Like a Bloggist

His critique, remains Genius and I will attempt to Highlite a few:


July 1, 1944

Mr. Alan Green
Writers’ War Board 122 East 42 Street
New York, 17, N. Y.

My dear Mr. Green:

Concerning “JUMP LIVELY JEFF”, I think the reason most Negro readers would not like the book is because it seems to perpetuate almost all of the old stereotypes that have been used for many years to caricature the Negro people.

The first two words of the first chapter are enough to make Negroes dislike it; naming a little colored boy after a rebel general, Jefferson Davis. Then comes persimmons and very shortly thereafter watermelon, and then an old Aunt Car’line. This particular fruit, and many varieties of Aunties have been used lo these many years to make Negroes a funny picture race. Then you turn a few more pages and lo and behold there is Mammy. Most Negroes nowadays loathe Mammy.

Since all of the conversation is in very broad dialect, and most Negro youngsters now who have been to school speak the same kind of English as other children, they naturally do not like slavery-time comic, antiquated dialect. These young people wish that books were written about colored children which would make them somewhere near the normal American pattern.

I do not have time at the moment to read this book for the story as I am about to go to St. Louis, Chicago and Detroit, to act as Emcee for the American Negro Music Festivals in those cities. Perhaps the story may be a good one, but from my modern American Negro viewpoint there are so many unfortunate surface nuisances, so many comic strip names like Abslinoun, and so many pappys and mammys and aunties, plus the dialect that one only has to glance through the book to see why Colored people today would not like it. It would seem to me the kind of book that would encourage perfectly nice little white children to mistakenly address a perfectly nice little Colored child in broad dialect, under the impression that that is the language Colored people speak now.

I am sorry that I cannot read the book carefully nor comment on its plot or story value at this time, but I think that someone could see by simply glancing through it, why it would hardly be a book to offer American Negro children. I personally am not a children’s author or a literary critic. The leading writer of children’s book is Mr. Arna Bontemps, Librarian, Fisk University, Nashville, 8, Tennessee. Perhaps Mr. Bontemps could give Miss Darby a much more comprehensive criticism that I. I am returning the book to you, herewith.

Sincerely yours,

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes was also a great Essayist

One of his most Famous Always Touched my Heart....

"Salvation", Langston Hughes

.......That night, for the first time in my life but one for I was a big boy twelve years old - I cried. I cried, in bed alone, and couldn't stop. I buried my head under the quilts, but my aunt heard me. She woke up and told my uncle I was crying because the Holy Ghost had come into my life, and because I had seen Jesus. But I was really crying because I couldn't bear to tell her that I had lied, that I had deceived everybody in the church, that I hadn't seen Jesus, and that now I didn't believe there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn't come to help me........

Meaning?

Langston Hughes; in 1915--- as a 13years old boy in Missouri, home of the STILL Talking History of Dred Scott, feels that his decisions and the Decisions of his community at a Christian Church Revival directly reflect Mankinds' timid behavioral tendency for Obedience out of Fear.

Langston himself a product of the rape of his great great grandmother by Henry Clay, Sr.; Speaker of the House of Representatives and Secretary of State from 1825 to 1829; understood from his immediate Family very well that the got/god/gawd of the Master was theirs!

OR sadistic torture would be ones' fate.

Hughes goes on to say:

" So I decided that maybe to save further trouble, I'd rather lie, too, and say that Jesus had come, and get up and be saved."

In saying this, Langston has obviously overlooked his personal belief to meet the level of obedience laid out by his community and family.

It leads us to the fact that people may believe strongly in an idea or thought but will overlook that belief to be obedient. And the Obedience to murderous or torturous threats can make a justified assumption that everyone in society may accept something that is Evil and False to them.

When poems stop talking about the moon and begin to mention poverty, trade unions, color, color lines and colonies, somebody tells the police.

The section of the *****s where a nickel costs a dime.

Well, when Christ comes back this time, I hope He comes back mad His own self. I hope He drives the Jim Crowers out of their high places, every living last one of them from Washington to Texas.

They [the police] learned something from them Harlem riots. They used to beat your head right in public, but now they only beat it after they get you down to the station house.

If the government can set aside some spot for a elk to be a elk without being bothered, or a buffalo to be a buffalo without being shot down, there ought to be some place where a Negro can be a Negro without being Jim Crowed.

