Langston Hughes: A Legacy of Words and Ideas
Langston Hughes: A Legacy of Words and Ideas
The Cleveland Institute of Music
Distance Learning Program
Activity Plan and Resource Guide
Music Selections:
"Strange Fruit"
Performed by Billie Holliday
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers"
Words by Langston Hughes
Music by Howard Swanson
"Lonely House"
Words by Langston Hughes
Music by Kurt Weill
©2003 Cleveland Institute of Music
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Langston Hughes: A Legacy of Words and Ideas
Langston Hughes: A Legacy of Words and Ideas
Activity Plan and Resource Guide
OBJECTIVES:
•
Students will learn about artists who use their art form to promote their ideas and ideals
•
Students will examine the culture and times in which Langston Hughes lived and how that
informed and influenced his works
•
Students will discover musical works which incorporate Langston Hughes' poetry
NATIONAL STANDARDS IN EDUCATION:
(http://www.educationworld.com/standards/)
NA.5-8.8 UNDERSTANDING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MUSIC, THE OTHER
ARTS, AND DISCIPLINES OUTSIDE THE ARTS
•
Students compare in two or more arts how the characteristic materials of each art (that is,
sound in music, visual stimuli in visual arts, movement in dance, human
interrelationships in theatre) can be used to transform similar events, scenes, emotions, or
ideas into works of art
•
Students describe ways in which the principles and subject matter of other disciplines
taught in the school are interrelated with those of music (e.g., language arts: issues to be
considered in setting texts to music; mathematics: frequency ratios of intervals; sciences:
the human hearing process and hazards to hearing; social studies: historical and social
events and movements chronicled in or influenced by musical works)
NA-M.9-12.8 UNDERSTANDING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MUSIC, THE OTHER
ARTS, AND DISCIPLINES OUTSIDE THE ARTS
•
Students explain how elements, artistic processes (such as imagination or craftsmanship),
and organizational principles (such as unity and variety or repetition and contrast) are
used in similar and distinctive ways in the various arts and cite examples
•
Students compare characteristics of two or more arts within a particular historical period
or style and cite examples from various cultures
•
Students explain ways in which the principles and subject matter of various disciplines
outside the arts are interrelated with those of music (e.g., language arts: compare the
ability of music and literature to convey images, feelings, and meanings; physics:
describe the physical basis of tone production in string, wind, percussion, and electronic
instruments and the human voice and of the transformation and perception of sound)
•
Students compare the uses of characteristic elements, artistic processes, and
organizational principles among the arts in different historical periods and different
cultures
•
Students explain how the roles of creators, performers, and others involved in the
production and presentation of the arts are similar to and different from one another in the
various arts (e.g., creators: painters, composers, choreographers, playwrights; performers:
instrumentalists, singers, dancers, actors; others: conductors, costumers, directors,
lighting designers)
©2003 Cleveland Institute of Music
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Langston Hughes: A Legacy of Words and Ideas
NL-ENG.K-12.1 READING FOR PERSPECTIVE
•
Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an
understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States
and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and
demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among
these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
NL-ENG.K-12.2 UNDERSTANDING THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE
•
Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to
build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical,
aesthetic) of human experience.
NL-ENG.K-12.6 APPLYING KNOWLEDGE
•
Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g.,
spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to
create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
NL-ENG.K-12.9 MULTICULTURAL UNDERSTANDING
•
Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language
use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions,
and social roles.
OHIO STANDARDS IN EDUCATION:
(http://www.ode.state.oh.us)
Benchmark : Concepts of Print, Comprehension Strategies and Self-Monitoring Strategies
Grades Eight through Twelve
2. Answer literal, inferential, evaluative and synthesizing questions to demonstrate
comprehension of grade-appropriate print texts and electronic and visual media.
Benchmark : Literary Text
Grade Eight
5. Interpret universal themes across different works by the same author and different authors.
8. Explain ways in which the author conveys mood and tone through word choice, figurative
language, and syntax.
9. Examine symbols used in literary texts.
Grade Nine
5. Interpret universal themes across different works by the same author and different authors.
9. Analyze ways in which the author conveys mood and tone through word choice, figurative
language and syntax.
10. Explain how authors use symbols to create broader meanings.
Grade Ten
4. Interpret universal themes across different works by the same author or by different authors.
8. Analyze the author’s use of point of view, mood and tone.
9. Explain how authors use symbols to create broader meanings.
©2003 Cleveland Institute of Music
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Langston Hughes: A Legacy of Words and Ideas
Grade Eleven
2. Analyze the historical, social and cultural context of setting.
5. Analyze variations of universal themes in literary texts.
Grade Twelve
2. Analyze the historical, social and cultural context of setting.
5. Analyze variations of universal themes in literary texts.
.
PRE-SESSION ACTIVITIES:
Please make sure that each student has a copy of the poems provided for the videoconference. You may
choose to have the students read through these texts as a homework assignment or as an in-class study
prior to the videoconference.
