#NJ Hall of Fame: Time to add #SenatorCoryBooker to this illustrious list?! #Democracy #newjersey #stanford #langstonhughes #GardenState #GOAT #uspol https://corybooker.com
Today in Labor History March 25, 1931: The authorities arrested the Scottsboro Boys in Alabama and charged them with rape. The Scottsboro Boys were nine African American youths, ages 13 to 20, falsely accused of raping two white women. A lynch mob tried to murder them before they had even been indicted. All-white juries convicted each of them. Several judges gave death sentences, a common practice in Alabama at the time for black men convicted of raping white women. The Communist Party and the NAACP fought to get the cases appealed and retried. Finally, after numerous retrials and years in harsh prisons, four of the Scottsboro Boys were acquitted and released. The other five were got sentences ranging from 75 years to death. All were released or escaped by 1946. Poet and playwright Langston Hughes wrote it in his work Scottsboro Limited. And Richard Wright's 1940 novel Native Son was influenced by the case.
#workingclass #LaborHistory #scottsboroboys #racism #lynching #rape #prison #langstonhughes #richardwright #novel #naacp #communism #books #author #writer #fiction #alabama #BlackMastadon @bookstadon
Langston Hughes Slept Here: A tour of the Vachel Lindsay Home
Springfield, Illinois, is a Lincoln-haunted town, but other attractions can be found there. Vachel Lindsay, once a much-celebrated American poet, haunts these neighborhoods. And poet Langston Hughes also hallows Springfield’s past.
#LangstonHughes #VachelLindsay #AbrahamLincoln #Springfield #Travel #Poetry #LiteraryTourism #writershomes
Tired
By Langston Hughes
I am so tired of waiting,
Aren't you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two —
And see what worms are eating
At the rind.
(Manually typed from a graphic on social media. Verified with Wikiquote.)
“What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?”
― #langstonhughes
#blackhistorymonth
#OnThisDay in 1902, #LangstonHughes, American #poet (Weary Blues), #playwright (Mulatto), and librettist (Troubled Island), born in Joplin, Missouri (d. 1967). 
#RIP
What is America to me?
Another person, one of us queer Black folks, covers some of what the U.S. is/was/could be.
https://poets.org/poem/let-america-be-america-again
#USPol
#UnrequitedLoyalty
#BlackMastodon
#BlackFedi
#Patriotism
#BlackThought
#LangstonHughes
#poetry
#LGBTQ
#LGBTQIA
9/10 
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
8/10
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for their pay?
7/10
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."
6/10
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
5/10
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
4/10
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
3/10
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
2/10
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
1/10
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain,
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
I wonder what sort of poems Langston Hughes would be writing now if he were still around?
“We have a country that is pickled in right-wing misinformation and rage.”
Anybody else hear #LangstonHughes asking what happens to a raisin in the sun?
Just me?
Mmkay 
"America was never America to me." Langston Hughes, "America"
