Caption from poster__

 

 

 

" Cross "

 My old man's a white old man

And my old mother's black.

If ever I cursed my white old man

I take my curses back. If ever I

cursed my black old mother

And wished she were in hell,

I'm sorry for that evil wish

And now I wish her well

My old man died in a fine big

house. My ma died in a shack.

I wonder were I'm going to die,

Being neither white nor black?

 

 

 

 

 

Langston Hughes was an American poet and central figure of the Harlem Renaissance born in Joplin, Missouri.  He graduated from Lincoln University in 1929.  He worked at a variety of jobsand lived in several countries, including Mexico and France, before Vachel Lindsay discovered his poetry in 1925.  The publication of The Weary Blues in 1926 (his first volume of poetry) enabled Hughes to attend Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, from which his writing (which often uses dialect and jazz rhythms) is largely concerned with depicting African American life; particularly, the experience of the urban African American.  Among his later collections of poetry are Shakespeare in Harlem (1942), One-Way Ticket (1949), and Selected Poems (1959).  Hughes' numerous other works include: several plays, notably, Mulatto (1935); books for children, such as The First Book of Negroes (1952); and novels, including Not Without Laughter (1930). His newspaper sketches about Jesse B. Simple were collected in The Best of Simple (1961).