Under the Watchful (F.B.)Eye: J. Edgar Hoover & the F.B.I. versus African American Literature

Langston Hughes

I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. — "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" read by Hughes.


Full name: James Mercer Langston Hughes

Also known as: Langston Hughes

Born: February 1, 1901 in Joplin, MO

Died: May 22, 1967 in New York City, NY

Occupation: poet, author, playwright

Notable works: The Weary Blues (poetry collection, 1926); Mule Bone (with Zora Neale Hurston, 1931); Mulatto (1935)

"What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun?... Or does it explode?"
— from "Harlem"

Associations: affiliated with the Council for Pan-American Democracy, National Committee of the Communist Party

Honors and awards: won the Witter Bynner Undergraduate Poetry Prize (1926); awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (1935); awarded the Spingarn Medal (1960); inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame (2012)

 

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