Honoring Those Who Fight the Good Fight (using Langston Hughes' Words)

The heart of racism is fear, hatred, and self-loathing.  It seeks to isolate, dishearten, and obliterate.  Time and time again, those peoples most oppressed have repudiated the power it once held over them.  Across the ages and across the globe, racism has begun to lose it's grasp.  People now are chosing to shed their ignorance as they embrace the truth.  We are all members of the same race, the human race.  We are all brothers and sisters in the same large family called to love and serve one another.

I dedicate these Langston Hughes poems to those who have fought the fight.  To those who envisioned a world as it should be and not as it was.  The dream has dawned. May the reality of change shine down on the world.

Thank you for your valiance. 

I, Too, Sing America       
          by Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.


Mother to Son
     by Langston Hughes

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.