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From the Guardian By Adria R Walker A new book charts how a 1949 meeting between the renowned poet and the legendary musician, then a 16-year-old girl, sparked enduring ties and fruitful collaboration In 1949, the poet and writer Langston Hughes was already a towering figure – he toured the country reading his poems and lecturing, drawing crowds that filled auditoriums. That year, at a lecture in Asheville, North Carolina, Hughes met a 16-year-old girl, Eunice Waymon, who would go on to make...

By Rupert Nacoste He put a spell on me. I was up late last night finishing W. Jason Miller’s “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.” Couldn’t put it down because I was so engrossed in this story of the relationship between Langston Hughes and Nina Simone. A story of a collaboration that spanned years, and helped underscore what was happening in the modern civil rights movement. I am a 75-year-old black man, who grew up in the Louisiana Jim Crow South. Yet, or maybe that’s why, I did not discover the...

From WFAE Charlotte's NPR News Source Tryon, North Carolina native Nina Simone, often called the High Priestess of Soul, made her mark on the music industry and the civil rights movement. Poet and playwright Langston Hughes visited Simone’s Asheville, N.C., high school to perform his poetry and made his first encounter with the then-sixteen-year-old talent. This began a decades-long friendship and creative partnership. The relationship led to the famed song "Backlash Blues," written by Hughes...