December 24, 2024 • 41 mins
Today, we delve deeper into Langston Hughes's life and work, exploring the cultural and historical contexts that shaped his voice. The conversation highlights the significance of oral traditions, the influence of blues on Hughes' poetry, and the importance of preserving Black culture through the work of scholars like Dr. William Ferris and Dr. Akiba Sullivan Harper. We also gain insight into Hughes' humor and social commentary through his Simple series and his global perspective as a writer. Overall, it emphasizes Hughes' enduring legacy and relevance in contemporary literature.
Learn More: The Black Archives of Mid-America
Read: Not So Simple: The "Simple" Stories by Langston Hughes
Listen: Voices of Mississippi: Artists and Musicians Documented by William Ferris
Connect with the Host: Jacquees Thomas @_ThatsPeace
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is Jacqueesse Thomas, and you're listening to Black Lid,
a podcast about black literature and the stories behind the storytellers.
Last week we had the privilege of hearing from doctor Karma.
As we begin today's episode, I want you to share
the very last thing she said, a note to readers
(00:23):
that perfectly captures the essence of this podcast. Keep these
words in mind as we dive deeper into the life
of Lengths and Hughes, exploring the world he inhabited and
the cultural forces that shaped his voice.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
And all of my twenty years of teaching college, I
always told my students in my literature classes that you
have to learn literature and context. You know, it's nice
enough to just read the piece and decide how you
feel about it or what's going on. You really need
to go deeper and find out what is going on,
(01:04):
what's happening with the writer, what's going on in the times,
going on in the culture, and then it's an even
deeper read. And I think that's true for likes to years.
If you know the context of his life and his
work and his experiences, then I think anything you read
by him becomes even more involved, even richer even more
(01:29):
rewarding to the reader.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
The journey isn't just about celebrating Hughs's work. It's about
understanding why his stories matter, how they've endured, and what
they reveal about the origins of storytelling itself. His words
were born from a lineage of oral traditions and the
(01:55):
rhythm of jazz and blues. They capture the collective dreams,
struggles and triumphs of a people who turned pain into
poetry and resilience into song. And this episode will not
only delve into his writings, but we'll also start to
(02:16):
unpack some of the many, many layers of Hughes, as
well as his deep connections to folklore and how it
shaped his art. We'll explore not just what Hughes wrote,
but why he wrote and now his words continue to
ripple through time lines from the poem The Wary.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Blues Droning, a drowsy syncopated.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Tune opening with the words drowning and drowsy mirrors this hypnotic,
almost overwhelming pull to the music, both a surrender to
the melody and a sense of emotional heaviness. While drowsy
(03:11):
suggests a dreamlike state induced by the sounds. The syncopated
tune refers to the irregular rhythms of blues and jazz.
The line not only describes the music, but also reflects
the emotional state evokes. Tired, melancholic, yet deeply moving.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Rocking back and forth, Rocking back and forth makes you
feel the energy of the musicians in the audience as
they're immersed and swaying. Mellow kroon. Someone using their voice
(04:05):
in a sentimental manner, expressive and as a form of solence.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
I heard a Negro play.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Heard a Negro clay the simple yet profound, a signature
of links and hughes. These lines helped to situate the
cultural contexts of the performance, rooting the music in African
American identity and struggle. By highlighting the act of listening,
(04:38):
he invites the readers to witness the performance alongside him,
bridging the personal and the collective expression.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Now, after he's rooted us into African American identity, he
puts us the place down on Lenox Avenue the other night.
Lenox Avenue, located in Harlem, served as the heart of
the Harlem Renaissance. By adding this line, it grounds the
(05:15):
poem in a specific cultural and historic moment. The other
night gives it this energy of typical, every day casual.
Yet the music transcends its ordinary setting to speak to
something much more universal. A lot of us think of
(05:38):
lengths and hughes in The first word that comes to
mind is poet, and that's not wrong. But have you
ever used the term folklorists? Today? I would like to
introduce a man by the name of doctor William Ferris Bill.
He prefers whose life work is a testment to the
(06:00):
power of memory and preservation of culture. Doctor Parris grew
up in the a farm in Mississippi, where his earliest
memories are shaped in the rhythms of real life.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
At a very early age, like three or four, a
black lady every first Sunday would take me to a
church on the farm, and I learned to sing the
hymns and learned to love the sermons. And as I
grew up, I realized there were no hymnals in the church,
(06:38):
and that when the families were no longer there, the
music would disappear. And as a teenager I started recording
and photographing the services as a way of preserving those
for the future generation. And that led me to a
(06:58):
career in preserving Black culture, blues, storytelling, quilt making, most
of which is transmitted orally. There are no books traditionally
that had been written about these worlds, and so if
(07:18):
you don't record and photograph, you're not going to have
a record, and to me, that was a crime.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Armed with a simple recorder and a camera, he began
documenting the church services, capturing the hymns, the voices, and
the community that made him, and ensuring that the stories
and the traditions of those people would not be forgotten.
That mission became the foundation of doctor Ferris's life's work.
(07:52):
It led him to a career dedicated to preserving Black
culture in all of its forms. He recognized the fragility
of culture and made it his mission to ensure its survival.
Doctor Ferris's story is one of foresight, passion, and deep
(08:14):
respect for the tradition that shape his early life.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
I dedicated my life to the people who raised me
in that church and to others that I met along
the way, some quite famous like BB King and Quincy
Jones and Alice Walker, but they all understood. We were
doing a common kind of journey of love for people
(08:44):
and the oral traditions that had been around for thousands
of years and were the way to the heart of
the worlds that I've known as a Southerner.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Doctor Bill Ferris is a Grammy Award winning renowned scholar
of Southern culture, folklore, and African American music. Through his work,
the voices, songs, and stories of a community have been
intentionally archived over the last sixty years. Folklore is defined
(09:19):
as the collection of expressive culture that a group of
people share. But as we continue this conversation, so will
the depths of its meaning.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Well. Folklore basically is oral tradition and it exists everywhere
in the world in Africa. In Nigeria, the writers Chinwa
Chebei and Amos Tuck use oral traditions in their novels
(09:51):
in the same way that Ralph Ellison uses the Blues
in The Invisible Man and Alice Walker in The Color Purple.
