Latest / The Breakfast Club / BLK LIT: Langston Hughes - We, Too: The Life, Legacy and Longevity of a Poet
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: My name is Jacquees Thomas, and you're listening to Black Lit,
- 0:05Speaker 1: a podcast about black literature and the stories behind the
- 0:10Speaker 1: storytellers length and Hughes. Now that's a name that might
- 0:17Speaker 1: conjure up some images of the Harlem Renaissance, powerful poetry
- 0:22Speaker 1: and a voice that spoke to a whole generation. But
- 0:27Speaker 1: before the accolades, before the iconic lines, there was a
- 0:32Speaker 1: young man with a powerful dream, a man who was
- 0:36Speaker 1: set out on a journey as rich and as complex
- 0:41Speaker 1: as the poetry he penned.
- 0:45Speaker 2: I Too.
- 0:48Speaker 3: Am America, who wrote that.
- 0:53Speaker 1: What you just heard was a quote from The Great Debaters,
- 0:57Speaker 1: the award winning two thousand and seven directed by Denzel Washington,
- 1:03Speaker 1: where Denzel delivers a line inspired by Lanson Hughes, I
- 1:08Speaker 1: Too am America. That single phrase, drawn from Hughes' iconic
- 1:16Speaker 1: poem I Too, published in nineteen twenty six, still resonates
- 1:21Speaker 1: today as both a declaration and a form of defiance.
- 1:28Speaker 1: It's a statement of belonging, one that bridges the divide
- 1:32Speaker 1: between exclusion and inclusion. It is a black man claiming
- 1:39Speaker 1: his rightful place in a nation that often tried to
- 1:43Speaker 1: deny him. I Too was written during the height of
- 1:48Speaker 1: the Harlem Renaissance. The poem describes a plague that is racism.
- 1:53Speaker 1: It is a poetic protest expressing how he, as a
- 1:57Speaker 1: black man, experiences this outright discrimination, and how despite not
- 2:04Speaker 1: being offered a seat at the quote unquote table, he
- 2:07Speaker 1: does not fret, for he knows how beautiful he is
- 2:13Speaker 1: and how such a beauty cannot be ignored forever. The
- 2:17Speaker 1: line tomorrow, I'll be at the table reinforces this belief
- 2:24Speaker 1: that there is hope for America because he too is American. Oh,
- 2:34Speaker 1: let America be America again, the land that never has
- 2:38Speaker 1: been yet but yet must be, the land where every
- 2:42Speaker 1: man is free, the land that's mine the poor man.
- 2:46Speaker 3: Let it be the dream it used to be. America
- 2:48Speaker 3: was never America to me.
- 2:50Speaker 1: Today, Hughes is celebrated as one of the most significant
- 2:54Speaker 1: voices of the Harlem Renaissance, a poet of the people
- 2:59Speaker 1: and a cultural architect and icon. But who exactly was
- 3:03Speaker 1: Lenggston Hughes? What experiences did he encounter? What was it
- 3:09Speaker 1: like being born an only child in Joplin, Missouri, in
- 3:13Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds to divorce parents, His childhood was fractured.
- 3:20Speaker 1: His father, a man who had dreams. He he just
- 3:25Speaker 1: didn't believe he could reach here in America, so he
- 3:28Speaker 1: escaped to Mexico, abandoning Langston and his mother.
- 3:35Speaker 2: Well, my father was very anti Negro, although he was negroing.
- 3:40Speaker 1: And to add to that feeling of rejection, his mother,
- 3:43Speaker 1: who was often absent in his life, left him to
- 3:47Speaker 1: be raised mostly by his grandmother in a near destitute
- 3:52Speaker 1: upbringing in.
- 3:53Speaker 2: This great, big, lonesome town. I might starve for a year,
- 3:58Speaker 2: but that extra day would get me down.
- 4:04Speaker 4: In nineteen twenty five, Hughes was bussing tables in a Washington,
- 4:09Speaker 4: DC hotel and he slipped a few poems to the
- 4:13Speaker 4: famous poet Rachel Lindsay.
- 4:16Speaker 1: Lengthy. News was a hustler. He wasn't just a poet.
