The University of Kansas
An Official Employee Publication From the Office of University Relations
Langston Hughes:
Poets, profs, actors to lead celebration
By Mary Jane Dunlap
KU is joining Lawrence in a major centennial celebration to honor the life and legacy of African-American poet Langston Hughes (1902-1967) in the community where he spent his childhood. He was born Feb. 1, 1902.
More than 75 speakers from the United States and abroad, including Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker and acclaimed actor Danny Glover, will join “Let America Be America Again.” The symposium, Jan. 31 and Feb. 7 to 10 at the Kansas Union, honors Hughes. Approximately 500 people are expected to attend.
“When he died, there wasn’t much recognition of his Lawrence connections,” said Maryemma Graham, symposium director. “This is our opportunity to bring Langston home.”
Since the symposium was first announced last June, the list of artists, entertainers, scholars and community activists coming to celebrate has grown, Graham said.
“Roy DeCarava, a photographer who knew and worked with Langston, and Amiri Baraka, a renowned poet, both plan to be here,” Graham said.
Symposium topics will cover Hughes’ poetry, his critics, the places he lived from the Midwest to Moscow, his ability as a writer to span generational interests from blues to bop to hip-hop, race and his role in the Harlem Renaissance.
In addition, the symposium includes a special workshop for teachers; plans for five symposium poets and Danny Glover visit 10 Lawrence schools Feb. 7; and the launch of a national poetry project supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Program details, registration information and the full list of speakers are available online at www.kuce.org/hughes or by calling KU Continuing Education (785) 864-5823 or toll free (877) 404-5823.
Walker’s “Remembering Langston,” pre-conference program is Jan. 31, and Glover’s “An Evening with Langston” is Feb. 7. Each event begins at 7 p.m. and is free to the public at the Lied Center. Vouchers are required for admission.
The vouchers are available at the Lied Center box office an hour before Walker’s presentation. Beginning Jan. 21, box offices at the Lied Center, Student Union Activities, or Murphy Hall will offer vouchers for Glover’s performance.
Speakers will include:
• Jabari Asim, Washington Post Book World senior editor.
• Amiri Baraka (a.k.a. LeRoi Jones), Newark, N.J., regarded as the father of the Black Arts Movement, is a poet, playwright, essayist, fictionalist and journalist.
• Emily Bernard, University of Vermont—Burlington, editor, “Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964.”
• Beverly Jarrett, director and editor in chief at the University of Missouri Press in Columbia, selected as publisher for the Collected Works of Langston Hughes.
• Paule Marshall, New York University distinguished chair in the creative writing program, novelist, and winner of a John Dos Passos Award for Literature, an American Book Award and a MacArthur Fellowship.
• Kevin Powell, founding staff member and former senior writer for Vibe magazine, a hip-hop historian and political activist, writes for Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Essence and The Washington Post.
• Arnold Rampersad, Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif., Sara Hart Kimball professor in the humanities, author and editor of more than a dozen books and essays on Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison and W.E.B. Du Bois; former MacArthur Fellow.
• Eugene Redmond, Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, poet and founding editor of Drumvoices Revue.
• Ishmael Reed, novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, publisher, television producer, editor of magazines and anthologies, and radio and TV commentator. His online literary magazine, Konch, is at www.ishmaelreedpub.com.
• Hazel Rowley, writer affiliated with the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
• Leslie Sanders, York University, Pa., co-edited The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, published in 2001 by the University of Missouri Press.
• Steven C. Tracy, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, author of Langston Hughes and the Blues and a recorded blues singer and harmonica player.
Arrangements for Danny Glover’s appearance were made through Greater Talent Network Inc., New York, N.Y.