So in the South, you have a geographic area where
I grew up and worked, but many Southerners, especially black families,
(10:15):
migrated for good reason out of the South.
Speaker 4 (10:18):
I pick up my life and take it away on
a one way ticket, gone up North, gone out, we gone.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
So you have Southern focal are alive and well in
Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance through the poems of poets
like Langston Hughes, who befriended W. C. Handy, the father
of the blues, who was the first to compose blues
(10:52):
as a music form, and Hughes was writing blues poems,
and they co authored a book of blues that was
an important kind of beginning for what is now called
a blues poem, which Alice Walker and many poets have
(11:16):
written blues poems over the years.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
Sometimes in writing the poetry of the blues, I've tried
to write in the exact format of the traditional folk blues.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
And so oral traditions can be in any location, and
for the Black voice, those can be in Mississippi, they
can be in Harlem, in the case of Richard Wright,
they can be in Paris. But those oral traditions are
(11:54):
the heart of the creative output, not only of music
and literature, but of art and artists like Romere Bearden
of the dance, and the work of people like Alvin
Ailey and in jazz, Duke Ellington, one of our great
(12:16):
American composers who created a kind of jazz world. But
much of that is connected to the blues and to
the folk voices. So those are the waters in which
I've swum for over eighty years. I'm grateful for all
(12:39):
it's taught me.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Views like Ellington immersed himself in Black folk tradition. He
understood that blues wasn't just music, that it far exceeded
a singular category of genre. It was purposeful, it was
a way of life.
Speaker 5 (13:01):
The Negro has had a major influence on the total
culture of America, which of course in the American music
through the greatest in the world.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
These literary giants drew inspiration from the oral traditions of
their cultures. Hughes found his muse and the vibrant folklore
of the American South. The Great Migration brought a wave
of Southern Black culture to the North, transforming Harlem into
a hot bed of creativity. W. C.
Speaker 6 (13:28):
Handy wrote, Saint Louis Blues. So let's have a great
hand for mister Handy, won't you please. W. C.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Handy, the father of blues, collaborated with Langston Hughes to
create a powerful fusion of poetry and music.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
The Weary Blues, and all of his poems have an
affinity with the blues. And when he worked with W. C. Handy,
it's like Handy moved from Memphis to New York and
they sort of met through social circles and they had
(14:13):
an affinity with each other. They were both writing poems,
one Handy where his poems were performed and Hughes's were read.
But they worked together to create blues that was both
on the printed page and performed.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Live, deeply connected to the stories of his Southern roots.
Hughes collaboration with W. C. Handy wasn't just a meeting
of artistic minds. It was a fusion of two powerful
forms of expression, the written word and the soulful melody
of the blues.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Oral tradition which is rooted in the and a blue
singer will learn from an older blues singer, and those
are the traditional oral traditions. Then you have the written
word and the word of the book and formally trained
(15:19):
musicians and writers like Langston Hughes, but they ground their poetry,
their short stories, their fiction in storytelling and oral traditions
including the music, and so you have basically the blues
(15:43):
and storytelling in oral tradition that are used as a
resource by classically trained musicians like Duke Ellington, Quincy Jones
and You Have Story. He's used by writers like Alice
Walker and Ralph Ellison and many others. It's kind of
(16:08):
an open relationship between the formally trained artists and writers
and the folk trains what a quilt maker. When I
asked how did you learn that talent? She said, fireplace
learning at the medium my mother and grandmother, I learned
(16:31):
to make a quilt.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Hughes was able to bridge the gap between the oral
and the written, the folk and the formal. He took
the law, emotions, and vibrant language of the blues and
transformed them into poetry that resonated with people from all
walks of life. This open relationship between the folk and
(16:54):
the formal is beautifully illustrated in the art of quilting,
where general of traditions are passed down through hands on learning,
creating something both functional and deeply expressive. Doctor Akiba Sullivan Harper,
(17:17):
She says her students call her doctor Dash, so I
will be calling her that as well. She is an
internationally recognized scholar, a retired Professor of English at Spelman College.
Doctor Dash has dedicated her entire career to the life
and work of Langston Hughes. She authored numerous books and
(17:40):
articles on the subject. Her determination and academic excellence led
to Hampton University, where she met the doctor Jesse Lemon Brown,
a distinguished professor and mentor. Under doctor Brown's guidance, Harper's
literary horizons expanded, leading her to discover Langston Hughes, the
(18:04):
writer who would inspire her life's most significant dedication. Doctor
Dash's connection to Hughes goes beyond academic study. It is
a deep appreciation for his ability to capture the essence
of black identity, and because of her personal ancestral deep connection,
(18:26):
we can thank her for his ongoing legacy and access
to some of the work that we have to reference today.
Speaker 7 (18:34):
I first encountered Langston Hughes in nineteen seventy one when
I was a pre fresh person at Hampton University. In
the composition class, we had doctor Jesse Lemon Brown, and
she required us to use an anthology that included people
(18:54):
who were of African origin, Hispanic origin, Native American, Asian
and aias and Eastern European origin. We had to pick
an author. I chose Langston Hughes. I've been writing about
him ever since. Since nineteen seventy one. I had graduated
from a high school that was almost fifty to fifty
(19:17):
black and white in Suffolk, Virginia. Had never heard of
Langston Hughes. And when I read his poems from nineteen
twenty six, when he was saying, the night is beautiful,
so the faces of my people, I was bold over
this man was in that. I thought we invented blackness
(19:37):
in nineteen seventy one. This brother in nineteen twenty six
was talking about the beautiful faces of black people, talking
about resting at night black like me. I was amazed.
Then I read that he had grown up as an
only child, and I'm an only child, and he loved libraries,
(20:02):
and I loved libraries. And it was just an infatuation
that grew into an intellectual focus that just never stopped.
So I went to grad school at Emma University. As
a grad student, I became a founding member of the
Langston Hughes Society, and I met the people who were
(20:24):
at the forefront of Hughes scholarship, like Thurman b. O'Daniel,
who used to be the editor of the College Language
Association and had edited a collection of critical essays on
Langston Hughes that most of which originated in the College
Language Association Journal. I met Richard Barksdale, who had written
(20:48):
a book link study of the poetry of Langston Hughes.