Langston Hughes

Blacklisted from Birth:

Mr. Elmer Rice, Chairman,
Committee on Blacklisting,
Authors League of America,
6 East 39th Street,
New York 16, New York.

Dear Elmer,

Here are my answers to the questionnaire re the FCC and blacklisting in TV and radio:

1. The publication of my name in RED CHANNELS has not affected my employment in TV or radio. Being colored I received no offers of employment in these before RED CHANNELS appeared, and have had none since—so it hasn’t affected me at all.

2. Answered above.

3. Negro writers, being black, have always been blacklisted in radio and TV. Only once in a blue moon are any colored writers given an opportunity to do a script and then, usually, with no regularity, and no credits. Like Hollywood, Negroes just simply are not employed in the writing fields in the American entertainment industry.

4. My personal experience has been that in my 25 years of writing, I have not been asked to do more than four or five commercial one-shot scripts. These were performed on major national hook-ups, but produced for me no immediate additional jobs or requests. One script for BBC was done around the world with an all-star cast. No American stations offered me work. My agents stated flatly, “It is just about impossible to sell a Negro writer to Hollywood or radio, and they use Negro subject matter very rarely.” Even the “Negro” shows like “Amos and Andy” and “Beulah” are written largely by white writers—the better to preserve the stereotypes, I imagine.

During the war I did a number of requested scripts for the Writers War Board, used throughout the country. Most of the white writers serving this committee also got any number of paying jobs to do patriotic scripts. Not one chance to do a commercial script was offered me.

My one period of work in radio covering several weeks was a few summers ago scripting the NBC show, “Swing Time at The Savoy”, a Negro variety revue. This was achieved at the insistence of the N.A.A.C.P. that objected to the stereotypes in the audition scripts written by white writers. NBC had at that time had not one Negro writer on its staff—which would have saved them making the mistakes the N.A.A.C.P. objected to and which were offensive to the general Negro public. As far as I know, Negro writers are, however, “blacklisted” at NBC. I know of none working there regularly.

Richard Durham in Chicago and Bob Lucas and Woody Bovell in New York are excellent radio writers but, being Negroes, they work with great irregularity—not due to being red but due to being colored.

5. No point in my appearing—the color bars everyone knows have been with us since radio began, before TV was born, and long ere that.

I’d like to add, however, my personal gratitude to you and the committee for your very fine stand in relation to the freedom to work—for those writers who are white enough to work (when not red-baited) and I hope as well for those writers who have been blacklisted from birth.

And to you for your personal stand, Elmer, my very great admiration.

Sincerely yours,
Langston Hughes

Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness
in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn
sunsets exquisitely dying.

- Langston Hughes

Permeating his work is pride in the African-American identity and its diverse culture.

"My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind,"

Hughes confronted racial stereotypes, protested social conditions, and expanded African America’s image of itself; a "people's poet" who sought to reeducate both audience and artist by lifting the theory of the black aesthetic into reality.

'The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people

Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.'

"My People" in The Crisis (October 1923)

Hughes stressed a racial consciousness and cultural nationalism devoid of self-hate.

His African-American race consciousness and cultural nationalism would influence many foreign black writers. His thought united people of African descent and Africa across the globe to encourage pride in their diverse culture and aesthetic. Hughes was one of the few prominent writers to champion racial consciousness as a source of inspiration for artists.

“Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.-”
¯ Langston Hughes

“Good morning, Revolution: You're the very best friend I ever had. We gonna pal around together from now on”
¯ Langston Hughes

“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 were i'm going to die,
Being neither white nor black?”
¯ Langston Hughes

“Bow down and pray in fear and trembling, go way back in the dark afraid; or work harder and harder; or stumble and learn; or raise up your fist and strike-but once the idea comes into your head you’ll never be the same again.
Oh, test tube of life! Crucible of the South, find the right powder and you’ll never be the same again-the cotton will blaze and the cabins will burn and the chains will be broken and men, all of a sudden, will shakes hands, black men and white men, like steel meeting steel!”

¯ Langston Hughes

/*
Very Well Done My Brother! Great Commentators as well! Thank You! I too, am a fan of Brother 'Langston Hughes!'

"The day celebrating the great birth was festive. Many were concerned with those who had not while many simply walked over and away - stepped over obliviously, ignored and cast away. Albeit, much of it due to invisibility and wanton chosen-selective ignorance."
http://ezinearticles.com/?Across-The-Way&i...

