The Langston Hughes Medal is awarded annually to recognize an influential and engaging African American writer. Established by the late Raymond Patterson, Professor Emeritus of English at the City College of New York, the medal honors Langston Hughes' lifelong commitment to social change through works that reflect various cultures with roots in an African heritage. The award is given to a "literary work that has endeavored to engage, challenge and question their cultural milieu in the tradition of Langston Hughes."
In 1973, the late Raymond R. Patterson, Professor of English at the CCNY, founded the Langston Hughes Festival to celebrate Langston Hughes’s vision of himself as an African American citizen-poet.
Famous quotes containing the words langston hughes, langston and/or hughes:
“I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”
—Langston Hughes (1902–1967)
“In the middle of the next century, when the literary establishment will reflect the multicultural makeup of this country and not be dominated by assimiliationists with similar tastes, from similar backgrounds, and of similar pretensions, Langston Hughes will be to the twentieth century what Walt Whitman was to the nineteenth.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.”
—Langston Hughes (1902–1967)