I met Arnold Rampersad, who wrote the two volume biography
of Langston Hughes, and this was nineteen eighty one before
he had written it. And I met people who encountered
Hughes in various ways. I met a woman who taught Spanish,
(21:09):
so she was focusing on the translations. It was amazing
nineteen eighty one, and part of what we did at
that Langston Hughes study conference in nineteen eighty one in Joplin, Missouri,
where Hughes had been born, we decided there should be
a definitive set of books by Langston Hughes because some
(21:31):
of his works had gone out of print, and the
ultimate result of that was the Collected Works of Langston Hughes,
sixteen volumes. We thought there should be more book length
studies of Hughes, which, of course there have been so many.
I've got more than a whole shelf of them. We
started the Langston Hughes Society so that the life and
(21:54):
works of Langston Hughes could be talked about, written about, disgust,
had conferences about and that went on. And part of
the Langston Hughes Society was the Langston Hughes Review, which
is still in print. In the Harlem Renaissance period when
so many young black writers were focusing on blackness, Langston
(22:17):
Hughes by nineteen twenty six, had already visited the continent
of Africa. It was authentic. He had lived in Paris,
so the expatriates who were enjoying a proliferation of their
jazz in Paris, he had seen them firsthand. So his
(22:39):
encounter with the Harlem Renaissance was authentic. And he also
was multi lingual, which some black writers weren't. He didn't
go to Lincoln University until during the Harlem Renaissance nineteen
twenty seven, and by this time that was his first
(23:01):
time being in a school that was almost entirely black.
I would say it was probably entirely. He had never
been in a classroom with all black people before. Now,
looking at segregation in most of the United states that
was really radical. So what Langston Hughes had done. He
(23:23):
had been to Mexico, he had helped teach English in Mexico.
He was that multi lingual. He had lived in Paris.
Now he found his French wasn't as good as his Spanish,
but he survived. And to have traveled up and down
the coast of West Africa, to have lived in Europe,
(23:43):
and to have lived in Mexico, he was already multinational
and diasporic in a way that many of his contemporaries
were not. Now let's flip that and say, because he
had been so many places, had been so isolated black people.
(24:04):
When he looked to the people, that became his community.
The black community became his base in a way that
maybe other authors did not have to turn to the people.
And I think his desire to be accepted by black people,
(24:27):
his desire to have his work understood by black people,
may have been deeper than for some of the other authors.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Hughes's generosity extended well beyond his own writing. He mentored
and supported generations of black artists, ensuring that their voices
would be heard. He was famous for writing many letters
in green ink when he learned of a Mary Baraka,
fellow poet, author, activist. He wrote him a letter with
(25:00):
humor and welcome.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
First poem, I have a public.
Speaker 6 (25:05):
I got a postcard in Greenich, she always Greening, who said,
hail the wife from Harlem.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
I understand you color. He befriended all sorts of young
aspiring writers, like Margaret Walker, whose board I still serve on.
Margaret Walker Alexander's the author of Jubilee. She was connected
to the Harlem Renaissance, and her poem for my People
(25:35):
is like an anthem. And she was my neighbor when
I taught at Jackson State on Guynes Street, which is
now Margaret Walker Street. We lived two doors from where
Medgar Evers was murdered a few years earlier, and her
(25:56):
work in many ways lebrated these traditions. We were both
in the English department at Jackson State. And Nikki Giovanni,
who sadly died this past week, was a close friend
of Margaret's and visited the campus a number of times
(26:20):
to read her poetry and to meet with students there.
I often tell my students an African proverb that says
when an old woman or man dies, a library burns
to the ground, and these were my libraries that I
learned from, and their voices I was able to capture,
(26:46):
you know, a small part of what their lives were about,
and to showcase those through the box set Voices of
Mississippi and through books that I've written about the Blues,
about writers who took those voices and crafted novels, short stories,
(27:12):
poems out of them. But they really are a key
to a life and culture. And when we look at
the Harlem Renaissance, we're looking at an epic, ongoing monument
to writers, dancers, artists, and we look at black intellectual history.
(27:37):
In many ways, you could say the Harlem Renaissance is
a part of Southern literature. These are Southern Black writers
for the most part. We have moved to for clear reasons,
to New York City where they could be a man,
as Richard Wright said, and not be living in the
(27:59):
world of Jim Crow that they grew up in in
the South. I had the honor of working at Yale
with a Mary Baraka and Larry Neel, who were pivotal
figures in the Black Arts movement, and they were a
second or third generation of what we can think of
as the Horlem Renaissance. It was and still goes on
(28:24):
as part of the legacy of literature, music art that
the Black tradition has given the world, not just our nation,
but it's a treasure that the whole globe respects.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Hughes His lifelong dedication to his craft is evident in
the vast body of work covering various genres and styles,
including the weekly column in The Chicago Defender, a prominent
African American newspaper, where he introduced the character Just Be Simple,
often referred to as Simple. The Simple series gave Hughes
(29:10):
an opportunity to showcase his ability to blend humor, wisdom,
and social commentary. The character was a relatable working class man.
Through this character, Langston was able to discuss issues of race, politics, relationships,
and the everyday life in Harlem. The series was an
(29:32):
accessible and poignant exploration of African American life, using wit
and satire to address serious topics in a way that
resonated with readers across the country. There are two things
that we can say inspired Lengthson's writing. His international experiences
and his deep connection to the Black community shaped a
(29:57):
very unique perspective, and that pec it wasn't always perceived
the way he intended.
Speaker 7 (30:04):
I say he started in nineteen forty two, when he
first started writing his column in the Chicago Defender. The
actual first name, the first time he named my simple
minded friend was nineteen forty three. But Hughes wrote that
character for decades, and yet when he got to the sixties,
(30:28):
some people were saying, this character is an uncle Tom.
