8.5 x 11 inches. Lyricist: Langston Hughes.
Langston Hughes (1902-1967) vividly depicted the Harlem Renaissance. Mulatto, bisexual, an outsider among outsiders, Hughes was unafraid to record his thoughts in a free and uncensored manner. His poems about the harsh and gritty lives of ordinary black people offended many black critics and intellectuals who wanted positive, refined images of black life to be presented for the inspection of white audiences. In "The Lynching Song," Hughes depicts mob mentality, complacency, self-preservation, insider, outsider, and chillingly ambiguous or ambivalent attitudes on this frightening atrocity which was shamefully commonplace at the time. Harmonically rich, striking, and complex. |