"The news media discovered, reported, and filmed the warrantless assault on the man and his friends. All of the accusations were proven to be without merit and the charges were unfounded. The unreasonable attack and accusation was plotted and hatched by a corrupted evil member..."
http://ezinearticles.com/?To-Soar-Upon-Mig...
*/

Thank You Dr. Gregory Boulware

I know you also Love Reading great things, sometimes I am rewarded with something from the past*********


Out of the darkness, the ignorance, the night.

Lift high my banner out of the dust.

Stand like free men supporting my trust.

Believe in the right, let none push you back.

Remember the whip and the slaver's track.

Remember how the strong in struggle and strife

Still bar you the way, and deny you life —

But march ever forward, breaking down bars.

Look ever upward at the sun and the stars.

Oh, my dark children, may my dreams and my prayers

Impel you forever up the great stairs —

For I will be with you till no white brother

Dares keep down the children of the Negro Mother.

- Langston Hughes

“Why should I want to be white? I am a Negro—and beautiful!”

So I am ashamed for the black poet who says, “I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet,” as though his own racial world were not as interesting as any other world.

I am ashamed, too, for the colored artist who runs from the painting of Negro faces to the painting of sunsets after the manner of the academicians because he fears the strange un-whiteness of his own features.

An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.

- Langston Hughes

One of his most powerful short prose pieces is “Poor Little Black Fellow”, which tells the story of Arnold who at a young age becomes an orphan and is adopted by a white rich couple. Arnolds is black and his lost parents were servants. Arnold, or Arnie as everyone calls him, grows up realizing he is not allowed to do nearly anything. Throughout his childhood and youth Arnie experiences being denied the same rights as the white children. He doesn’t get to join the scouts; he doesn’t get to play with the other children and is not invited to any parties. The Church, which his adoptive parents attend, use him as a symbol of “Christian charity”. Everyone in the story displays a superficial tone of exaggerated niceness to Arnie since they know he can’t be a part of anything. Their kindness is patronizing, not really helping with Arnie´s problems as a toxic bearer of blackness in a world of hidden white oppressions. Indeed, Mr. Hughes shows in this story that kindness can in times be worse than maliciousness. By being nice, the whites are able to deny Arnie any forms of equality or rights. Arnie knows in a way that the kindness is fake, a way to rationalize the racism he faces, but is powerless to say anything. Being extra nice to Arnie does nothing but put Arnie down, since he is not treated as a normal kid. Even worse he is used by his adoptive white parents and their friends and neighbors to make them feel better about themselves, while contributing and continuing the dehumanizing segregation and its hidden ideology.

“Poor Little Black Fellow” is a great literary document of the 1930’s. It is also a great example of how racism is more and more insidious than the explicit and obvious malicious and cruel actions engendered in the prejudiced social world. It’s also denial, which Arnie´s adoptive parents are guilty of. Prejudice and hatred take different shapes. Just because one is acting nice it most certainly doesn’t mean the actions are not harmful. This niceness, as described by Mr. Hughes, can be a way to exercise ones privilege and of looking down. Making someone less of a person is exposed in a grammar of oppression regardless of ones tone or being “polite” about it. This story is the perfect example of this, and should therefore be read by everybody who thinks everything will be okay if we are just nice to each other. If only it was so easy, but true kindness comes in the form of true equal rights, opportunity and freedom, as Langston Hughes illustrates.

It was 1923, Langston visited the West Coast of Africa Asia and Hughes unleased this masterful Artistry:

I’ve known rivers.

I’ve known rivers as ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the Pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to

New Orleans, and I’ve seen it muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers;

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

and had this conversation with the People:

“Our problems in America very much like yours,” I told the Africans, “especially in the South, I am a Negro, too.”

But they only laughed at me and shook their heads and said:

“You, white man!”

It was the only place in the world where I’ve ever been called a white man. They looked at my copper-brown skin and straight black hair—like my grandmother’s Indian hair, except a little curly

—and they said: “You—white man.”

One of the laborers aboard, a Kru from Liberia who knew about these things, explained to Hughes that most nonwhites who came to Africa from abroad came to help the white man, whether as missionary or as clerk or helper in colonial governments, “so the Africans call them all white men.”

