University Daily Kansan / Friday, February 1, 1991
Campus/Area
3
School children create first Hughes Day
By Lara Gold
Kansan staff writer
A parent-teacher group and children from Lawrence schools have worked for the past year to create Dr.詹森's first Langston Hughes Day.
Today, their work becomes reality.
The celebration for Langston Hughes
will be held at City Hall with a proclamation reading by Mayor Shirley Martin-Smith.
Joanne Hurst, director of the civil rights commission, also will speak
The ceremony will continue at 12:15 p.m. at Pinckney Elementary School, 810 W. Sixth St., one of the schools Hughes attended.
Presentations and activities about Hughes, his life and his literature will be made by University of Kansas faculty, Lawrence residents and school children from Pinkney and New York Elementary School and
Central Junior High School.
Hughes spent most of his childhood in Lawrence and attended all three schools.
Langston Hughes was a 20th century poet whose works were known for their portrayal of the African-American experience in the United States. Langston Hughes day marks the beginning of Black History Month.
Robert Baker, a parent who acted
as a liaison between the parents and the City Commission, said. "Since his story parallels the diversity of the Pinckney area, we felt he was a good role model to increase Pinckney pride."
Baker said it was a coincidence that today was Hughes' birthday.
Fifth grade students from Pinkney and New York schools petitioned the City Commission on Jan. 22 to declare Feb. 1 as Langston
Hughes Day They also asked for money to mark the two houses where Hughes lived with his grandparents as a child in Lawrence.
Baker said the City Commission allocated more than $700 to mark the sites of the two houses Hughes lived in on Alabama and New York streets.
The school children have been the most important part of Langston Hughes Dav. he said.
Kris Hayden, a parent on the
committee to create Langston Hughes Day agreed.
She said the children had learned much in preparation for Langston Hughes Day. They have prepared a series of books that she illustrated some of his poetry.
"My youngest son, before he goes to bed, tells me about things Langston Hughes had to overcome such as loneliness and children have found him inspirational."
1990 census might bring grant money
Bv Vanessa Fuhrmans
Kansan staff writer
Only time will tell just how much impact the 1990 U.S. census figures for Lawrence will have on the city.
According to the final 1990 census figures released last week, the Lawrence population has grown nearly 25 percent since 1980. An increase of 12.47% people within a decade brought the total to 186,300.
Dave Guntter, a Lawrence city planner, said the figures reflected a tremendous amount of growth in the city.
The "vacancy rates were much lower this time," he said. "And yet we have addied over 1,000 housing units."
But city officials said the new figures not only meant good news in the past but also good news to come. The benefits of the population boom will trickle down when federal and state agencies use the data to allocate grants, which will include money for highways and social service programs.
Rod Bremby, assistant city manager, said the city would see how the count would effect federal financing in July after agencies began to distribute funds and grants.
State agencies, which currently are determining their two-year budgets, will adjust the 1990 census figures to discount the University of Kansas population.
Bremby said the city and county, along with several other Kansas counties, would ask the Legislature to amend the law that excludes the University, penitentiaries and other institutions.
Although city officials are glad about the 1990 federal count, the city and Douglas County have filed a suit to contest the data from a 1981 state court. The county residents who were not permanent Lawrence residents.
"One of the things we stressed was how critical it was for them to get back in Lawrence to do a follow-up before the students left in May," he said. "We were the shortfall that existed after the 1980 census."
Guentert said he thought the federal census data was accurate and recommended census workers for the job. (KU.edu)
Because many students already had left for the summer when census workers returned to complete their surveys in 1980, much of the KU population was excluded. Guntter said.
The city spent $5,000 last year to form the Complete Count Committee, a group that helped census workers and encouraged residents to complete and return surveys.
Just checking
Kim Kaplan, Chicago senior, holds a stethoscope to her chest and pedals a stationary bicycle as Sean Jacobson, Merriam senior (right), and Jennifer Myers, Topeka junior (left), check her blood pressure. The blood pressure check is part of an exercise physiology class called Clinical Fitness Evaluation Techniques. Instructor Graig Nickel said that the goal of the course was to teach exercise science students how to administer fitness tests.
