[William A. Baurle]

If you don't want to read the poem (it runs to 100 pages in Spenserian stanza), that's fine, but at least read the dedicatory address. Why is it, when Black History Month comes around, I hear plenty about George Washington Carver, every year, but I never hear anything about this man?

Even without the poem, that address ought to have ensured that this man's name would be honored far more than it has been.

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/a/amverse/...;view=fulltext

[Michael Juster]

I would broaden the point. The poets of the Harlem Renaissance wrote a substantial amount of poetry, but it seems that colleges and anthologies focus on a very small percentage of their work, as in the case of Langston Hughes.

I suspect that the fact that much of the work doesn't fit into the easy narratives of the contemporary academic world accounts for so much work being neglected. For instance, most "dialect poems" by Harlem Renaissance poets make us cringe today, but nonetheless it is important for us to understand what they were trying to do and how their work differs from far less sympathetic "dialect poems" written by white authors with reprehensible motives. Hughes' writing for the stage, too, has been largely ignored.

[William A. Baurle]

I am a negro, and as such, I accept the situation, and enter the lists with poised lance. I disdain to whine over my "previous condition." I despise the doctrine of the slave's allowance. Petition and complaint are the language of imbecility and cowardice —the evidences of that puerile fear which extinguishes the soul. The time has come when all "Uncle Toms" and "Topsies" ought to die. Goody goodness is a sort of man worship: ignorance is its inspiration, fear its ministering spirit, and beggary its inheritance. Genius, in a right good soul, is the highest impress of the Divine Image on clay. It alone can have the respect of God and man. Dumb endurance is the stamp of heroism and mortal greatness. To it, all earth is place, all time opportunity, heaven companionship and God a friend.

- Albery Allson Whitman (1851 - 1901)

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/236576

[Eileen Cleary]

Hi Will.

We never hear about Samuel Allen either , who in my opinion is a living treasure and may not be around much longer.

Allen was Deputy Assistant District Attorney in New York City from 1946 to 1947, a civilian attorney with the U.S. Armed Forces in Europe (1951-1955), and in private practice in New York from 1956 to 1958. He taught law at Texas Southern University from 1958 to 1960. In 1961, he was appointed to the position of assistant general counsel of the U.S. Information Agency and served in that position until 1964. He was then named chief counsel of the Community Relations Service in Washington, D.C., a position he occupied from 1965 to 1968. In 1968, he was named Avalon Professor of Humanities at the Tuskegee Institute, where he taught for two years. In 1971 he became a professor of English at Boston University where he taught until he retired in 1981. Allen also taught at Wesleyan University (1970-71) and was writer-in-residence at Tuskegee and at Rutgers University

He was instrumental in public policy leading up to the NAACP, part of the negritude movement, a social scientist/writer/lawyer/professor. He also wrote under the name Paul Vesey. He is still alive and one of the most gentle of gentlemen one could ever meet. We don't hear enough about so many unsung people. He's one of them.

Don't know if I'm allowed to post a poem of his in this thread-but they are easy to pull up online.

Eileen

[William A. Baurle]

Thanks for introducing me to Mr. Allen.

[Quincy Lehr]

Per Mike's point--I don't think that's quite fair, at least in places with decent-sized African American studies programs. I myself tend to use McKay in classes more than Hughes--in part because McKay serves my purposes as a historian a bit better, in part because I rate him higher as a poet than Hughes.