Wednesday, February 17, 1999
The University Daily Kansan
Section A · Page 7
Downtown museum display documents poet's childhood
By Dan Curry
Kansan staff writer
When Langston Hughes, godfather of the Harlem Renaissance, was in seventh grade, his teacher made him sit in the back row with the other African-American children.
Although the superintendent expelled him, years later Hughes led the intense creativity movement that filled Harlem in the years after World War II.
Hughes, who was then living in Lawrence, placed a sign on his desk that read, "Jim Crow Row."
A current display at Watkins Community Museum of History, 1047 Massachusetts St., documents Hughes' years in Lawrence, where he lived from 1903 to 1915. The display will continue for at least the next few months.
Hughes wrote plays, stories, musicals, newspaper columns and poems about African-American life, said Maryemma Graham, professor of English and former Langston Hughes visiting professor. She said Hughes made two major contributions to American culture.
"He brought the culture of the folk into recognition as a legitimate literary form," she said. "Up to that point, what we call African-American literature was not looked at favorably. He refused to dress it up to make it more accessible to the mainstream. He gave respect to the way African Americans speak and think and carry on their daily lives."
She said Hughes was also a godfather in the Harlem Renaissance.
She said aspiring African-American writers would travel to Harlem to talk to Hughes.
"Once you were his friend, he maintained a relationship with you." Graham said.
Maria Butler, Lawrence resident, completed the exhibit for a class while working on her master's degree in historical administration and museum studies at the University of Kansas.
She had read Hughes' novel, "Not Without Laughter," which Hughes developed from his life in Lawrence.
"What I tried to do with that exhibit is draw parallels between incidents in the book and incidents that actually happened," Butler said.
Hughes spent most of his childhood living with his grandmother at 732 Alabama St.
After his grandmother died, Hughes moved in with a family at 731 New York St.
At the age of 13, he left Lawrence to join his mother in Lincoln, Ill., in the summer of 1915.
Hughes returned to Lawrence three times and gave poetry readings at the Kansas Union in 1958 and 1965.
"We think of Langston Hughes as being basically one of the native sons of Lawrence," said Chancellor Robert Hemenway, who taught a class about Hughes last year.
Langston Hughes, African-American poet, is known as the godfather of Harlem Renaissance. Hughes lived in Lawrence from 1903 to 1915. Photo courtesy of University Archives.
Harlem
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Langston Hughes
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