TUESDAY.JAN.29.2002 LANGSTON HUGHES THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 7A There were crowds of children under the bright red and white wooden shelter at the park entrance. They were lining up at the gate — laughing, merry, clean little white children, pushing and yelling and giggling amiably. Sandy let Willie-Mae go first and he got in line behind her. The band was playing gaily inside . . . They were almost to the entrance now... There were just two boys in front of them. Willie-Mae held out her black little hand clutching the coupons. They moved forward. The man looked down. "Sorry," he said, "This party's for white kids." Willie-Mae did not understand. She stood holding out the coupons, waiting for the tall white man to take them. "Stand back, you two," he said, looking at Sandy as well. "I told you little darkies this wasn't your party." Come on—next little girl." And the line of white children pushed past Willie-Mea and Sandy, going into the park. Stunned, the two dark ones drew aside. — from "Children's Day," chapter 18, Not Without Laughter A Children's Day Party took place in 1910 at Lawrence's Woodland Park, sponsored by the Lawrence Daily Journal. The paper printed "all children in the city" were invited and would receive free admission, a free show, and free refreshments. But two days before the event, the paper printed this notice: The journal has been asked if the colored children will be in attendance. The Journal knows the colored children have no desire to attend a social event of this kind and that they will not want to go. This is purely a social affair and of course everyone in town knows what that means. Many years later, Hughes wrote the poem "Merry-Go-Round," which he read to KU students in 1957 and 1965. “Merry-Go-Round” Where is the Jim Crow section On this merry-go-round, Mister, cause I want to ride? Down South where I come from White and colored Cannot sit side by side Down South on the train There's a Jim Crow car. On the bus we're put in the But there ain't no back To a merry-go-round! Where's the horse For a kid that's black? Schultz said reading the poem was the poet's way of "realizing the pain of being a black boy in a segregated town." Laughter But the real point of Not Without Laughter and of much of Hughes' poetry is that, despite bad experiences, life is good, Graham said. Hughes showed that "there was always a kernel of beauty, of love or humor," he said. "No matter how hard life is, there's always this humor, this vitality that's there." Schultz said that, like Hughes' poetry, the novel celebrated African-American music, dance, stories and language. Sandy learns from characters who sine Hughes describes Sandy's discovery that "jokes are often not really jokes at all, but rather unpleasant realities that hurt unless you can think of something equally funny and unpleasant to say in return." blues songs and spirituals, tell stories and use humor to cope. Hughes enjoyed a subversive sense of humor, Graham said. As with the phrase "Jim Crow Row," Hughes liked to undermine words to make readers hear them differently, she said. Hughes was often called "The Negro Poet Laureate," but he liked to call himself "The Poet Low-Rate," and "a literary sharecropper." At one of his visits to KU, he told students that, once he realized that magazines paid by the line for poetry, he broke his lines in two to double his pay. Hughes' "Simple"columns and stories, about his conversations in a bar with his fictional friend, Jesse B. Semple, are known for that subversive humor. In "Cracker Prayer," Semple gives his version of a white racist's prayer: "As You is my father, Lord, lead me not into black pastures, but deliver me from integration, for Thine is the power to make all men as white as snow. But I would still know a Nigra even though he were white, by the way he sings, also by certain other characteristics which I will not go into now because a prayer is no place to explain everything ..." Hughes told Mayfair magazine in 1958 that many of his readers thought Semple was real. One wrote him to say, "You ought to let Semple write your columns for you — he's got more sense than you." Graham said Hughes conveyed his messages by weaving blues, gospel and jazz music into his writing. He wrote his poetry to sound like black people's voices and their music. Good morning Daddy! Am I you near? The boogie-boogie rumble of a dream deferred? — from "Montage of a Dream Deferred" Graham said Hughes' innovative use of language had been properly recognized only since his death. Before that, he was Merry-Go-Round Where is the Jim Crow section On this merry-go-round, Mister, cause I want to ride? Down South where I come from White and colored Cannot sit side by side Down South on the train There's a Jim Crow car. On the bus we're put in the back — But there ain't no back To a merry-go-round! Where's the horse For a kid that's black? - Langston Hughes seen more as a popular poet and racial poet rather than a "literary figure," she said. But Hughes is still a "popular poet" amidst academic recognition. "He has a tremendous following in the international community," Graham said. And next week, his childhood home will pay its own tribute. Get Involved this story was edited by Sarah Smarsh and Jeremy Clarkson. 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