- 4:20Speaker 1: He was a busboy, a seaman, a cook, anything that
- 4:24Speaker 1: allowed him to survive while pursuing his craft. He wrote
- 4:29Speaker 1: between shifts and during long nights, determined to make his
- 4:33Speaker 1: voice heard. His life was a patchwork of odd jobs,
- 4:38Speaker 1: stitched together by a relentless passion for storytelling. But it
- 4:43Speaker 1: wasn't just about survival. That hustle, that grit is what
- 4:48Speaker 1: makes his story so powerful. It's why his work filled
- 4:53Speaker 1: with themes of identity, resilience, and chasing your dreams, finds
- 4:59Speaker 1: its way into classrooms across the country till this day.
- 5:05Speaker 1: But how does a hustling poet who spent his night
- 5:08Speaker 1: scribbling down on napkins and diners become one of the
- 5:11Speaker 1: most taught poets in American classrooms? How did Langston Hughes,
- 5:16Speaker 1: the seamen, the cook, the bus boy transform into the
- 5:22Speaker 1: Langston Hughes that we know today, the voice of dreams, struggles,
- 5:28Speaker 1: and resilience for students everywhere. Langston had an incredible gift
- 5:33Speaker 1: of seeing the beauty and the pain of life and
- 5:38Speaker 1: putting it into words. His poetry captured not just his
- 5:42Speaker 1: own experiences, but the posts of a people. When he
- 5:47Speaker 1: wrote about the rivers in Mississippi, or the Congo or
- 5:51Speaker 1: the Nile, it wasn't just as locations, but as the
- 5:55Speaker 1: history of black resilience. Dream defers doesn't just ask questions,
- 6:02Speaker 1: it demands that you confront it. Mother to son is
- 6:06Speaker 1: like a warm, encouraging arm around your shoulder, telling you
- 6:11Speaker 1: to keep climbing. And that's why, decades later, teachers bring
- 6:16Speaker 1: him into classrooms. Hughes was a bridge to history and literature.
- 6:21Speaker 1: But also to empathy and understanding. His work wasn't just beautiful,
- 6:26Speaker 1: it was teachable and relatable, perfect for young minds learning
- 6:32Speaker 1: about America's diversity and struggles, about dreams and justice, about
- 6:38Speaker 1: what it means to fight and hope and build. The
- 6:43Speaker 1: language is rhythmic and clear. His ideas are timeless, but
- 6:48Speaker 1: the words are simple enough to reach a middle schooler.
- 6:52Speaker 1: He wrote, hold fast to your dreams, for without them,
- 6:58Speaker 1: life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly. You
- 7:03Speaker 1: don't need a dictionary for that, because you can feel
- 7:06Speaker 1: it in your soul. As we explore the life and
- 7:11Speaker 1: legacy of Langston Hughes, we had the privilege of speaking
- 7:15Speaker 1: with doctor Carmeletta Williams, the current CEO of the Black
- 7:21Speaker 1: Archives of Mid America and a scholar with three decades
- 7:25Speaker 1: of experience and a passion for Hughes's work. She shared
- 7:30Speaker 1: a deep understanding of his life and gave historical contacts
- 7:34Speaker 1: and insight into what made his voice so revered. Her
- 7:39Speaker 1: ability to connect Langston's work to the broader Black experience
- 7:44Speaker 1: and contemporary conversations made her an extraordinary resource, and we
- 7:50Speaker 1: were truly honored to have her with us and to
- 7:54Speaker 1: share this conversation with you.
- 7:58Speaker 5: When he was telling stories than the blues genre, and
- 8:02Speaker 5: he was telling the story that the people who made.
- 8:06Speaker 2: Him famous that they were living.
- 8:09Speaker 5: So he was with the folks he hung out and
- 8:13Speaker 5: churches and as well as in bars, so absorbing all
- 8:17Speaker 5: aspects of the culture.
- 8:19Speaker 2: And that's what he wrote about. The Negro Mother is powerful.
- 8:23Speaker 5: Because it hit so many people and they're like, yeah,
- 8:26Speaker 5: my mother's story is a little bit different, but basically
- 8:29Speaker 5: this is her tale too.