“But I am not white,” I said.

“You are not black either,” the Kru man said simply.

- Langston Hughes

“I am the darker brother”

- Langston Hughes

Here Hughes is clearly speaking on behalf of the African American race because during the early and mid 1900’s African American were oppressed because of their darker skin color.

No where in the writing does Hughes mention the word racism, segregation, discrimination.

No where in the poem are words like Civil Rights Movement or Harlem Renaissance read.

L.Hughes' "On the Road" and R.Wright's "The Man Who Was Almost a Man"




In any confrontation, the two options are fight or flight, and Sargeant chooses to fight. With the police and the townspeople battering him, he holds onto the stone pillar so fiercely that the entire church is pulled down when the people try to pull him away from it. David, by contrast, chooses to escape the difficult situation he is in through flight.

Despite their similarities in terms of racial prejudice and rebellion against injustice, Langston Hughes' "On the Road" and Richard Wright's "The Man Who Was Almost a Man" demonstrate opposing perspectives in the three issues of survival vs. random action, sanctuary vs. freedom, and fight vs. flight. Where Hughes' Sargeant is man who has decided to stop being victimized and stand for the meeting of his most basic needs, Wright's David is a rebel whose dilemma is the result of a wild moment of random experimentation. The stories' differences underscore not only the different perspectives of victims of racial injustice but also the difference between taking a stand purposefully and simply yielding to feelings of rage and disenfranchisement. In the end, the purposeful stand of Sargeant commands greater respect than David's rebellion, even though it does not succeed materially.

Hughes, Langston. The Collected Works of Langston Hughes.

Langston Hughes

I am your son, white man!

Georgia dusk
And the turpentine woods.
One of the pillars of the temple fell.

You are my son!
Like Hell!

The moon over the turpentine woods.
The Southern night
Full of stars,
Great big yellow stars.
What’s a body but a toy?
Juicy bodies

Of niggeer wenches
Blue black
Against black fences.

O, you little bastard boy,
What’s a body but a toy?
The scent of pine wood stings the soft night air.
What’s the body of your mother?
Silver moonlight everywhere.
What’s the body of your mother?
Sharp pine scent in the evening air.

A niggeer night,
A niggeer joy,
A little yellow
Bastard boy.

Naw, you ain’t my brother.

niggeers ain’t my brother.

Not ever.

niggeers ain’t my brother.

The Southern night is full of stars,
Great big yellow stars.
O, sweet as earth,
Dusk dark bodies
Give sweet birth

To little yellow bastard boys.
Git on back there in the night,

You ain’t white

The bright stars scatter everywhere.
Pine wood scent in the evening air.

A niggeer night,
A niggeer joy.

I am your son, white man!
A little yellow

Bastard boy.

We captured a wounded Moor today.
He was just as dark as me.
I said, Boy, what you been doin' here
Fightin' against the free?

He answered something in a language
I couldn't understand.
But somebody told me he was sayin'
They nabbed him in his land

And made him join the fascist army
And come across to Spain.
And he said he had a feelin'
He'd never get back home again.

He said he had a feelin'
This whole thing wasn't right.
He said he didn't know
The folks he had to fight.

And as he lay there dying
In a village we had taken,
I looked across to Africa
And seed foundations shakin'.

Cause if a free Spain wins this war,
The colonies, too, are free —
Then something wonderful'll happen
To them Moors as dark as me.

I said, I guess that's why old England
And I reckon Italy, too,
Is afraid to let a workers' Spain
Be too good to me and you —

Cause they got slaves in Africa —
And they don't want 'em to be free.
Listen, Moorish prisoner, hell!
Here, shake hands with me!

I knelt down there beside him,
And I took his hand —
But the wounded Moor was dyin'
And he didn't understand.

by Langston Hughes

WAR!!!! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? ABSOLUTELY "NOTHING!!!!"

Happy Birthday ----------- Lets bury the History of uncleTomism 2015

That is the Subject

It is the Prose, Poetry and History of ONE of America's Greatest MINDS

James Mercer Langston Hughes; American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist.

if some pettyThinkers like mrGray---would like to take their turn at ignorance and oleUncletomism thought---OK

thanks selfProfessed 'blackHebrewIsraelite' deacon

"..........WAR!!!! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? ABSOLUTELY "NOTHING!!!!" .......