Just be simple was absolutely not an uncle Tom. And
I just think that had to have heard when we
don't understand our elders, and when we don't ask the
questions to try to understand, and when we and in
(30:51):
this case, this is a hypothetical we young people. When
young people think they can judge or rate the work
of elders without knowing the backstory and the history. That's
Missy Langston Hughes, who had literally been writing all of
(31:11):
his life. I mean he was writing in eighth grade
because children told him he was the class poet. He
had been writing pretty much all of his life. Here
he is in his sixties. Keeping in mind these are
the nineteen sixties, and so we just lost our beloved
Nikki Giovanni looking at the kind of radical voice that
(31:34):
the young authors Amery Baraka, Sonya Sanchez, Nicki Giovanni, that
kind of radical voice. Some of those young writers did
not know his lifelong journey, and they disdained what they
saw as too much humor from Langston Hughes. He's not
(31:54):
taking this black rights program seriously enough. He's us pandering
to white audiences, and that must have hurt.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
These columns were later collected into several books, including Simple
Speaks as Mind in nineteen fifty, Simple Takes a Wife
nineteen fifty three, Simple Stakes Acclaim nineteen fifty seven, and
in nineteen sixty one, The Best of Simple.
Speaker 7 (32:26):
When I was asked to edit the Return of Simple,
I included a large number of stories that had appeared
in Simple Takes a Wife. My requirements from the publisher
were I could not publish anything that had been in
the Best of Simple. News had omitted a lot of
the stories and Simple Takes a Wife, and many of
(32:49):
those stories show a different, more sensitive, more nuanced representation
of women and attitude toward women. And by the time
you get to the sixties, some of the stories that
never got collected. I also included those in the Return
of Simple. We have his wife who Joyce eventually became
(33:12):
his second wife. Joyce wants to go to a conference
of African women. Joyce says women need to declare autonomy
over their own bodies, so that voice through the character Joyce.
There's also the character Many, his cousin. Many is feisty, outspoken,
(33:39):
takes no crap. So when he allows women to speak
for themselves as opposed to simple talking about them, those
simple stories give a different view. And then there's the
seldom mentioned character Lynn Clarice. Lynn Clarice was a Fisk
University graduate who liked theater and those kinds of women's
(34:04):
voices we seldom see, and they, of course were not
in the best of simple So it is helpful I
think if readers expand their acquaintance with Hughes's work that
sixteen volume collected works of Langston Hughes. Only three volumes
are poetry, so thirteen volumes are other genres. You talked
(34:28):
about Hughes being different from other Harlem Renaissance writers. Hughes
wrote whatever would sell, and unlike many of his contemporaries,
he kept publishing after the Depression depleted the money that
had supported so many of the plays and books and
music of the Harlem Renaissance. He found a way. So
(34:52):
his perseverance as a writer, his variety of genres as
a writer, and the unpublished things that we still can
discover through archival collections. So I think it's up to everybody.
(35:12):
I think it's up to people to keep reading, to
keep looking his pros. There are two volumes in that
collected works that are his essays, and people only know
one essay by Langston Hughes, The Negro Artist and the
Racial Mountain. It's a great essay from nineteen twenty six.
(35:36):
But he kept writing until he died. He wrote about
anything and everything. You can imagine. He had that weekly
column in the Chicago Defender. The majority of those columns
were not simple stories. He wrote book reviews, He talked
about politics, He talked about theater, He talked about funny stuff.
(35:58):
He talked about food, He talked about everything.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
He went everywhere. He wrote about everything. Langston's curiosity for
life was his eternal mus He made space on the
page for the conversations he wanted to have and the
points he wanted to make, whether it was short form, poetry, articles, humor. Overall,
(36:23):
he wrote about what was affecting him. What was affecting
his people.
Speaker 7 (36:29):
From the collected poems, the poem is called frosting. Freedom
is just frosting on somebody else's cake, and so must
be till we learn how to bake. Frosting was first
published under the title Black Economics, then The Crisis Magazine
(36:59):
December of nineteen sixty six, and the title was changed
for The Panther and the Lesh, the final volume that
he edited and that was published posthumously.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Freedom as written stands starkly alone on its own line,
a deliberate choice by Hughes to emphasize both its significance
and its elusive nature. It's a word that America has
long claimed as his identity, yet lingers in the shadows,
(37:36):
blended into the darkness of racial and economic inequality. Doctor
Martin Luther King Junior articulated similar truths about the economic
dimensions of Freedom, truths so uncomfortable that they led to
his assassination. Hughes, however, often worked under the protective coloring
(38:00):
of poetry, weaving these themes into verses that simultaneously soothed
and provoked. In volumes like Ask Your Mama, Twelve Moods
of Jazz embodies a layered complex critique of freedom and
the systemic barriers that define it in America. An excer
(38:22):
Mama Hughes broadens the conversation, not just reflecting on America's
failures to fulfill its promises of freedom, but also connecting
the African American struggle to the global fight for liberation,
referencing Afro Latin music and the political independent movements in Africa.
(38:46):
This valume is rarely taught or performed. It is a
masterpiece of intertextuality, drawing on political, musical, and literary figures
to create a sin innfony of resistance and resilience. It
challenges readers to confront the complexity of freedom and his
(39:09):
intersections with culture, race, and economics. Hughes should not only
be celebrated for his poetry, but also for his profound
and often overlooked ability to infuse complex references and as
doctor Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper Doctor Dash underscores in her
(39:33):
valume of Hughes's simple stories, even his seemingly straightforward characters
and narratives are not so simple.
Speaker 5 (39:44):
Well, of course, thereanda is usually not having sent You
have to work for it, and that is one reason
why I have written so many other things other than poetry.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Thank you for listening. Join us on the next episode
as we continue the conversations, the dissections, and the exploration
of linkson Hughes and his work. Black Litt is a
Black Effect original series in partnership with iHeart Media. Is
written and created by myself Jacqueis Thomas and executive produced
(40:23):
alongside Dolly s. Bishop. Chanelle Collins is the director of Production,
Head of Talent Nicole Spence, writer producer Jason Torres, Our
researcher and producer is Jabari Davis, and the mix and
sound design is by the Humble Duane Crawford Special thanks
to Doctor Dash and Doctor Bill Ferris. Gratitude is an action,
(40:45):
so I have to give praise to those who took
the time out to write a review. Please keep sharing
and we will promise to bring more writers and greater
episodes to you. Also, if you're looking to become a
writer or in search of a supportive writing community, join
me for a free creative writing session on my website
(41:06):
Black writers Room dot com, b LK Writer's Room dot com,
or hit me up directly for more details at Underscore
t h A T s P e A C E,
that's peace,
My name is Jacqueesse Thomas, and you're listening to Black Lid,
a podcast about black literature and the stories behind the storytellers.