- 8:31Speaker 3: Now through my children, young and free, I realized the blessings.
- 8:37Speaker 2: Deny to me.
- 8:39Speaker 5: Of course my mother was Bangstern's generation are after. But
- 8:46Speaker 5: I saw those stairs, I saw that journey life for
- 8:51Speaker 5: me ain't been no crystal statics, had tax in it, boards,
- 8:56Speaker 5: throwing up places with no carpet on the floor.
- 9:00Speaker 2: Fair.
- 9:01Speaker 5: So I think that he wrote about real life and
- 9:04Speaker 5: that people didn't imagine. Plus he was in the time
- 9:09Speaker 5: he didn't want to take the art so far. I
- 9:12Speaker 5: feel that the regular folk, the common folks, the what
- 9:16Speaker 5: Langston called the negro lois down so that they could
- 9:20Speaker 5: feel it, they could accept that, and then that was
- 9:24Speaker 5: what made him famous. Now also we know about his
- 9:27Speaker 5: relationship with white folks, is that he.
- 9:30Speaker 2: Didn't cater to them.
- 9:34Speaker 5: Is even though he depended on people like the god
- 9:38Speaker 5: Mother to give him finances and to get him published
- 9:42Speaker 5: and to you know, and he stayed in their homes,
- 9:45Speaker 5: he still wrote his art and he still told about
- 9:49Speaker 5: those lives. And so he bifurcated in a means that
- 9:54Speaker 5: he could operate moviesily in both worlds. And that's been
- 9:57Speaker 5: said of zor two, so we can get to that
- 10:00Speaker 5: they moved easily through all kinds of cultures, but they
- 10:03Speaker 5: stay true to who they were, to their blackness, to
- 10:07Speaker 5: their history, to their people.
- 10:09Speaker 2: And those are the stories that he wrote about.
- 10:13Speaker 1: Hughes said, I want to write so that everyone can understand,
- 10:17Speaker 1: and he did. That's why you find him in the
- 10:21Speaker 1: pages of school books, inspiring kids to dream big, to
- 10:27Speaker 1: ask questions, to see the world for what it is
- 10:31Speaker 1: and for what it could be. He was an artist
- 10:36Speaker 1: who refused to separate black culture from his art. To him,
- 10:42Speaker 1: jazz and blues weren't just background music. They wore the
- 10:45Speaker 1: heartbeat and soul of his poetry. And that's what makes
- 10:50Speaker 1: Langston Hughes so revolutionary and enduring. He wasn't writing to
- 10:56Speaker 1: impress an exclusive elite. He was writing to connect, to
- 11:01Speaker 1: give voice to the hustlers, to the dreamers, and the
- 11:05Speaker 1: preachers who might otherwise go unheard. His words carry the
- 11:10Speaker 1: rhythm of the streets, the posts of jazz, and the
- 11:14Speaker 1: soul of the everyday person trying to carve out a
- 11:18Speaker 1: piece of the world. Langston understood that poetry wasn't just
- 11:25Speaker 1: for libraries or lecture halls. It was for the people.
- 11:29Speaker 1: It was for the mother humming blues while she cooked,
- 11:33Speaker 1: for the busker playing a saxophone on a Harlem corner,
- 11:36Speaker 1: for the worker coming home late, dreaming of a better tomorrow.
- 11:41Speaker 1: Hughes speaks directly to the human condition, raw, real, and
- 11:46Speaker 1: most importantly accessible, breaking down the barriers between high art
- 11:52Speaker 1: and popular culture.
- 11:54Speaker 5: We know where he came from. We know that he
- 11:57Speaker 5: came from spare and meager beginnings. I tear up every
- 12:01Speaker 5: time I read about him having to put newspaper in
- 12:05Speaker 5: his shoes, which were usually women's shoes that they had
- 12:08Speaker 5: gotten someplace in the winter time because they didn't have
- 12:11Speaker 5: any money, having to live with Auntie and uncle because
- 12:14Speaker 5: they didn't have any money. And he didn't just say, okay,
- 12:18Speaker 5: I'm above this now. Langston took care of his mother
- 12:21Speaker 5: till she died, and in many places along that road
- 12:26Speaker 5: he had to do it out to take care of her.