Saturday, May 23rd 2015 at 7:32AM
Deacon Ron Gray | delete | block member

******************************do continue your example of uncletomish, it should be gone in 2015

WHAT IS WAR GOOD FOR?

Regardless where war is fought, many innocent people die, and for what? This is what I see in the writings of Langston Hughes that you posted.

sorry I need to adjust my writing above------after this NON READING comment from

selfProfessed 'blackHebrewIsraelite' deacon ....

"..... Regardless where war is fought, many innocent people die, and for what? This is what I see in the writings of Langston Hughes that you posted....."

Saturday, May 23rd 2015 at 7:58AM
Deacon Ron Gray | delete | block member

**********************************

*****IF ALL YOU GET OUT OF THE GREAT Langston Hughes is war?

-----do continue your writingReading examples of UNEDUCATED uncletomish,

The BIA Preamble does ask Members to stop your Stereotypical negroidIgnorant thinking of the past

Robert,

What do you get from this account from a boy dyeing fighting people that he do not know, in a land that is not his, for a cause he knows little to nothing about as he lye dying and don't understand why? What do you call that? That's right!!!! You never had to sacrifice a damn thing for your country....

Happy Birthday ----------- Lets bury the History of uncleTomism 2015

That is the Subject

It is the Prose, Poetry and History of ONE of America's Greatest MINDS.....

James Mercer Langston Hughes; American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist.

if some pettyThinkers like mrGray---would like to take their turn at ignorance and oleUncletomism thought with this bit of Ignorant rant---OK

"......Robert, What do you get from this account from a boy dyeing fighting people that he do not know, in a land that is not his, for a cause he knows little to nothing about as he lye dying and don't understand why? What do you call that? That's right!!!! You never had to sacrifice a damn thing for your country...."

Saturday, May 23rd 2015 at 9:01AM
Deacon Ron Gray | delete | block member

******************************************

With the American Artistry of WRITING of James Mercer Langston Hughes;

------I want at BIA to highlight THE PURPOSE of the Great American Journalist

--- BIA, Genesis----María de la Soledad Teresa O'Brien.....giving thoughtful Truthful thought

the "dyeing fighting people" Writing from Langston WAS; if you could READ English, an account that Langston; as a JOURNALIST

----- presented FROM the 'warAgainst Facism' that he was covering in Spain......

a war that at the time, many Americans volunteered to fight.......AND for my Blog SUJECT and your understanding, IF YOU CAN...,

'Fascists is Jim Crow people,honey...and here, we shoot 'em down'
(Langston Hughes, Dear Folks At Home)

This Blog is directed at Fulfilling my BIA membership to give positive, thoughtful, intellectual content to find solutions for issues that affect America.......personally yourWriting and commentary GENERALLY, in my opion; is a DUMBING down of American Intelligence

My suggestion to you OR any racistlyIgnorant writer would be to READ and not think in yourOlde Racist and personal attack Truth ignorance.......

So, now after we had to go through is low bearing fruit of yours we both agree that James Mercer Langston Hughes was talking about war and what that entails.

WAR!!! WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR ABSOLUTELY "NOTHING!!"

just as tommism is trampling this Righteously Poetic Blog of the Great Langston Hughes

lets take a bit of History of other negros trampling life and growth

The Life of Langston Hughes


"In the backyard at 20 East 127th Street, (Mr. Langston’s home) where the lawn in the summer of 1954 was dense and green, a gardener named Mr. Sacred Heart, a follower of the evangelist Father Divine, planted some flowering shrubs. I

n front of the house, at Langston’s request, someone planted Boston Ivy that crept up the walls and eventually luxuriated, so that everyone knew in which house on the street had lived the poet Langston Hughes. But most of the patch of earth beside the front steps, about six feet square, was barren from years of trampling by neighbourhood children, who had little time for flowers.

Langston decided to rescue it, and teach the children a tender lesson at the same time.

Under his supervision, aided by Mr. Sacred Heart, each child chose a plant, set it, and assumed partial responsibility for weeding and watering the garden. On a picket beside each plant was posted a child’s name.

Proud of the garden, which flourished, and prouder still of his children, Langston was photographed at least once beaming in their midst."

I am proud of this garden as well as it flourished the Great Langston Hughes HAPPY BIRTHDAY Brother Hughes, your work will live on for our youth to discover.

