February is Black History Month and February 1st is the birthday of James Langston Hughes, perhaps America’s most famous African American poet, playwright, novelist, and travel writer, and a major figure of the Harlem Renaissance.
Hughes was born into an abolitionist and politically-active family on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. Langston was the great-great-grandson of Charles Henry Langston, who was one of the first two Black men admitted to Oberlin College (the other was his brother, Gideon).
Charles's other brother was John Mercer Langston, an educator, civil rights leader, a visionary reformer and an accomplished statesman and lawyer. John Mercer was the first Black American to be elected to public office ~ in 1855, as the Town Clerk in Brownhelm, OH; he later served on the Oberlin City Council and the Board of Education and then as the first African-American elected to (the 51st) Congress from Virginia ~ this was the late-1860's! John Mercer earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees at Oberlin, of which he wrote:
To Oberlin belongs the honor of being the first institution of learning in the world to give woman equal educational opportunities and advantages with man. To it, too, belongs the honor of being the first college of the United States to accept the negro student and give him equal educational opportunities and advantages with the white.
But John Mercer was denied entry to Oberlin's law school. Embittered but undeterred, he read law in the office of Philemon Bliss, a lawyer, legislator and anti-slavery activist from Elyria, OH. Twelve months later, John Mercer stood before a committee of three of the five-member District Court and was examined on his knowledge of the law. They unanimously certified Langston's qualifications, but felt that as a Black man, under Ohio's Black Laws, he could not engage in a lawsuit against whites. They returned to an 1842 state supreme court decision which said a "nearer White than Black" mulatto was entitled to the rights of a white man. Ruling Langston "White enough", they admitted him to the Ohio state bar in 1854.
This is how John Mercer became the first Black lawyer in Ohio (!), where he practiced law for 15 years. In 1868, he founded the Law School at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and (in the tradition of Oberlin) made Howard's hallmark race and gender diversity; he later served as Acting President of Howard.
All 3 Langston brothers were committed to the Black freedom movement, organizing antislavery societies at both the state and local level, helping runaway slaves to escape along the Ohio section of the Underground Railroad, and giving public addresses about social reform, which included appeals for women's rights and temperance.
This is the family Langston Hughes was born into ~ he had no choice, really, but to become the celebrated writer and activist that we all now admire and respect. And so I leave you with one of my favorite essay/poems by Hughes, the (sadly) still-relevant and timely, Let America Be America Again (1938) (in particular I love the last line ~ yes, let's work together as green states):
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!
I adore his Hughes' work. Let America be America Again gives me a lump in my throat, even though I'm not an American myself. I also love Will VE Day be ME Day Too?
Posted by: Laura | Wednesday, February 02, 2005 at 01:39 AM