Langston Hughes #Quotes for Black History Month

(CANVAS STAFF REPORTS) – It’s fitting that the first day of Black History Month also marked the birthday of one of the founding voices of the Harlem Renaissance .

Langston Hughes, born Feb. 1, 1902 in Joplin, Mo., was an African-American novelist, playwright, short story writer, and columnist.

Following the release of his first published poem in 1921 – his signature work ” The Negro Speaks of Rivers ” – Hughes became one of the earliest innovators of the new literary art form jazz poetry, using jazz rhythms and dialect to depict the life of urban blacks in his poems, stories, and plays.

Hughes became best-known for his work during the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, which he defined in his 1926 essay, ” The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain .”

By his later years Hughes- who died following abdominal surgery in 1967- had been deemed the ” Poet Laureate of the Negro Race .” To this day his words live on in a series of quotes that gave voice to the struggles of his fellow African-Americans for pride, equality, and justice:

• “Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid.”

• “My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”

• “Hold fast to your dreams, for without them life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.”

• “I swear to the Lord, I still can’t see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.”

• “I will not take ‘but’ for an answer.”

• “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun?”