On May 22, nineteen years apart two intellectually creative black giants passed away, Claude McKay and Langston Hughes. Claude McKay, a Jamaican-born poet who was a product whose works were instrumental during the beginnings of the Harlem Renaissance. Claude McKay's works were significant during the time of the New Negro Movement. It was that movement that was defined by Alain Locke, Howard University intellectual icon, in the article he wrote for Survey Magazine, The New Negro. One of Claude McKay's most famous poetic works and also one of mine as well is:

If We Must Die
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O, kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men, we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

On May 22, 1948, Claude McKay at the age of 58, he passed away leaving behind a vast reservoir of writings that are still relevant today. It seems that our greatest epic writers lived during the days when Harlem was the spotlight of Black American genius. On May 22, 1967, James Mercer Langston Hughes passed away at the age of 65. It is said that our most prolific black writer of all-time was Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes was also a representative of black genius during the Harlem Renaissance, he embodied almost every aspect of Locke's description of the New Negro. Both McKay and Hughes were social activists who fought vigorously against hatred directed by white supremacists during their lives. Langston Hughes was also very close to Zora Neale Hurston. They both traveled many a southern road capturing the black folk history that had been covered up more many years. Sometimes you wish for reincarnations of men like McKay and Hughes, men who could motivate many in our black communities to address and defeat the pressing issue of black illiteracy. It seemed that the farther away we get from the year 1865 when the chains of slavery were unleashed. More and more of our black communities don't seem to value the importance of being absolutely strategic readers, writers, and thinkers. This is one of Langston Hughes more powerful poems and one I really feel strongly about as well. Yes, it is as relevant today as the day Langston Hughes put his pen to a pad and created it.

Dream Deferred
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 syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

So please take the take to listen to the Blackman Who Reads Aloud as I read some of the works of McKay and Hughes. I have already read the collected works of Langston Hughes on the Blackman Read Aloud Hour. It is almost impossible to give due respect to these intellectual giants but I will try.

One of the great points of creating a blog on black history is that you always have posts that you can go back to. I've had my blog now for over three years (www.joesmokethoughts.com). During that period of time, I have had over 430,000 unique viewers as well as over 3/4 of a million page views. It takes a great deal of effort to maintain an active black educational blog. For one, not many people will take the time to interact with a blog that comes from one individual person, especially if that person is black. I don't like to feed into misconceptions about our black community but it not like we anxiously await reading written blogs. That is why I can always revisit my blog posts that reflect our magnificent black history.

I have 2 objects for today's lesson. First, I will go back to May 21, 2017. On May 21, 1881, Blanche Bruce was appointed the United States Treasurer. Blanche Bruce, former governor of the state of Louisana; elected to the United States House of Representatives and appointed United States Senator from Louisana as well became the first American of African Descent to have his name stamped on paper money in this country. This was quite an achievement since Blanche Bruce came up from being born the son of a freed slave and white plantation owner to working the Mississippi River as a steamboat gambler to serving in the Union Army to defeat the Confederacy. Blanche Bruce endured many struggles to rise above this country's racial barriers to be in the room with the great historical minds in the 1800s. Men like Charles Sumner, Frederick Douglass, Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, The Black Capitol Men who served in Congress during Reconstruction and all the other black leaders who fought for our civil and social rights. I will read a speech given by Blanche Bruce in my role as the Blackman Who Reads Aloud.

The second object takes me back now 50 years to the campus of North Carolina A&T, a black college that always seemed to be placed first and foremost in our struggle for civil and social rights. 50 years ago today, Willie Grimes, a student at North Carolina A&T was murdered in cold blood during a student demonstration. Willie Grimes's name will not be placed in the pantheon of people like Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, 4 Little Girls at the 16th Street Church in Birmingham, Alabama, or may even Jimmie Lee Jackson but Willie Grimes's life was snuffed out by forces intent on fighting against blacks getting full citizenship rights. Willie Grimes paid the ultimate price for those of us who walked behind him today for the rights we take for granted. Not fully understanding the price others have paid previously. Today, The Blackman Who Reads Aloud reads an article that discussed the events that led to Willie Grimes's murder.

How would you feel about getting on a Trailways or Greyhound Bus knowing that at some point during your travel you will be violently confronted by angry racists white mobs bent on possibly murdering or maiming you, simply because of the color of your skin, or because you supported the equal citizenship rights denied by these hate-filled white mobs of black Americans?

Number 1 Thought:
You couldn't retaliate against those white mobs. You had to remain non-violent and accept the beatings;

Number 2 Thought:
You will be severely outnumbered and you cannot anticipate little or no support by the law enforcement agencies;

Number 3 Thought:
Law enforcement agencies in most cases would be the very people inflicting the racist beatings; the governors and mayors of the cities and states the buses will travel will most likely conspire with law enforcement to ensure that the buses will be attacked by those white violent mobs;

Number 4 Thought:
The federal government justice agencies sworn to protect the rights of all citizens will get involved actively in preventing the mob attacks.

Now ask yourself this serious question this afternoon, are you brave enough to board any of those buses? Well, today 58 years ago in Montgomery Alabama, the Freedom Riders who did in fact board buses faced the wrath of hatred and violence. These brave Americans whose main agenda was simply to ensure that the rights of a black citizen to travel was protected were beaten mercifully in the Montgomery Alabama bus station. My guess is that this white mob was seeking some type of retribution for the bus boycott that occurred six years earlier. This wasn't municipal transportation but federal interstate travel. No matter any opportunity to beat the absolute hell out of black people seeking change was enough.


It is vital that we understand that although slavery may have ended in 1865. The oppressive treatment of Black Americans continued relentlessly for another century or more. Today I go back to a post I produced last year ago, May 20, 2018, and initially in 2017. The Blackman Who Reads Aloud continues to retrace our history through the act of the read aloud. This 30-minute reading will be enlighting as well as provoking.