- 12:30Speaker 5: He's a man who searched his whole life for a
- 12:32Speaker 5: close relationship with his brother and died without actually having
- 12:36Speaker 5: achieved that.
- 12:38Speaker 2: So he knew what life was like.
- 12:41Speaker 5: He knew what people were really going through, and he
- 12:45Speaker 5: didn't discard it. It's like, yeah, I'm writing in limousines
- 12:49Speaker 5: to the met now, So he didn't live that being
- 12:52Speaker 5: the controlling factor. It was always who he was at
- 12:55Speaker 5: that time, where he came from, and who the people were.
- 12:58Speaker 2: When it's not a miss.
- 13:00Speaker 5: I don't think that when he left and moved to
- 13:04Speaker 5: New York. He moved to Harlem, you know, and he
- 13:07Speaker 5: was right next door to the YMCA. When he died,
- 13:10Speaker 5: he lived right next door to the YMCA, So that
- 13:13Speaker 5: wasn't an accidental cycle. I think that was always his
- 13:18Speaker 5: plan was to be with the people, and he talked
- 13:22Speaker 5: about being with his people and what he could do
- 13:25Speaker 5: for them. So I think that we remember him now,
- 13:28Speaker 5: we read him now because we still see ourselves in
- 13:31Speaker 5: his work. We see our lives, we see our history,
- 13:34Speaker 5: we see our families, we see our neighbors in what
- 13:37Speaker 5: he wrote, because that's what he did. He took those
- 13:41Speaker 5: ordinary people and made wonderful stories.
- 13:44Speaker 2: He told their stories, he made up stories about them.
- 13:47Speaker 5: And that's why I think it lasts so long, and
- 13:49Speaker 5: it's still lasting now.
- 13:52Speaker 2: Beautiful also is a son.
- 13:54Speaker 5: Beautiful also are the souls of my people?
- 13:58Speaker 2: Are my people.
- 14:07Speaker 1: This universality is why his poetry seamlessly transitions into music,
- 14:12Speaker 1: influencing not only jazz and blues, but laying the groundwork
- 14:16Speaker 1: for hip hop. Hugh's rhythms, cadences, and themes can be
- 14:20Speaker 1: compared to the verses of nineties conscious rappers like Nas
- 14:25Speaker 1: Common and Toothpop, who, like Hughes, spoke to the struggles
- 14:30Speaker 1: and dreams of their communities. His poems are the spiritual
- 14:34Speaker 1: ancestors of rap lyrics, the original anthems of resilience and pride.
- 14:41Speaker 1: Lanxon Hughes made art for the people, for his people,
- 14:46Speaker 1: and that's why his influence indoors. His poetry doesn't just
- 14:50Speaker 1: sit on a page. It moves, It sings, it marches.
- 14:54Speaker 1: It's very much alive today as it was in a
- 14:56Speaker 1: Harlem Renaissance, proving that the rhythm of the streets is timeless,
- 15:07Speaker 1: you are listening to black lids. To truly grasp the
- 15:14Speaker 1: depth of Langston Hughes's insight, we must look back to
- 15:18Speaker 1: a defining moment in his young life, a moment that
- 15:21Speaker 1: shaped the lens through which he would view the world.
- 15:26Speaker 1: Envision a young Langston now living with his godfaring aunt
- 15:30Speaker 1: and pipe laying uncle after the passing of his grandmother.
- 15:34Speaker 1: Although he loved his aunt and uncle, he was just
- 15:37Speaker 1: thirteen when his aunt brought him to church to get saved.
- 15:41Speaker 1: He sat nervously in a church in his hometown in Lawrence, Kansas, waiting, waiting.
- 15:50Speaker 1: It was supposed to be a moment of salvation, waiting, waiting,
- 15:56Speaker 1: a rite of passage into faith. The congregation full of
- 16:00Speaker 1: fervor and hope, waiting waiting for Langston to join the
- 16:07Speaker 1: procession of young souls saved by God, and his aunt
- 16:12Speaker 1: desperately awaiting to affirm her hope.