©2003 Cleveland Institute of Music
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Langston Hughes: A Legacy of Words and Ideas
Langston Hughes: A Brief History
Langston Hughes was born (1902) in Joplin, Missouri and died (1967) in Harlem. During his lifetime he
established himself as one of the most popular and influential writers of the twentieth century. Langston
Hughes was a pioneer as an African American poet, novelist and playwright.
Hughes authored 16 books of poems, two novels, seven collections of short stories, two autobiographies,
five nonfiction works, nine children’s books, and more than 30 plays. He edited nine anthologies and
translated many literary works from French and Spanish.
Although he traveled throughout the world and resided mostly in New York City’s Harlem, Cleveland,
Ohio holds a special place in the biography of Langston Hughes. From 1916 to 1920 he attended Central
High School and taught art classes at Karamu House. It was during these years that his writing skills
developed.
Karamu House is important to Langston Hughes because it was at Karamu House that some of his plays
were developed and produced for the first time. Hughes visited Karamu continually throughout his life as
he sought inspiration for his writings. Langston Hughes even wrote a poem celebrating his long-time
special relationship to Karamu’s founders, Russell and Rowena Jelliffe.
As a poet, Langston Hughes expressed the struggles and triumphs of black life in American society
throughout the nation’s history. Through his poems, significant African American historical figures and
social themes are depicted and celebrated. Langston Hughes was able to create new forms through which
African-American culture could be read and understood. In the Hughes era, African American
contributions were thought, by white Americans to be obscure and minimal.
Langston was one of many talented poets of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s – in the company of
James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, and others. He embraced African-American
jazz rhythms and was one of the first black writers to attempt to make a profitable career out of his
writing. Hughes incorporated blues, spirituals, colloquial speech and folk ways in his poetry.
An influential cultural organizer, Hughes published numerous black anthologies and began black
theater groups in Los Angeles and Chicago, as well as New York City. He also wrote effective
journalism, creating the character Jesse B. Semple (“simple”) to express social commentary.
One of his most beloved poems, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (1921, 1925), embraces his
African – and universal - heritage in a grand epic catalogue. The poem suggests that, like the
great rivers of the world, African culture will endure and deepen.
©2003 Cleveland Institute of Music
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Langston Hughes: A Legacy of Words and Ideas
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
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.
©2003 Cleveland Institute of Music
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Langston Hughes: A Legacy of Words and Ideas
Call to Creation
Listen!
All you beauty-makers,
Give up beauty for a moment.
Look at harshness, look at pain,
Look at life again.
Look at hungry babies crying,
Listen to the rich men lying,
Look at starving China dying.
Hear the rumble in the East:
”In spite of all,
Life must not cease.”
In India with folded arms,
In China with the guns,
In Africa with bitter smile See where the murmur runs:
“Life must not cease,
Because the fat and greedy ones
Proclaim their thieving peace.”
Their peace much worse than war and deathFor this is better than living breath:
Free! To be Free!
Listen!
Futile beauty-makersWork for a while with the pattern-breakers!
Come for a march with the new-world makers:
Let beauty be!
©2003 Cleveland Institute of Music
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Langston Hughes: A Legacy of Words and Ideas
The Black Clown
You laugh
Because I’m poor and black and funnyNot the same as youBecause my mind is dull
And dice instead of books will do
For me to play with
When the day is through.
I am the fool of the whole world.
Laugh and push me down.
Only in song and laughter
I rise again-a black clown.
Strike up the music.
Let it be gay.
Only in joy
Can a clown have his day.
God! Give me the spotted
Garments of a clown
So that the pain and the shame
Will not pull me down.
Nigger! Nigger! Nigger!
Scorn pushing me down.
Laugh at me! Laugh at me!
Just a black clown!
Freedom!
Abe Lincoln done set me freeOne little moment
To dance with glee.
Laugh at me then,
All the world roundFrom Africa to Georgia
I’m only a clown!
Then sadness againNo land, no house, no job,
No place to go.
But no! Not forever
Like this will I be:
Here are my hands
That can really make me free!
Black- in a white world
Where cold winds blow.
The long struggle for life:
No schools, no workNot wanted here; not needed thereBlack-you can die.
Nobody will care-
Three hundred years
In the cotton and the cane,
Plowing and reaping
With no gainEmpty handed as I began.
Yet clinging to the ladder,
Round by round,
Trying to climb up,
Forever pushed down.
A slave-under the whip,
Beaten and sore.
God! Give me the laughter
That I can stand more.
Day after day
White spit in my faceWorker and clown am I
For the “civilized” race.
©2003 Cleveland Institute of Music
Suffer and struggle.
Work, pray, and fight.
Smash my way through
To manhood’s true right.
Say to all foemen:
You can’t keep me down!
Tear off the garments
That make me a clown!
Rise from the bottom,
Out of the slime!
Look at the stars yonder
Calling through time!
Cry to the world
That all might understand:
I once was a black clown
But nowI’m a man!