Last week we had the privilege of hearing from doctor Karma.
As we begin today's episode, I want you to share
the very last thing she said, a note to readers
(00:23):
that perfectly captures the essence of this podcast. Keep these
words in mind as we dive deeper into the life
of Lengths and Hughes, exploring the world he inhabited and
the cultural forces that shaped his voice.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
And all of my twenty years of teaching college, I
always told my students in my literature classes that you
have to learn literature and context. You know, it's nice
enough to just read the piece and decide how you
feel about it or what's going on. You really need
to go deeper and find out what is going on,
(01:04):
what's happening with the writer, what's going on in the times,
going on in the culture, and then it's an even
deeper read. And I think that's true for likes to years.
If you know the context of his life and his
work and his experiences, then I think anything you read
by him becomes even more involved, even richer even more
(01:29):
rewarding to the reader.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
The journey isn't just about celebrating Hughs's work. It's about
understanding why his stories matter, how they've endured, and what
they reveal about the origins of storytelling itself. His words
were born from a lineage of oral traditions and the
(01:55):
rhythm of jazz and blues. They capture the collective dreams,
struggles and triumphs of a people who turned pain into
poetry and resilience into song. And this episode will not
only delve into his writings, but we'll also start to
(02:16):
unpack some of the many, many layers of Hughes, as
well as his deep connections to folklore and how it
shaped his art. We'll explore not just what Hughes wrote,
but why he wrote and now his words continue to
ripple through time lines from the poem The Wary.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Blues Droning, a drowsy syncopated.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Tune opening with the words drowning and drowsy mirrors this hypnotic,
almost overwhelming pull to the music, both a surrender to
the melody and a sense of emotional heaviness. While drowsy
(03:11):
suggests a dreamlike state induced by the sounds. The syncopated
tune refers to the irregular rhythms of blues and jazz.
The line not only describes the music, but also reflects
the emotional state evokes. Tired, melancholic, yet deeply moving.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Rocking back and forth, Rocking back and forth makes you
feel the energy of the musicians in the audience as
they're immersed and swaying. Mellow kroon. Someone using their voice
(04:05):
in a sentimental manner, expressive and as a form of solence.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
I heard a Negro play.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Heard a Negro clay the simple yet profound, a signature
of links and hughes. These lines helped to situate the
cultural contexts of the performance, rooting the music in African
American identity and struggle. By highlighting the act of listening,
(04:38):
he invites the readers to witness the performance alongside him,
bridging the personal and the collective expression.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Now, after he's rooted us into African American identity, he
puts us the place down on Lenox Avenue the other night.
Lenox Avenue, located in Harlem, served as the heart of
the Harlem Renaissance. By adding this line, it grounds the
(05:15):
poem in a specific cultural and historic moment. The other
night gives it this energy of typical, every day casual.
Yet the music transcends its ordinary setting to speak to
something much more universal. A lot of us think of
(05:38):
lengths and hughes in The first word that comes to
mind is poet, and that's not wrong. But have you
ever used the term folklorists? Today? I would like to
introduce a man by the name of doctor William Ferris Bill.
He prefers whose life work is a testment to the
(06:00):
power of memory and preservation of culture. Doctor Parris grew
up in the a farm in Mississippi, where his earliest
memories are shaped in the rhythms of real life.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
At a very early age, like three or four, a
black lady every first Sunday would take me to a
church on the farm, and I learned to sing the
hymns and learned to love the sermons. And as I
grew up, I realized there were no hymnals in the church,
(06:38):
and that when the families were no longer there, the
music would disappear. And as a teenager I started recording
and photographing the services as a way of preserving those
for the future generation. And that led me to a
(06:58):
career in preserving Black culture, blues, storytelling, quilt making, most
of which is transmitted orally. There are no books traditionally
that had been written about these worlds, and so if
(07:18):
you don't record and photograph, you're not going to have
a record, and to me, that was a crime.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Armed with a simple recorder and a camera, he began
documenting the church services, capturing the hymns, the voices, and
the community that made him, and ensuring that the stories
and the traditions of those people would not be forgotten.
That mission became the foundation of doctor Ferris's life's work.
(07:52):
It led him to a career dedicated to preserving Black
culture in all of its forms. He recognized the fragility
of culture and made it his mission to ensure its survival.
Doctor Ferris's story is one of foresight, passion, and deep
(08:14):
respect for the tradition that shape his early life.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
I dedicated my life to the people who raised me
in that church and to others that I met along
the way, some quite famous like BB King and Quincy
Jones and Alice Walker, but they all understood. We were
doing a common kind of journey of love for people
(08:44):
and the oral traditions that had been around for thousands
of years and were the way to the heart of
the worlds that I've known as a Southerner.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Doctor Bill Ferris is a Grammy Award winning renowned scholar
of Southern culture, folklore, and African American music. Through his work,
the voices, songs, and stories of a community have been
intentionally archived over the last sixty years. Folklore is defined
(09:19):
as the collection of expressive culture that a group of
people share. But as we continue this conversation, so will
the depths of its meaning.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Well. Folklore basically is oral tradition and it exists everywhere
in the world in Africa. In Nigeria, the writers Chinwa
Chebei and Amos Tuck use oral traditions in their novels
(09:51):
in the same way that Ralph Ellison uses the Blues
in The Invisible Man and Alice Walker in The Color Purple.
So in the South, you have a geographic area where
I grew up and worked, but many Southerners, especially black families,
(10:15):
migrated for good reason out of the South.