- 16:15Speaker 2: Waiting, waiting, waiting.
- 16:21Speaker 1: Lengthen set palm, sweating, waiting, waity, searching. He wanted to
- 16:30Speaker 1: feel something, anything, that would affirm the presence of a
- 16:34Speaker 1: higher power, but that moment never came. Eventually, under immense pressure,
- 16:41Speaker 1: he walked to the altar not out of faith, but
- 16:45Speaker 1: to fulfill his aunt's expectations and to end the spectacle.
- 16:52Speaker 1: That night, alone in his room, Lengthton cried not tears
- 16:57Speaker 1: of joy, but of profound disillusionment. He had been searching
- 17:03Speaker 1: for God and instead found the weight of expectation and pretense.
- 17:10Speaker 1: The walls were thin, and his aunt heard his tears
- 17:13Speaker 1: and assumed they were of glory. This was a moment
- 17:17Speaker 1: that would stay with him, shaping his understanding of faith
- 17:23Speaker 1: community in the gap between societal norms and individual truth.
- 17:31Speaker 5: We know that story because he's hearing and he's hearing,
- 17:36Speaker 5: and he's hearing that all of these children are all
- 17:40Speaker 5: going to be saved, and he knows some of them
- 17:43Speaker 5: are faking it because they talk about it. And then
- 17:45Speaker 5: when it comes to the point where he's last kid's
- 17:48Speaker 5: city and this service is not going to end if
- 17:50Speaker 5: he doesn't, then he goes to the altar and he
- 17:55Speaker 5: pretends to have seen Jesus. And that night, well, you know,
- 18:02Speaker 5: when he goes home, he hears his auntie and Oglerie
- 18:06Speaker 5: talking and she talks about how proud she is of
- 18:09Speaker 5: him for having found God, and chal Ree doesn't care
- 18:12Speaker 5: at all.
- 18:13Speaker 2: You know, he's not that religious person.
- 18:15Speaker 5: But then he feels guilt because he had lied to
- 18:19Speaker 5: people who had been so good to him. And I
- 18:22Speaker 5: think that's the reason that when he needed God, he
- 18:25Speaker 5: didn't come to He wasn't there, he didn't come to him.
- 18:29Speaker 5: So I think that's why we see this mixture of
- 18:33Speaker 5: emotions when it comes to religion in his work, because
- 18:37Speaker 5: we see those women that he writes about who actually
- 18:40Speaker 5: retreat to the church because their lives, their personal lives
- 18:44Speaker 5: are so heavy and they can't deal with themselves.
- 18:47Speaker 2: They go to the church. They retreat to the church.
- 18:50Speaker 2: But we also see.
- 18:51Speaker 5: Him going to church, and he has a good time
- 18:54Speaker 5: when he goes, but he goes to listen to the
- 18:56Speaker 5: music and listen to the people, not necessarily to connected God.
- 19:01Speaker 5: So we have then this split, this bifurcation of this
- 19:07Speaker 5: guy who was raised in the people that the person
- 19:10Speaker 5: that he loved most anti read, who took care of
- 19:14Speaker 5: him and took care of his grandmother, wanted to embed
- 19:18Speaker 5: this religion in him, and then him thinking as a
- 19:22Speaker 5: child that God didn't become when I needed it. So
- 19:27Speaker 5: what does he do with that? Well, he keeps going
- 19:30Speaker 5: to church in different churches, and somehow, I think at
- 19:34Speaker 5: times he was pretending just to be going for the
- 19:37Speaker 5: music because he got hurt of music other places, but
- 19:41Speaker 5: he also wanted to be in that community of blackness.