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Langston Hughes: A Legacy of Words and Ideas
The Negro Mother
Children, I come back today
To tell you a story of the long dark way
That I had to climb, that I had to know
In order that the race might live and grow.
Look at my face – dark as the nightBut shining like the sun with love’s true light.
I am the child they stole from the sand
Three hundred years ago in Africa’s land.
I am the dark girl who crossed the wide sea
Carrying in my body the seed of the free.
I am the woman who worked in the field
Bringing the cotton and the corn to yield.
I am the one who labored as a slave,
Beaten and mistreated for the work that I gave –
Children sold away from me, husband sold, too.
No safety, no love, no respect was I due.
Three hundred years in the deepest South:
But God put a song and a prayer in my mouth.
God put a dream like steel in my soul.
Now, through my children, I’m reaching the goal.
Now, through my children, young and free,
I realize the blessings denied to me.
I couldn’t read then, I couldn’t write.
I had nothing, back there in the night.
Sometimes the valley was filled with tears,
But I kept trudging on through the lonely years.
Sometimes, the road was hot with sun,
But I had to keep on till my work was done:
I had to keep on! No stopping for me –
I was the seed of the coming Free.
I nourished the dream that nothing could smother
Deep in my breast – the Negro mother.
I had only hope then, but now through you,
Dark ones of today, my dreams must come true:
All you dark children in the world out there:
Remember my sweat, my pain, my despair.
Remember my years heavy with sorrow –
And make of those years a torch for tomorrow.
Make of my past a road to the light
Out of the darkness, the ignorance, the night.
Lift high my banner out of the dust.
Stand like free men supporting my trust.
Believe in the right, let none push you back.
Remember the whip and the slaver’s track.
©2003 Cleveland Institute of Music
Remember how the strong in struggle and strife
Still bar you the way, and deny you life –
But march ever forward, breaking down bars.
And look ever upward at the sun and the stars.
Oh, my dark children, may my dreams and my prayers
Impel you forever up the great stairs –
For I will be with you till no white brother
Dares keep down the children of the Negro mother.
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Langston Hughes: A Legacy of Words and Ideas
Lonely House
At night when everything is quiet
This old house seems to breathe a sigh
Sometimes I hear a neighbor snoring
Sometimes I her a baby cry
Sometimes I can hear a staircase creaking
Sometimes a distant telephone
Oh, and when the night settles down again
This old house and I are all alone
Lonely house, lonely me
Funny with so many neighbors
How lonesome you can be
Lonely town, lonely street
Funny, you can be so lonely
With all these folks around
I guess there must be something
I don't comprehend
Sparrows have companions
Even stray dogs have a friend
The night for me is not romantic
Unhook the stars and take them down
I'm lonely in this lonely town, in this lonely house
The night, the night for me is not romantic
Unhook the stars and take them down
I'm lonely in this lonely town, in this lonely house
At night when everything is quiet
©2003 Cleveland Institute of Music
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Langston Hughes: A Legacy of Words and Ideas
LANGSTON HUGHES SELECTED CHRONOLOGY
1902
1919
1920
1921
1929
1930
1932
1941
1953
1961
1967
Born in Joplin, Missouri
Graduated High School in Cleveland, Ohio
Wrote the poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.”
Moved to Harlem in New York City
Graduated from Lincoln University
Published first novel, “Not Without Laughter.”
Traveled to the Soviet Union
Began writing weekly column for the Chicago Defender
Appeared before the House Un-American Affairs Committee
wrote the musical play, ”Black Nativity.”
Died in New York City
©2003 Cleveland Institute of Music
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Langston Hughes: A Legacy of Words and Ideas
Langston Hughes: A Legacy of Words and Ideas
Activity Plan and Resource Guide
VIDEOCONFERENCE ACTIVITIES
INTRODUCTION
Brief discussion of Langston Hughes's life.
MUSICAL SELECTION
"Strange Fruit" performed by Billie Holliday
ACTIVITY
Discuss how artists use their art form to dispel their ideas into the world - Billie Holliday with
"Strange Fruit"; Pablo Picasso with Guernica
MUSICAL SELECTION
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" Words by Langston Hughes, Music by Howard Swanson
ACTIVITY
Discuss how the image of the river figures into this poem.
THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE
"Black Clown" performed by an actor from Cleveland's Karamu House Theatre
ACTIVITY
Discuss the image of the black clown and its history (minstrel shows)
THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE
"Call to Creation" performed by an actor from Cleveland's Karamu House Theatre
ACTIVITY
Examine Hughes' views on beauty and life as portrayed in this poem
THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE
"Negro Mother" performed by an actor from Cleveland's Karamu House Theatre
ACTIVITY
Discuss the image of the African American woman as presented by Hughes in this work
MUSICAL SELECTION
"Lonely House" Words by Langston Hughes, Music by Kurt Weill
ACTIVITY
Examine the contrast presented by Hughes in this work between the bustling city and the
loneliness of man
©2003 Cleveland Institute of Music
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