@ robert powell Please explain what you mean Lets bury the History of uncleTomism, Thank you

Langston writes it better than I-----" The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves."

and Langston was told by One of the young Negro poets said to me, "I want to be a poet--not a Negro poet," meaning, I believe, "I want to write like a white poet"; meaning, "I would like to be a white poet"; meaning behind that, "I would like to be white."

I was sorry the young man said that... And I doubted... this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro....this urge within....toward whiteness, the desire to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.

that is the Culture and Poetic answer from Langston to you......

for me,

the negro, that he speaks of is the Descendant of African Asian people DEFINED by europeanRacist Ignorance and the paganChristian morality of Europe.

--- To be a Man, one must NOT be defined by his master of rape, torture and murder.

--- To be a Man, one must NOT be defined by masters History, Scholarship and Science.

--- To be a Man, one must NOT be defined by the Laziness, and Lack of Courage of slaves.

Many Authors at BIA, remain--in my opinion--Maintain the Laziness and Lack of Courage to expand their American Experience --- Away from uncleTomism:----- to the History, Scholarship and Science of Africa Asia

slaverAmericana 1492-1864(1964) ---- History of rape, torture, murder and Disgrace of America

BUT ---- What was the African Asian Before 1492, in 1491, in 1392/1292/1192/1092/992/892/792?

In 2015--we have a Courageous, Great American President Baraka Hussein Obama
In 2015--we have a History, Scholarship and Science of BEFORE ----- slaverAmericana(1492-1864)

In 2015--we need to bury the History of uncleTomism and become President Obama Courageous

@ robert powell
Perhaps I did not explain myself well, what is uncle Tomism

perhaps you need to REREAD your 2 Different Questions First

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@ robert powell Please explain what you mean Lets bury the History of uncleTomism, Thank you
Monday, May 25th 2015 at 1:19PM
Sylvainy Soso | delete | block member

@ robert powell
Perhaps I did not explain myself well, what is uncle Tomism
Monday, May 25th 2015 at 2:23PM
Sylvainy Soso | delete | block member

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Un'cle Tom'ism

Origin of Uncle Tomism

1935-1940

a policy of relationship between "whites and blacks"(1935 would have been American Citizens and negros)involving a benevolent but patronizing attitude on the part of the American Citizens and a willingly submissive attitude on the part of the negros.

Also called Tomism.

@ robert powell
I think in this instance you might be using the wrong name Uncle Tom I might be wrong but from my research Uncle Tom was the good guy the one who was there to help his people even putting cotton in the basket of those who did not pick enough cotton to save them I believe the right mane is Sambo or Samboism please correct me if I’m wrong

So calling someone An Uncle Tom in a complement, A Sambo will be the insult

Writing in the 1950s, poet Langston Hughes called Uncle Tom's Cabin a "moral battle cry for freedom."

Immediately after its publication, Uncle Tom's Cabin was both lauded as an achievement and attacked as inaccurate:

⦁ The most liberal abolitionists felt the book was not strong enough in its call to immediately end slavery, disliked Stowe's tacit support of the colonization movement, and suggested that Stowe's main character Tom was not forceful enough.

⦁ More moderate anti-slavery advocates and reformers praised the book for putting a human face on those held in slavery, emphasizing the impact slavery had on families, and helping the public understand and empathize with the plight of enslaved mothers.

⦁ Pro-slavery forces claimed that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible, that Tom was too noble, and accused Stowe of fabricating unrealistic, one-sided images of Southern slavery.

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based on your reading of Langston, Ms.Stowe and Dictionary Definition you write....

"....So calling someone An Uncle Tom in a complement..A Sambo will be the insult ."

Monday, May 25th 2015 at 3:49PM
Sylvainy Soso | delete | block member

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Ok, Sylvainy Soso is an Uncle Tom and not a sambo...........

Where is the Jim Crow section

On this merry-go-round,

Mister, cause I want to ride?

Down South where I come from

White and colored

Can't sit side by side.

Down South on the train

There's a Jim Crow car.

On the bus we're put in the back—

But there ain't no back

To a merry-go-round!

Where's the horse

For a kid that's black?


Langston Hughes

When I get to be a composer
I'm gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew.
I'm gonna put some tall tall trees in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black white black people
And I'm gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hands
And red clay earth hands in it
Touching everybody with kind fingers
And touching each other natural as dew
In that dawn of music when I
Get to be a composer
And write about daybreak
In Alabama.