Speaker 4 (10:18):
I pick up my life and take it away on
a one way ticket, gone up North, gone out, we gone.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
So you have Southern focal are alive and well in
Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance through the poems of poets
like Langston Hughes, who befriended W. C. Handy, the father
of the blues, who was the first to compose blues
(10:52):
as a music form, and Hughes was writing blues poems,
and they co authored a book of blues that was
an important kind of beginning for what is now called
a blues poem, which Alice Walker and many poets have
(11:16):
written blues poems over the years.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
Sometimes in writing the poetry of the blues, I've tried
to write in the exact format of the traditional folk blues.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
And so oral traditions can be in any location, and
for the Black voice, those can be in Mississippi, they
can be in Harlem, in the case of Richard Wright,
they can be in Paris. But those oral traditions are
(11:54):
the heart of the creative output, not only of music
and literature, but of art and artists like Romere Bearden
of the dance, and the work of people like Alvin
Ailey and in jazz, Duke Ellington, one of our great
(12:16):
American composers who created a kind of jazz world. But
much of that is connected to the blues and to
the folk voices. So those are the waters in which
I've swum for over eighty years. I'm grateful for all
(12:39):
it's taught me.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Views like Ellington immersed himself in Black folk tradition. He
understood that blues wasn't just music, that it far exceeded
a singular category of genre. It was purposeful, it was
a way of life.
Speaker 5 (13:01):
The Negro has had a major influence on the total
culture of America, which of course in the American music
through the greatest in the world.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
These literary giants drew inspiration from the oral traditions of
their cultures. Hughes found his muse and the vibrant folklore
of the American South. The Great Migration brought a wave
of Southern Black culture to the North, transforming Harlem into
a hot bed of creativity. W. C.
Speaker 6 (13:28):
Handy wrote, Saint Louis Blues. So let's have a great
hand for mister Handy, won't you please. W. C.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Handy, the father of blues, collaborated with Langston Hughes to
create a powerful fusion of poetry and music.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
The Weary Blues, and all of his poems have an
affinity with the blues. And when he worked with W. C. Handy,
it's like Handy moved from Memphis to New York and
they sort of met through social circles and they had
(14:13):
an affinity with each other. They were both writing poems,
one Handy where his poems were performed and Hughes's were read.
But they worked together to create blues that was both
on the printed page and performed.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Live, deeply connected to the stories of his Southern roots.
Hughes collaboration with W. C. Handy wasn't just a meeting
of artistic minds. It was a fusion of two powerful
forms of expression, the written word and the soulful melody
of the blues.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Oral tradition which is rooted in the and a blue
singer will learn from an older blues singer, and those
are the traditional oral traditions. Then you have the written
word and the word of the book and formally trained
(15:19):
musicians and writers like Langston Hughes, but they ground their poetry,
their short stories, their fiction in storytelling and oral traditions
including the music, and so you have basically the blues
(15:43):
and storytelling in oral tradition that are used as a
resource by classically trained musicians like Duke Ellington, Quincy Jones
and You Have Story. He's used by writers like Alice
Walker and Ralph Ellison and many others. It's kind of
(16:08):
an open relationship between the formally trained artists and writers
and the folk trains what a quilt maker. When I
asked how did you learn that talent? She said, fireplace
learning at the medium my mother and grandmother, I learned
(16:31):
to make a quilt.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Hughes was able to bridge the gap between the oral
and the written, the folk and the formal. He took
the law, emotions, and vibrant language of the blues and
transformed them into poetry that resonated with people from all
walks of life. This open relationship between the folk and
(16:54):
the formal is beautifully illustrated in the art of quilting,
where general of traditions are passed down through hands on learning,
creating something both functional and deeply expressive. Doctor Akiba Sullivan Harper,
(17:17):
She says her students call her doctor Dash, so I
will be calling her that as well. She is an
internationally recognized scholar, a retired Professor of English at Spelman College.
Doctor Dash has dedicated her entire career to the life
and work of Langston Hughes. She authored numerous books and
(17:40):
articles on the subject. Her determination and academic excellence led
to Hampton University, where she met the doctor Jesse Lemon Brown,
a distinguished professor and mentor. Under doctor Brown's guidance, Harper's
literary horizons expanded, leading her to discover Langston Hughes, the
(18:04):
writer who would inspire her life's most significant dedication. Doctor
Dash's connection to Hughes goes beyond academic study. It is
a deep appreciation for his ability to capture the essence
of black identity, and because of her personal ancestral deep connection,
(18:26):
we can thank her for his ongoing legacy and access
to some of the work that we have to reference today.
Speaker 7 (18:34):
I first encountered Langston Hughes in nineteen seventy one when
I was a pre fresh person at Hampton University. In
the composition class, we had doctor Jesse Lemon Brown, and
she required us to use an anthology that included people
(18:54):
who were of African origin, Hispanic origin, Native American, Asian
and aias and Eastern European origin. We had to pick
an author. I chose Langston Hughes. I've been writing about
him ever since. Since nineteen seventy one. I had graduated
from a high school that was almost fifty to fifty
(19:17):
black and white in Suffolk, Virginia. Had never heard of
Langston Hughes. And when I read his poems from nineteen
twenty six, when he was saying, the night is beautiful,
so the faces of my people, I was bold over
this man was in that. I thought we invented blackness
(19:37):
in nineteen seventy one. This brother in nineteen twenty six
was talking about the beautiful faces of black people, talking
about resting at night black like me. I was amazed.
Then I read that he had grown up as an
only child, and I'm an only child, and he loved libraries,
(20:02):
and I loved libraries. And it was just an infatuation
that grew into an intellectual focus that just never stopped.
So I went to grad school at Emma University. As
a grad student, I became a founding member of the
Langston Hughes Society, and I met the people who were
(20:24):
at the forefront of Hughes scholarship, like Thurman b. O'Daniel,
who used to be the editor of the College Language
Association and had edited a collection of critical essays on
Langston Hughes that most of which originated in the College
Language Association Journal. I met Richard Barksdale, who had written
(20:48):
a book link study of the poetry of Langston Hughes.
