In recognition of Poetry Month, a program for all ages highlighting the life and work of the black poet and social activist Langston Hughes will be at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Iola Public Library. Doris and Bill Martin, Overland Park, will present the program.
Doris Martin said they got their start when Nanda Nunnelly of the Langston Hughes Cultural Society in Joplin “saw Bill’s storyboards and wanted to know if we would like to join and do research on Langston Hughes.” They have since become “history detectives” for the Society.
The Langston Hughes Cultural Society was founded to help bring awareness to Langston Hughes’ life and many works. “It helps increase appreciation of his writings and highlight the importance of them on civil rights, democracy, diversity, and inclusion,” said Doris. “Not only when Langston was alive, but today as well.”
An icon of the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes was born in Joplin, Mo., but he called Kansas his home, having spent his childhood around Lawrence, Topeka and Kansas City. After a short time in New York, Hughes spent the early 1920s traveling through West Africa and Europe, living in Paris and England. Hughes returned to the United States in 1924 and moved to Harlem after graduating from Lincoln University in 1929.
In the 1950s and ’60s, he served as mentor for many young black writers and has been described as having “set a tone, a standard of brotherhood and friendship and cooperation, for all of us to follow.”
Hughes’ first poem “Negro Speaks of Rivers,” was written at the age of 17 while on a train crossing the Mississippi. This would become one of his most famous writings. Its free verse is mature in its old-soul themes and continues to speak to the current social and political climate.
Hughes is perhaps best known for his role in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. He would go on to publish 15 books of poetry, write non-fiction and children’s books, as well as plays.
A special exhibit prepared by the Martins will remain at the Iola Public Library through April. The exhibit will showcase the life, work and legacy of Hughes via an audiovisual program, storyboards, and poems selected with youth in mind.
