"Langston"
by Christopher Fox Graham
for one little girl
growing up in the segregated South,
Langston was her favorite
 |
| Poet Langston Hughes signs autographs for young fans. Photograph by Griffith J. Davis/Griffith J. Davis Photographs and Archives |
in the Heart of Harlem
top floor 20 East 127th
Hughes howled for dreams deferred
in eleven revolutions
the stinking rotten meat of Jim Crow
festering like a sore
running north from Joplin to New York
like he did
redlining himself into the Renaissance
and a coming revolution
 |
| The Langston Hughes House is a historic home located in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City. It is an Italianate style dwelling built in 1869. It is a three story with basement, rowhouse faced in brownstone and measuring 20 feet wide and 45 feet deep. Noted African American poet and author Langston Hughes (1902–1967) occupied the top floor as his workroom from 1947 to 1967 |
Hughes found his home in Harlem
and “Harlem” found its home
in the anthologies and college textbooks
where the dream could sag like a heavy load
and one little girl
growing up in the segregated South,
handwrote her favorite:
“A world I dream where
black or white,
black or white,
“Whatever race you be,
“Will share the bounties of
the earth
“And every man is free,”
Hughes and King
the New Yorker and Alabaman
the communist and the Christian
traded stanzas and sermons
 |
| Poet Langston Hughes [Feb. 1, 1901-May 22, 1967], left, was called the father of the Harlem Renaisssance literary and arts movement. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. [Jan. 15, 1929-April 4, 1968] led the Civil Rights Movement until his assassination. Photo of Langston Hughes courtesy of Carl Van Vechten/Carl Van Vechten Trust/Beinecke Library, Yale Photo of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. courtesy of Marion S. Trikosko |
In Lorraine Hansberry’s hands,
Hughes’ “Harlem” dried up
and tasted like a "Raisin in the Sun"
from the pulpit at Dexter Avenue Baptist,
in the heart of Montgomery
became the revolution’s war cry
in the hands
of an Alabama preacher
with an army of churches at his back
a dream deferred
called all kinds of names
riding in the back end of the bus for no reason
swimming with its head deep under water
given no release
must explode
into bus boycotts
the Little Rock Nine
the riot at Ole Miss
Emmitt Till in a casket
George Wallace in a doorway
John Lewis across a bridge in Selma
with a preacher’s army behind him
racial slurs from schoolchildren
like 6-year-olds always are
an army unto herself
 |
| President Barack Obama, Ruby Bridges and representatives of the Norman Rockwell Museum view Rockwell’s "The Problem We All Live With,” hanging in a West Wing hallway near the Oval Office, July 15, 2011. Bridges is the girl portrayed the painting, then 6-years-old, on her way to William Frantz Elementary School, an all-white public school, on Nov. 14, 1960, during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis. She was escorted by four deputy U.S. marshals Official White House Photo by Pete Souza |
before the March on Washington,
 |
| “Emancipator looking down on demonstrators." Participants in the March on Washington in front of the Lincoln Memorial and massed along both sides of the Reflecting Pool, viewed from behind Abraham Lincoln statue” on Aug. 28, 1963. Photo by James K. Atherton for United Press International/Shorpy |
the preacher turned revolution back into poetry
made a dream deferred into dream to come
into freedom ringing
there was one little girl
growing up in the segregated South,
who said Langston was her favorite
she collected, annotated and footnoted his poems
worn the pages rough in her collection
left bookmarks with her favorites
“Sunday Morning Prophesy”
“I, Too”
added the poems the editors omitted,
for a grandson unborn
in case he became a poet
or led a revolution
she heard him read poems, once
before the Long Hot Summer of ‘67
before brother Malcolm was shot
before reverend King was shot
before a bomb in Birmingham
killed four little girls
she heard him read poems, once
on a tour in Atlanta
sharing dreams so syrupy sweet
they would crust and sugar over
into a revolution burning
from her Atlanta
in the segregated South
to his Harlem
 |
| Born in Joplin, Mo., Langston Hughes moved to New York City in 1947, and lived of his time in the city in the top apartment at 20 E. 127th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, N.Y., until his death in May 1967. Photo by Robert W. Kelley/The Life Picture Collection |
Langston spoke to her,
the way no other poet did
Langston was her favorite
"which no one could imagine"
she said,
a little white girl
growing up in the segregated South
she never met my son
she died 8 months before he was born
but we named our son
to honor him
to remember her
not for the revolution
but for their dream
 |
| Sylvia Rebie Redfield (December 14, 1925 - July 28, 2021) |
of all her great-grandchilren
Langston
would be her favorite
