Happy birthday James Mercer Langston Hughes, pioneering African-American social activist, novelist, playwright and Harlem Renaissance poet. He confronted racial stereotypes, and protested social conditions, he supported the Scottsboro boys, stood proudly with the anti fascists in the Spanish Civil War, and strongly opposed the McCarthy witchhunts, and was to become known as a peoples poet. He was also one of the earliest innovators, of the then new literary art form called jazz poetry, the following poem of his was written 1951.
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-
And then run
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
like a sugary sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
here's an animated google doodle celebrating his birthday and his poem ' I dream a word.'
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