I met Arnold Rampersad, who wrote the two volume biography
of Langston Hughes, and this was nineteen eighty one before
he had written it. And I met people who encountered
Hughes in various ways. I met a woman who taught Spanish,
(21:09):
so she was focusing on the translations. It was amazing
nineteen eighty one, and part of what we did at
that Langston Hughes study conference in nineteen eighty one in Joplin, Missouri,
where Hughes had been born, we decided there should be
a definitive set of books by Langston Hughes because some
(21:31):
of his works had gone out of print, and the
ultimate result of that was the Collected Works of Langston Hughes,
sixteen volumes. We thought there should be more book length
studies of Hughes, which, of course there have been so many.
I've got more than a whole shelf of them. We
started the Langston Hughes Society so that the life and
(21:54):
works of Langston Hughes could be talked about, written about, disgust,
had conferences about and that went on. And part of
the Langston Hughes Society was the Langston Hughes Review, which
is still in print. In the Harlem Renaissance period when
so many young black writers were focusing on blackness, Langston
(22:17):
Hughes by nineteen twenty six, had already visited the continent
of Africa. It was authentic. He had lived in Paris,
so the expatriates who were enjoying a proliferation of their
jazz in Paris, he had seen them firsthand. So his
(22:39):
encounter with the Harlem Renaissance was authentic. And he also
was multi lingual, which some black writers weren't. He didn't
go to Lincoln University until during the Harlem Renaissance nineteen
twenty seven, and by this time that was his first
(23:01):
time being in a school that was almost entirely black.
I would say it was probably entirely. He had never
been in a classroom with all black people before. Now,
looking at segregation in most of the United states that
was really radical. So what Langston Hughes had done. He
(23:23):
had been to Mexico, he had helped teach English in Mexico.
He was that multi lingual. He had lived in Paris.
Now he found his French wasn't as good as his Spanish,
but he survived. And to have traveled up and down
the coast of West Africa, to have lived in Europe,
(23:43):
and to have lived in Mexico, he was already multinational
and diasporic in a way that many of his contemporaries
were not. Now let's flip that and say, because he
had been so many places, had been so isolated black people.
(24:04):
When he looked to the people, that became his community.
The black community became his base in a way that
maybe other authors did not have to turn to the people.
And I think his desire to be accepted by black people,
(24:27):
his desire to have his work understood by black people,
may have been deeper than for some of the other authors.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Hughes's generosity extended well beyond his own writing. He mentored
and supported generations of black artists, ensuring that their voices
would be heard. He was famous for writing many letters
in green ink when he learned of a Mary Baraka,
fellow poet, author, activist. He wrote him a letter with
(25:00):
humor and welcome.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
First poem, I have a public.
Speaker 6 (25:05):
I got a postcard in Greenich, she always Greening, who said,
hail the wife from Harlem.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
I understand you color. He befriended all sorts of young
aspiring writers, like Margaret Walker, whose board I still serve on.
Margaret Walker Alexander's the author of Jubilee. She was connected
to the Harlem Renaissance, and her poem for my People
(25:35):
is like an anthem. And she was my neighbor when
I taught at Jackson State on Guynes Street, which is
now Margaret Walker Street. We lived two doors from where
Medgar Evers was murdered a few years earlier, and her
(25:56):
work in many ways lebrated these traditions. We were both
in the English department at Jackson State. And Nikki Giovanni,
who sadly died this past week, was a close friend
of Margaret's and visited the campus a number of times
(26:20):
to read her poetry and to meet with students there.
I often tell my students an African proverb that says
when an old woman or man dies, a library burns
to the ground, and these were my libraries that I
learned from, and their voices I was able to capture,
(26:46):
you know, a small part of what their lives were about,
and to showcase those through the box set Voices of
Mississippi and through books that I've written about the Blues,
about writers who took those voices and crafted novels, short stories,
(27:12):
poems out of them. But they really are a key
to a life and culture. And when we look at
the Harlem Renaissance, we're looking at an epic, ongoing monument
to writers, dancers, artists, and we look at black intellectual history.
(27:37):
In many ways, you could say the Harlem Renaissance is
a part of Southern literature. These are Southern Black writers
for the most part. We have moved to for clear reasons,
to New York City where they could be a man,
as Richard Wright said, and not be living in the
(27:59):
world of Jim Crow that they grew up in in
the South. I had the honor of working at Yale
with a Mary Baraka and Larry Neel, who were pivotal
figures in the Black Arts movement, and they were a
second or third generation of what we can think of
as the Horlem Renaissance. It was and still goes on
(28:24):
as part of the legacy of literature, music art that
the Black tradition has given the world, not just our nation,
but it's a treasure that the whole globe respects.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Hughes His lifelong dedication to his craft is evident in
the vast body of work covering various genres and styles,
including the weekly column in The Chicago Defender, a prominent
African American newspaper, where he introduced the character Just Be Simple,
often referred to as Simple. The Simple series gave Hughes
(29:10):
an opportunity to showcase his ability to blend humor, wisdom,
and social commentary. The character was a relatable working class man.
Through this character, Langston was able to discuss issues of race, politics, relationships,
and the everyday life in Harlem. The series was an
(29:32):
accessible and poignant exploration of African American life, using wit
and satire to address serious topics in a way that
resonated with readers across the country. There are two things
that we can say inspired Lengthson's writing. His international experiences
and his deep connection to the Black community shaped a
(29:57):
very unique perspective, and that pec it wasn't always perceived
the way he intended.
Speaker 7 (30:04):
I say he started in nineteen forty two, when he
first started writing his column in the Chicago Defender. The
actual first name, the first time he named my simple
minded friend was nineteen forty three. But Hughes wrote that
character for decades, and yet when he got to the sixties,
(30:28):
some people were saying, this character is an uncle Tom.