Langston Hughes

Into the warp and woof of America:

ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL.
NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH
TO GOVERN ANOTHER MAN
WITHOUT HIS CONSENT.
BETTER DIE FREE,
THAN TO LIVE SLAVES.

Who said those things? Americans!
Who owns those words? America!
Who is America? You, me!
We are America!
To the enemy who would conquer us from without,
We say, NO!
To the enemy who would divide
And conquer us from within,
We say, NO!
FREEDOM!
BROTHERHOOD!
DEMOCRACY!
To all the enemies of these great words:

We say, NO!

A long time ago,
An enslaved people heading toward freedom

Made up a song:

Keep Your Hand On The Plow! Hold On!
The plow plowed a new furrow
Across the field of history.
Into that furrow the freedom seed was dropped.
From that seed a tree grew, is growing, will ever grow.
That tree is for everybody,
For all America, for all the world.
May its branches spread and shelter grow
Until all races and all peoples know its shade.

KEEP YOUR HAND ON THE PLOW! HOLD ON!


Langston Hughes

In Time Of Silver Rain

In time of silver rain
The earth puts forth new life again,
Green grasses grow
And flowers lift their heads,
And over all the plain
The wonder spreads

Of Life,
Of Life,
Of life!

In time of silver rain
The butterflies lift silken wings
To catch a rainbow cry,
And trees put forth new leaves to sing
In joy beneath the sky
As down the roadway
Passing boys and girls
Go singing, too,

In time of silver rain When spring
And life
Are new.

Langston Hughes

Harlem
Sent him home
in a long box-
Too dead
To know why:

The licker
Was lye.


Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!


Langston Hughes

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.

I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.


I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.


But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.

I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.


I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn't a-been so high
I might've jumped and died.


But it was High up there! It was high!

So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.

I could've died for love--
But for livin' I was born

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry--
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.


Life is fine!

Langston Hughes

"Slave on the Block," by Langston Hughes,

.............is the story of a well-meaning but patronizing white couple's interactions with their young black employee. With cutting irony, Hughes dramatizes the tension that arises when the couple takes the young black man into their home in order use him as a source of artistic inspiration. Hughes presents the psychological dynamics between black and white characters in order to criticize the limitations of a racially divided society and to illustrate the subtle as well as overt forms racism can take.

"Slave on the Block," was first published in Scribner's magazine in September, 1933, when Hughes was 31. It also appeared in a collection of short stories entitled The Ways of White Folks, which came out the following year.

Hughes had already established his reputation as a major voice of the literary movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, but The Ways of White Folks was his first collection of short stories. Best known as a blues poet, Hughes devoted the main part of his career to writing about the experiences and expressions of ordinary, urban black people.

The Ways of White Folks marks a temporary departure from this topic, focusing instead on the strange and contradictory racial attitudes of white people as seen from a black point of view.

Though The Ways of White Folks received favorable reviews when it came out, praised for its assured ironic voice and incisive understanding of human psychology, some critics found Hughes's portrayal of white characters unfair.

Since then, scholars have responded that Hughes's critical portrayal of whites is a mark of maturity and an important step in the development of African-American literature.

Langston Hughes is of our time.

His linking of his writing with the struggles against racism, working-class exploitation, poetry, war and capitalism is of first rate importance today as many Americans assault innocents abroad and the democratic rights of the American people – in the name of war on terrorism.

His writing will continue to be deeply inspiring in the struggle through the achievement of inclusiveness in our land.

In one of his last poems, “Dream of Freedom” he wrote:

This dream today embattled With its back against the wall – To save the dream for one It must be saved for all –

Americas great poet Langston Hughes, was a pretty good columnist and journalist.

The following piece follows the 1943 race riot in Harlem, sparked when a white cop shot and wounded a black soldier (sound familiar?).

The article stands as testimony to the timelessness of American race and class distinctions, and relations, as Hughes depicted the gaps between white and black New York, and between upper class African Americans living in doorman apartment buildings in the Sugar Hill neighborhood, and the slum dwellers elsewhere in Harlem:

“But under the hill on Eighth Avenue, on Lenox, and on Fifth there are places like this — dark, unpleasant houses with steep stairs and narrow halls, where the rooms are too small, the ceilings too low and the rents too high. There are apartments with a dozen names over each bell. The house is full of roomers. Papa and mama sleep in the living room, the kids in the dining room, lodgers in every alcove, and everything but the kitchen is rented out for sleeping. Cooking and meals are rotated in the kitchen.

