Image featured is taken of Hughes on 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, at “Our Block's Children's Garden,” -Under his supervision…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."
“Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.”
The leader of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes —a poet, social activist, and playwright - just one of the many writers who Martin Luther King Jr. held so very close to his heart. We recommend starting with The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes - this definitive collection spans five decades, and is comprised of over 800 poems - half of which had never before been seen until its publication long after Langston's death. This compendium contains all of the poems which were published throughout his entire lifetime; arranged in the order in which he wrote them.
The relationship formed between Martin Luther King Jr. and poet Langston Hughes was inspired through their work as activists —the two became very close friends. They spent years exchanging intimate letters, and eventually reserved some time for traveling to Nigeria together, in the 1960’s. Prior to the height of their friendship at this moment in time, Dr. King recited a very specific poem to his wife Corretta on what would have been her very first Mother’s Day celebration -Dr. King would read the poem “Mother to Son”, written by his muse, Langston Hughes. During this time period Hughes also made an honorable contribution to his dear friend; he wrote a poem about Dr. King, entwined with insights based on the infamous Montgomery Bus Boycott. Hughes titled the piece, “Brotherly Love.”
Albeit this blossoming companionship that had formed between the two men, the turbulent years of the civil rights movement had its unique way of creating a boundary between Hughes and Dr. King. Not to mention, Langston had already acquired much more attention than Martin had managed to garner from the public; he had a reputation, and Dr. King was still trying to establish his. It would be said that Dr. King had never publicly uttered the poet’s name throughout the decades. We all know why at this point, but ages ago it was just a rumor; in the 1940’s, Mr. Hughes had attracted the attention of the FBI —agents would sneak into his public readings, suspicious of his radical effect on the black community; and the reputation built around his being a communist sympathizer.
In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter (Knopf, 1930), won the Harmon gold medal for literature. In addition to leaving us a large body of poetic work, Hughes wrote eleven plays and countless works of prose, including the well-known “Simple” books: Simple Speaks His Mind (Simon & Schuster, 1950); Simple Stakes a Claim (Rinehart, 1957); Simple Takes a Wife (Simon & Schuster, 1953); and Simple's Uncle Sam (Hill and Wang, 1965). He edited the anthologies The Poetry of the Negro and The Book of Negro Folklore, wrote an acclaimed autobiography, The Big Sea (Knopf, 1940), and cowrote the play Mule Bone (HarperCollins, 1991) with Zora Neale Hurston.
Langston resided in Mexico during his youth, and later became one of the very first black authors to make a living off of his work. His mother was a school teacher, and a poet herself. Hughes barely knew his father, daddy was cruel, and never around; yet daddy paid Hughes’s tuition to study at Columbia University, for as long as his son didn’t become a writer! It wasn’t long until Langston dropped out of Columbia, and made history for himself. His story "Blessed Assurance" deals with a father's anger over his son's effeminacy and "queerness". Many of his readers, specifically of the LGBTQ community, state that his “love of black men is evidenced in a number of poems.” Biographers argued that “in order to retain the respect and support of black churches and organizations and avoid exacerbating his precarious financial situation, Hughes remained closeted”—although many who knew him have stated that he was was anything, he may have been asexual. We love you Langston, whoever it is you wanted to be; Your delicate demeanor, literary mastery, and social influence pales in comparison to any modern writer of our times.
