Page 10
University Daily Kansan
Thursday, April 29, 1965
Langston Hughes —
(Continued from page 1)
"I'm sure that nobody in Topeka throws stones now, but they do in Selma, and at the University of Mississippi." He said his experience at school taught him that there were many, many friendly white children, and he continued, "I am not very conscious of being a negro. I don't resent it."
"TODAY," he said to the audience. "I'm going to read you some poems by negro poets." He said two poets that influenced him during high school were Paul L. Dunbar and Carl Sandberg.
When his family moved to Lincoln, Neb. "Something happened that changed my life." He was elected class poet in the eighth grade. He began writing soon afterwards.
After graduation from high school, he went to Mexico with his father. Hughes then decided to go to Columbia, in New York, because, "I always wanted to see Harlem." With $13 in his pockets, he started to school.
Life in Harlem rang of Duke Ellington, Ethel Waters, and Paul Robeson, and it was a "center of burgeoning Negro culture," the poet said. However, there were no jobs to be found for Negroes, and Hughes began to write about negroes trying to get work. "Out of Work," done in the style of the traditional blues, by the poet, began, "I done walked down the street 'til the shoes wore off my feet . . ."
Africa, and the people that he saw there, inspired him to write, "My People." "The night is beautiful," so are the faces of my people," he began, "Beautiful is the sun., so are the souls of my people."
In Paris, he managed to get by on sign language, when he discovered that his high school french could not help him. With $7, he found "sign language couldn't get me a job." Hughes finally became a doorman in a night club. "It
was a gangster night club," he said and they fought in all languages."
While working as dishwasher in the Grandview Hotel, the beat of the hotel music got into his blood and "I tried to put it into my poetry."
In "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," Hughes read the lines that he wrote when he was 18, as he crossed the Mississippi River. He thought of the slaves that had been shipped down the river, and of Abe Lincoln's trip down the river on a raft. As the train crossed the river, the words, "I've known rivers, ancient of the world," came to him . . .
"THE NEXT poem." he said, "recalls the problem of the Negro and the ballot. It seems incredible to me that in America, home of democracy, millions of Americans cannot even vote. It is incredible that it's worth your life to vote." In another poem, he told the story of a young Negro boy who is harassed by the Ku Klux Klan.
"Ive never felt it to be a problem of black against white," the poet continued, "but of good people against bad people." He spoke of the many white people who sacrificed much, even their lives at times, to help free the slaves during the Civil War days. "How could the newly-freed Negroes have learned to read if not by the whites who risked their lives to help them become educated?" he asked.
He said, "I can't conceive of Negroes and whites fighting each other." He added that sometimes the children are the ones who suffer most. He told a story of a little colored girl whose parents moved north. She goes to a carnival, and stands before a merry-go round, wondering "Where's the horse for the kid who's black?"
"I'm sure that someday we'll have a horse for everyone," Hughes said.
Delta Delta Delta sorority and Phi Kappa Theta fraternity will have their annual Happy Hour Picnic for foreign students this Sunday at the Phi Kappa Theta chapter house, 1120 W. 11th St., from 1-4 p.m.
Happy Hour Planned
The picnic will be American style, and there will be a program of folk singing.
Judy Long Delta Delta Delta Surfers shirts in many colors to wear with Madras shorts. 12th & Oread VI 3-6369
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