“In vast sections below the hill, neighborhood amusement centers are dark are gin mills, candy stores that sell King Kong (and maybe reefers), drug stores that sell geronimoes — dope tablets — to juveniles for pepping up cokes, pool halls where gambling is wide open and barbecue stands that book numbers. Sometimes, even the grocery stores have their little side rackets without the law. White men, more often than Negroes, own these immoral places where kids as well as grown-ups come.

“The kids and the grown-ups are not criminal or low by nature.

Poverty, however, and frustration have made some of them too desperate to be decent.

Some of them don’t try any more. Slum-shocked, I reckon.”

“Politics can be the graveyard of the poet. And only poetry can be his resurrection.”

Langston Hughes (1964)

On the afternoon of November 15, 1940, Langston Hughes was headed toward the exquisite Vista del Arroyo Hotel in Pasadena to attend a luncheon in celebration of his recently published biography, The Big Sea.

As the car in which he was being driven got nearer his destination he heard the strains of Irvin Berlin’s recently revised, “God Bless America.” The music was coming from a “sound-truck” parked directly across the street from the hotel. It displayed a banner with the phrase “100 percent American” written in gold lettering. A large crowd had gathered in front of the hotel with picket signs emblazoned with Hughes’s name, causing traffic and general chaos. With the car unable to move forward, Hughes got out a few blocks away and walked, unnoticed, through the crowd.

In the hotel lobby the manager and the organizer of the event, George Palmer Putnam, met him and explained that Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson had sent about a hundred of her followers to protest his appearance. McPherson had recently denounced Hughes from her Angelus Temple pulpit as a “radical and anti-Christ,” saying, “there are many devils among us, but the most dangerous of all is the red devil. And now there comes among us a red devil in black skin!”

GOODBYE, CHRIST

Goodbye,
Christ Jesus Lord God Jehova,

Beat it on away from here now.
Make way for a new guy with no religion at all –

A real guy named
Marx Communist Lenin Peasant Stalin Worker ME –

I said, ME!
Go ahead now,
You’re getting in the way of things, Lord.

And please take Saint Ghandi with you when you go,
And Saint Pope Pius,
And Saint Aimee McPherson,
And big black Saint Becton
Of the Consecrated Dime.

And step on the gas, Christ!

Move!

By what sends
the white kids
I ain't sent:
I know I can't
be President.
What don't bug
them white kids
sure bugs me:
We know everybody
ain't free.

Lies written down
for white folks
ain't for us a-tall:
Liberty And Justice--
Huh!--For All?


Langston Hughes

Comes the Colored Hour:

Martin Luther King is Governor of Georgia,
Dr. Rufus Clement his Chief Adviser,
A. Philip Randolph the High Grand Worthy.
In white pillared mansions
Sitting on their wide verandas,
Wealthy Negroes have white servants,
White sharecroppers work the black plantations,
And colored children have white mammies:
Mammy Faubus
Mammy Eastland
Mammy Wallace
Dear, dear darling old white mammies--
Sometimes even buried with our family.
Dear old
Mammy Faubus!

Culture, they say, is a two-way street:
Hand me my mint julep, mammny.
Hurry up!
Make haste!

Langston Hughes

Wisdom And War

We do not care-
That much is clear.
Not enough
Of us care
Anywhere.

We are not wise-
For that reason,
Mankind dies.

To think
Is much against
The will.

Better-
And easier-
To kill.


Langston Hughes

Yet you say we’re fighting
For democracy.
Then why don’t democracy
Include me?

I ask you this question

Cause I want to know

How long I got to fight

BOTH HITLER — AND JIM CROW.

- Langston Hughes, Beaumont to Detroit: 1943

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I know you been dead sometime now Mr. Langston Hughes

BUT

- I never figured out WHAT is Jim Crow..cause it is 2017 and trump$ette wants to make great again?

1. Is Jim Crow the North stopping the enforcement of the 14th Amendment?

2. Is Jim Crow just the idea of the racistlyIgnorant paganChristian ... 'whiteSupremist' Misconception?