Just be simple was absolutely not an uncle Tom. And
I just think that had to have heard when we
don't understand our elders, and when we don't ask the
questions to try to understand, and when we and in
(30:51):
this case, this is a hypothetical we young people. When
young people think they can judge or rate the work
of elders without knowing the backstory and the history. That's
Missy Langston Hughes, who had literally been writing all of
(31:11):
his life. I mean he was writing in eighth grade
because children told him he was the class poet. He
had been writing pretty much all of his life. Here
he is in his sixties. Keeping in mind these are
the nineteen sixties, and so we just lost our beloved
Nikki Giovanni looking at the kind of radical voice that
(31:34):
the young authors Amery Baraka, Sonya Sanchez, Nicki Giovanni, that
kind of radical voice. Some of those young writers did
not know his lifelong journey, and they disdained what they
saw as too much humor from Langston Hughes. He's not
(31:54):
taking this black rights program seriously enough. He's us pandering
to white audiences, and that must have hurt.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
These columns were later collected into several books, including Simple
Speaks as Mind in nineteen fifty, Simple Takes a Wife
nineteen fifty three, Simple Stakes Acclaim nineteen fifty seven, and
in nineteen sixty one, The Best of Simple.
Speaker 7 (32:26):
When I was asked to edit the Return of Simple,
I included a large number of stories that had appeared
in Simple Takes a Wife. My requirements from the publisher
were I could not publish anything that had been in
the Best of Simple. News had omitted a lot of
the stories and Simple Takes a Wife, and many of
(32:49):
those stories show a different, more sensitive, more nuanced representation
of women and attitude toward women. And by the time
you get to the sixties, some of the stories that
never got collected. I also included those in the Return
of Simple. We have his wife who Joyce eventually became
(33:12):
his second wife. Joyce wants to go to a conference
of African women. Joyce says women need to declare autonomy
over their own bodies, so that voice through the character Joyce.
There's also the character Many, his cousin. Many is feisty, outspoken,
(33:39):
takes no crap. So when he allows women to speak
for themselves as opposed to simple talking about them, those
simple stories give a different view. And then there's the
seldom mentioned character Lynn Clarice. Lynn Clarice was a Fisk
University graduate who liked theater and those kinds of women's
(34:04):
voices we seldom see, and they, of course were not
in the best of simple So it is helpful I
think if readers expand their acquaintance with Hughes's work that
sixteen volume collected works of Langston Hughes. Only three volumes
are poetry, so thirteen volumes are other genres. You talked
(34:28):
about Hughes being different from other Harlem Renaissance writers. Hughes
wrote whatever would sell, and unlike many of his contemporaries,
he kept publishing after the Depression depleted the money that
had supported so many of the plays and books and
music of the Harlem Renaissance. He found a way. So
(34:52):
his perseverance as a writer, his variety of genres as
a writer, and the unpublished things that we still can
discover through archival collections. So I think it's up to everybody.
(35:12):
I think it's up to people to keep reading, to
keep looking his pros. There are two volumes in that
collected works that are his essays, and people only know
one essay by Langston Hughes, The Negro Artist and the
Racial Mountain. It's a great essay from nineteen twenty six.
(35:36):
But he kept writing until he died. He wrote about
anything and everything. You can imagine. He had that weekly
column in the Chicago Defender. The majority of those columns
were not simple stories. He wrote book reviews, He talked
about politics, He talked about theater, He talked about funny stuff.
(35:58):
He talked about food, He talked about everything.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
He went everywhere. He wrote about everything. Langston's curiosity for
life was his eternal mus He made space on the
page for the conversations he wanted to have and the
points he wanted to make, whether it was short form, poetry, articles, humor. Overall,
(36:23):
he wrote about what was affecting him. What was affecting
his people.
Speaker 7 (36:29):
From the collected poems, the poem is called frosting. Freedom
is just frosting on somebody else's cake, and so must
be till we learn how to bake. Frosting was first
published under the title Black Economics, then The Crisis Magazine
(36:59):
December of nineteen sixty six, and the title was changed
for The Panther and the Lesh, the final volume that
he edited and that was published posthumously.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Freedom as written stands starkly alone on its own line,
a deliberate choice by Hughes to emphasize both its significance
and its elusive nature. It's a word that America has
long claimed as his identity, yet lingers in the shadows,
(37:36):
blended into the darkness of racial and economic inequality. Doctor
Martin Luther King Junior articulated similar truths about the economic
dimensions of Freedom, truths so uncomfortable that they led to
his assassination. Hughes, however, often worked under the protective coloring
(38:00):
of poetry, weaving these themes into verses that simultaneously soothed
and provoked. In volumes like Ask Your Mama, Twelve Moods
of Jazz embodies a layered complex critique of freedom and
the systemic barriers that define it in America. An excer
(38:22):
Mama Hughes broadens the conversation, not just reflecting on America's
failures to fulfill its promises of freedom, but also connecting
the African American struggle to the global fight for liberation,
referencing Afro Latin music and the political independent movements in Africa.
(38:46):
This valume is rarely taught or performed. It is a
masterpiece of intertextuality, drawing on political, musical, and literary figures
to create a sin innfony of resistance and resilience. It
challenges readers to confront the complexity of freedom and his
(39:09):
intersections with culture, race, and economics. Hughes should not only
be celebrated for his poetry, but also for his profound
and often overlooked ability to infuse complex references and as
doctor Donna Akiba Sullivan Harper Doctor Dash underscores in her
(39:33):
valume of Hughes's simple stories, even his seemingly straightforward characters
and narratives are not so simple.
Speaker 5 (39:44):
Well, of course, thereanda is usually not having sent You
have to work for it, and that is one reason
why I have written so many other things other than poetry.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Thank you for listening. Join us on the next episode
as we continue the conversations, the dissections, and the exploration
of linkson Hughes and his work. Black Litt is a
Black Effect original series in partnership with iHeart Media. Is
written and created by myself Jacqueis Thomas and executive produced
(40:23):
alongside Dolly s. Bishop. Chanelle Collins is the director of Production,
Head of Talent Nicole Spence, writer producer Jason Torres, Our
researcher and producer is Jabari Davis, and the mix and
sound design is by the Humble Duane Crawford Special thanks
to Doctor Dash and Doctor Bill Ferris. Gratitude is an action,
(40:45):
so I have to give praise to those who took
the time out to write a review. Please keep sharing
and we will promise to bring more writers and greater
episodes to you. Also, if you're looking to become a
writer or in search of a supportive writing community, join
me for a free creative writing session on my website
(41:06):
Black writers Room dot com, b LK Writer's Room dot com,
or hit me up directly for more details at Underscore
t h A T s P e A C E,
that's peace,
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Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.