5 groups granted revenue-code status
Kansan staff report
The Student Senate Finance Committee and Student Senate Executive Committee voted unanimously to grant revenue-code status to five groups last night.
Black Student Union, Lawrence Transitional Care Services, Rape Victim Support Services, Legal Services for Students and the University Daily Kansas received revenue code status
Groups that receive revenue-code status can be financed for two years by Senate.
In order to receive that designation, a group must prove to StudEx and the finance committee that it benefits the University of Kansas, that it benefits the College and that it needs (financing for a two-year basis).
year financing allowed the organization to plan longer-term projects with more certainty than if it had to be financed annually.
According to Senate rules and regulations, Senate can finance groups in three ways. It can finance groups every two years, annually and on a special-request basis.
Cedric Lockett, BSU president, said that two-
Craig Fulton, committee chairperson, said that the finance committee would begin budget hearings.
In budget hearings, finance committee will vote to approve or amend budgets of 17 groups that it and StudEx have approved as revenue-code groups.
Senate has $1,288,150 to allocate for next year.
The money comes from the $23 student activity fee
provided by the city.
Hughes fought discrimination through prose
Writer wanted to ease tensions
By Katie Chipman
Kansan staff writer
Langston Hughes was one of many African-American writers, artists and thinkers who contributed to the Harlem Renaissance, the first U.S. cultural movement to incorporate African-American voices fully.
Hughes, called the international voice of the oppressed, had an impact on the social and racial consciousness of the working class, writing to try to end discrimination.
Hughes lived in Lawrence at 732 Alabama St. until he was 12 years old. The house has been torn down, but his work has remained as an inspiration for those who speak out against inequality and injustice.
Hughes wrote about the lives of African-American people in the United States. His writings about the homeless, jobless men, mistreated women and hurted loved ones were viewed by some critics as stereotypical, but to Hughes, they were a reflection of the painful results of racism.
A versatile writer, Hughes wrote poetry, plays, novels, song lyrics, essays and journals. Until his death in 1967, he used his writings to expose and relieve the tension that existed between races.
Hughes' writings were an integral part of the Harlem Renaissance. He, along with writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and Rudolph Fisher, contributed to publications of the time that established African-American writers as commentators on the American experience.
Hughes' earliest memories were of Lawrence, where he lived with his
Two years after he graduated from high school, he started attending Columbia University in New York. Hughes attended Columbia because he was a math prodigy and he him with the education and atmosphere he needed to become a writer.
His parents separated a year after he was born, and his mother, Carolyn, often lived away from him while she searched for work. Hughes' father moved to Mexico and rarely corresponded with his son.
Instead, his experiences at Columbia made him acutely aware of racial discrimination. He wrote his first protest poem at the university and
While attending an all-white school in
Whitehall, he worked as a cash
caddie and he might power up in book
He began to write poetry when he was in high school in Cleveland. Hughes' later work was influenced by his unstable childhood, and some of the characters he wrote about had experiences similar to his own.
A versatile writer, Hughes wrote poetry, plays, novels, song lyrics, essays and journals. Until his death in 1967, he used his writings to expose and relieve the tension that existed between races.
dropped out after his first year.
Later, he attended Lincoln University, a school exclusively for African-American students. For his senior project in sociology, Hughes earned a bachelor's degree of the juniors and seniors at the school preferred an all-white faculty.
Hughes attacked the school's unsted policy against hiring African-American professors and caused an uproar at Lincoln.
During his first year at Lincoln, Hughes published his first volume of noetry.
Hughes' writing turned satirical in the 1930s, when he began writing about the prevailing attitudes of whites toward African-Americans. He became known as a crusader for social justice and political reform.
When Hughes wrote a poem for the eighth convention of the Communist Party in the United States, he caused much distress. It was the fact that he supported the party.
During World War II, Hughes was a member of the Writers War Committee, and although he was opposed to every aspect of the war, he was also helped by the United States win. He hoped that the conflict of war would end abroad and that the conflict of discrimination would end at home.