- 19:48Speaker 1: This pivotal experience would later ring throughout Hughes's work. His
- 19:53Speaker 1: poetry often wrestled with the tension between belief and skepticism,
- 19:59Speaker 1: hope and despair. In poems like The Negro Speaks of
- 20:04Speaker 1: Rivers and Goodbye Christ, he grapples with the spiritual and
- 20:09Speaker 1: existential questions that define not just his life, but the
- 20:14Speaker 1: lives of many. He understood the beauty and the power
- 20:19Speaker 1: of faith, but he also saw how it could be
- 20:22Speaker 1: weaponized or hollowed out by human failings. This experience marks
- 20:30Speaker 1: a consistent conflict that shows up throughout Langston's work. Later on,
- 20:38Speaker 1: after visiting the Soviet Union and seeing socialism working. Here
- 20:46Speaker 1: are a few words from the poem Goodbye Christ, where
- 20:50Speaker 1: Hughes calls for a rethinking of dominant American beliefs. Listen, Christ,
- 20:58Speaker 1: you did all right in your day, I reckon, but
- 21:01Speaker 1: that day's gone now. They ghosted you up A swell
- 21:05Speaker 1: story too, called it Bible, but it's dead now. The
- 21:09Speaker 1: popes and the preachers have made much money from him.
- 21:15Speaker 1: Linx and Hughes' search for truth beginning at that church.
- 21:18Speaker 1: Fuel was never about easy answers. It was about embracing
- 21:23Speaker 1: the complexity of life, the struggles and contradictions that make
- 21:30Speaker 1: us human. And in doing so, he became the unchallenged
- 21:35Speaker 1: spokesman of the black experience.
- 21:39Speaker 5: He wanted to be with those black folks in the church.
- 21:42Speaker 5: You wanted to share their life stories. You wanted to
- 21:45Speaker 5: hear their testimonies, and he wanted them to sing that
- 21:48Speaker 5: story out so that he could absorb that. And then
- 21:52Speaker 5: on the other hand, you know when he talks about music,
- 21:56Speaker 5: he talks a lot about the blues, and the blues
- 21:59Speaker 5: he says of this stories of those people that starts
- 22:02Speaker 5: in their gut and tells their stories. And when he
- 22:06Speaker 5: needed help, it was the people. And when he wanted
- 22:10Speaker 5: to fill hole, he went.
- 22:11Speaker 2: To the people.
- 22:13Speaker 5: It was the folk that helped Bangston. The folks stayed there,
- 22:18Speaker 5: the folk who helped him to reach his goals and
- 22:21Speaker 5: realize its dreams. So for me, I think Blangston's religion
- 22:29Speaker 5: and his non religion.
- 22:31Speaker 2: We're all a totally merchant into black life.
- 22:34Speaker 5: This is what it feels to be black and he
- 22:37Speaker 5: wants to feel all aspects of it.
- 22:41Speaker 1: Chocolate Darling out of a dream, born uns into the
- 22:45Speaker 1: Coco Brown whom pomegranate lived, pride of the town.
- 22:49Speaker 2: Lazy Hughes and the Death Poet.
- 22:53Speaker 1: What you just heard was Yassin Bay, the artist known
- 22:56Speaker 1: as most Death, reciting Hughes's Harlem Sweeties on an episode
- 23:01Speaker 1: of HBO's Deaf Poetry Jam. It's a powerful connection between
- 23:05Speaker 1: two eras, but also transcends time, where poetry becomes music,
- 23:11Speaker 1: becomes culture, becomes life itself. Hughes wasn't just a writer,
- 23:16Speaker 1: he was a witness. He documented the Black experience and
- 23:21Speaker 1: all its complexity, the pain and the perseverance, but also
- 23:26Speaker 1: the beauty. And then, like Harlem Sweeties, he celebrates the
- 23:31Speaker 1: beauty of Black women, the laughter and the loss. He
- 23:38Speaker 1: gave dignity to lives ignored, carving out spaces for those
- 23:42Speaker 1: stories to be heard.
- 23:44Speaker 5: Many of my poems are poems about the problems of
- 23:47Speaker 5: American democracy in general, as applied to race.
- 23:51Speaker 2: Leston Hughes is one of the greatest poets to ever exist.
- 23:55Speaker 2: I am fed up with Jim crow Laws.
- 23:57Speaker 1: People are cruel.
- 23:58Speaker 2: I'm afraid who ron.
- 24:01Speaker 3: Zyon the Weapon the Lord formed against those I prefer
- 24:04Speaker 3: the Lord mathematics.
