Langston Hughes and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Jan 9, 2023
- 1 min read
By Michael Morand
“For years, Martin Luther King Jr. and poet Langston Hughes maintained a friendship,” Jason W. Miller of North Carolina State University noted in Smithsonian Magazine in 2018. The Langston Hughes Papers are a great source about the relationship between Hughes and King and were a key source for Miller’s 2015 book, Origins of the Dream: Hughes’s Poetry and King’s Rhetoric.
This temporary display showcases a selection of materials about one of Hughes and King’s encounters, related to a tribute to labor leader A. Philip Randolph in January 1960. Miller devotes a chapter of his book to King’s request that Hughes write a poem for the event and to Hughes’s positive response and his writing process. (See Project Muse for information about electronic access to the book, as well as information about buying it in print.)