- 24:05Speaker 2: Sob Jim Crows a poet like Blaxton Hughes and can't lose.
- 24:10Speaker 1: The very roots of hip hop are in Langston Hughes's work,
- 24:14Speaker 1: the flow of his words, the raw honesty of his storytelling.
- 24:18Speaker 1: They formed the blueprint for artists like Kendrick Andre three thousand,
- 24:23Speaker 1: Black Thought, Most Death. They embodied Hughes' core sensibility to
- 24:29Speaker 1: take the everyday struggles and triumphs of black life and
- 24:33Speaker 1: turn them into art. Leanthon Hughes was a poet of truth.
- 24:37Speaker 1: He didn't shy away from the tension between faith and doubt,
- 24:40Speaker 1: between family and interdependence. In fact, his work often peeled
- 24:45Speaker 1: back the layers of social norms to reveal what lies
- 24:49Speaker 1: beneath humanity. Lengthton didn't just write about the world, He
- 24:55Speaker 1: changed how we see it. He turned the Harlem streets
- 24:58Speaker 1: into poetry, transformed jazz and blues into structure, and made
- 25:03Speaker 1: a legacy that flows like the mighty River from the
- 25:07Speaker 1: Harlem Renaissance to the beats of hip hop. But before
- 25:12Speaker 1: the poet, before the legacy, there was the revival, a
- 25:19Speaker 1: moment of silence, a moment doubt and the moment when
- 25:25Speaker 1: Lens and Hughes began to discover his truth. It was
- 25:29Speaker 1: the birth of a vision, not bound but what should be,
- 25:35Speaker 1: but by what is?
- 25:40Speaker 3: You had to risk it all, you had to go.
- 25:42Speaker 2: Bro.
- 25:43Speaker 3: Now, I what I would have likes to what I
- 25:45Speaker 3: would have w duvoir, what I would have Fredrick Douglass.
- 25:49Speaker 1: As my team and I were wrapping up the edit
- 25:54Speaker 1: and final selects for this episode, we received word of
- 26:00Speaker 1: Nikki Giovanni's passing, so in honor of her, we end
- 26:07Speaker 1: on a poem she wrote, for links and heres, rest
- 26:12Speaker 1: and peace to you both. Thank you for your literature,
- 26:20Speaker 1: your art, your words, your poetry, and for your ancestral mentorship.
- 26:33Speaker 1: We are grateful.
- 26:36Speaker 3: If I took a rainbow ride, I could be there
- 26:38Speaker 3: by your side. Metaphor has its point of view, illusion
- 26:43Speaker 3: and illusion to meter verse, classical free poems, or what
- 26:47Speaker 3: you do to Me?
- 26:51Speaker 1: Join us next week as we explore more of Linkston's
- 26:54Speaker 1: life and work. Black Lit is a Black Effect original
- 27:02Speaker 1: series in partnership with iHeartMedia. Is written and created by myself,
- 27:07Speaker 1: Jack Queis Thomas and executive produce alongside Dolly s Bishop.
- 27:12Speaker 1: Chanelle Collins is the Director of Production, Head of Talent
- 27:16Speaker 1: Nicole Spence, writer producer Jason Torres, Our researcher and producer
- 27:21Speaker 1: is Jabari Davis, and the mix and sound design is
- 27:25Speaker 1: by the Humble Duane Crawford Special thanks to doctor CROMLETTA.
- 27:30Speaker 2: Williams.
- 27:30Speaker 1: Gratitude is an action, so I have to give praise
- 27:33Speaker 1: to those who took the time out to write a review.
- 27:35Speaker 1: Please keep sharing and we will promise to bring more
- 27:39Speaker 1: writers and greater episodes to you. Also, if you're looking
- 27:45Speaker 1: to become a writer or in search of a supportive
- 27:48Speaker 1: writing community, join me for a free creative writing session
- 27:52Speaker 1: on my website black writers Room dot com, BLK writer's
- 27:56Speaker 1: Room dot com, or hit me up directly from more
- 28:00Speaker 1: details at Underscore t h A T S P E
- 28:05Speaker 1: A c E.
- 28:06Speaker 2: That's piece