ChickenBones: A Journal
for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes
www.nathanielturner.com 
Letters from the
Archives of Marcus Bruce Christian
From & To Friends, Colleagues, & Wife
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Books by Marcus Bruce Christian
Song of the Black Valiants: Marching Tempo / High Ground: A Collection of Poems / Negro soldiers in the Battle of New Orleans
I am New Orleans: A Poem / Negro Iron Workers of Louisiana: 1718-1900 / The Liberty Monument
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Books by Langston
Weary Blues (1926) / The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes / The Ways of White Folks (Stories) / The Big Sea: An Autobiography
Best of Simple / I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey / New Negro Poets U.S.A.
Not Without Laughter /Five Plays by Langston Hughes / Selected Poems of Langston Hughes
Ask Your Mama: Twelve Moods for Jazz / Fine Clothes to the Jew / The Collected Works of Langston Hughes (Poems 1921-1940)
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Letter 1
Langston Hughes Comments
On Christian’s Blues Poems
Langston Hughes
c/o The Crisis, 69 Fifth Avenue
New York City
On Tour
Tuskegee Institute, Alabama
February 15, 1932
Mr. Marcus B. Christian
2500 Palmyra Street
New Orleans, Louisiana
My dear Mr. Christian:
I believe I told you after my lecture that I liked your BLUES best, particularly your splendid poem in dialect about the New Year. I liked also the poem BOW DOWN NIGGER BOW DOWN.
The only criticism I would have on these dialect poems is that your dialect is too complicated for the average person to read, which would hinder their having a wide appreciation. I think they would be just as effective if you would limit your dialect to a few words like spelling ‘the’ in the conventional ‘de’ way and not attempting to dialectize every word.
The other poem of these that I think I liked best was the lovely little lyric called SOUVENIR. I think that would make a very beautiful song. Thank you for letting me see your work. Why not submit some of them to the magazines and newspapers for possible publication?
Very truly yours,
Langston Hughes
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Ballad of Roosevelt
By Langston Hughes
The pot was empty,
The cupboard was bare.
I said, Papa,
Whats the matter here?
Im waitin’ on Roosevelt, son,
Roosevelt, Roosevelt,
Waitin’ on Roosevelt, son.
The rent was due,
And the lights was out.
I said, Tell me, Mama,
Whats it all about?
Were waitin’ on Roosevelt, son,
Roosevelt, Roosevelt,
Just waitin’ on Roosevelt.
Sister got sick
And the doctor wouldnt come
Cause we couldnt pay him
The proper sum
A-waitin on Roosevelt,
Roosevelt, Roosevelt,
A-waitin’ on Roosevelt.
Then one day
They put us out o’ the house.
Ma and Pa was Meek as a mouse
Still waitin’ on Roosevelt,
Roosevelt, Roosevelt.
But when they felt those
Cold winds blow
And didnt have no
Place to go
Pa said, Im tired
Owaitin’ on Roosevelt,
Roosevelt, Roosevelt.
Damn tired o waitin on Roosevelt.
I cant git a job
And I cant git no grub.
Backbone and navels
Doin’ the belly-rub
A-waitin’ on Roosevelt,
Roosevelt, Roosevelt.
And a lot o’ other folks
Whats hungry and cold
Done stopped believin’
What they been told
By Roosevelt,
Roosevelt, Roosevelt
Cause the pots still empty,
And the cupboards still bare,
And you cant build a
bungalow
Out o’ air
Mr. Roosevelt, listen!
Whats the matter here?
Source: Langston Hughes, Ballad of Roosevelt, New Republic 31 (November 14, 1934)
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The Negro Speaks of Rivers
By Langston Hughes
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
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Written in 1920
Source: Poets.org: Includes audio of Hughes reading
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Scholarly Books on Langston Hughes
Martha Cobb. Harlem, Haiti, and Havana: A comparative critical study of Langston Hughes, Jacques Roumain, Nicolás Guillén. 1979.
Faith Berry. Before & Beyond Harlem: Biography of Langston Hughes. 1995.
Faith Berry, edited Good Morning Revolution: Uncollected Writings of Langston Hughes. 1973
Arnold Rampersad. The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902-1941, I, Too, Sing America (Life of Langston Hughes, 1902-1941). 2002
Arnold Rampersad. The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume II: 1914-1967, I Dream a World (Life of Langston Hughes, 1941-1967). 2002
Steven C. Tracy. Langston Hughes and the Blues. 2001
R. Baxter Miller. The Art And Imagination of Langston Hughes. 2006.
Christopher C Santis, Christopher C Santis, Langston Hughes and the *Chicago Defender*: Essays on Race, Politics, and Culture, 1942-62. 1995
Jonathan Scott Socialist Joy in the Writing of Langston Hughes. 2006
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Selected Letters Selected Diary Notes
Memories of Marcus B. Christian (Cains) Christian’s BioBibliographical Record Introduction to I AM NEW ORLEANS
A Theory of a Black Aesthetic Magpies, Goddesses, & Black Male Identity
Activist Works on Next Level of Change Intro to I Am New Orleans Letter from Dillard University
A Labor of Genuine Love Letter of Gift of Photos Letters from LSU and Skip Gates
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Negro Iron Workers of Louisiana: 1718-1900
By Marcus Bruce Christian
Study of the blacksmith tradition and New Orleans famous lace balconies and fences.
Acclaimed during his life as the unofficial poet laureate of the New Orleans African-American community, Marcus Christian recorded a distinguished career as historian, journalist, and literary scholar. He was a contributor to Pelican’s Gumbo Ya Ya, and also wrote many articles that appeared in numerous newspapers, journals, and general-interest publications.
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Audio: My Story, My Song (Featuring blues guitarist Walter Wolfman Washington)
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AALBC.com’s 25 Best Selling Books
Fiction
#1 – Justify My Thug by Wahida Clark #2 – Flyy Girl by Omar Tyree #3 – Head Bangers: An APF Sexcapade by Zane #4 – Life Is Short But Wide by J. California Cooper #5 – Stackin’ Paper 2 Genesis’ Payback by Joy King #6 – Thug Lovin’ (Thug 4) by Wahida Clark #7 – When I Get Where I’m Going by Cheryl Robinson #8 – Casting the First Stone by Kimberla Lawson Roby #9 – The Sex Chronicles: Shattering the Myth by Zane
#10 – Covenant: A Thriller by Brandon Massey
#11 – Diary Of A Street Diva by Ashley and JaQuavis
#12 – Don’t Ever Tell by Brandon Massey
#13 – For colored girls who have considered suicide by Ntozake Shange
#14 – For the Love of Money : A Novel by Omar Tyree
#15 – Homemade Loves by J. California Cooper
#16 – The Future Has a Past: Stories by J. California Cooper
#17 – Player Haters by Carl Weber
#18 – Purple Panties: An Eroticanoir.com Anthology by Sidney Molare
#19 – Stackin’ Paper by Joy King
#20 – Children of the Street: An Inspector Darko Dawson Mystery by Kwei Quartey
#21 – The Upper Room by Mary Monroe
#22 Thug Matrimony by Wahida Clark
#23 – Thugs And The Women Who Love Them by Wahida Clark
#24 – Married Men by Carl Weber
#25 – I Dreamt I Was in Heaven – The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang by Leonce Gaiter
Non-fiction
#1 – Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable #2 – Confessions of a Video Vixen by Karrine Steffans #3 – Dear G-Spot: Straight Talk About Sex and Love by Zane #4 – Letters to a Young Brother: MANifest Your Destiny by Hill Harper #5 – Peace from Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You’re Going Through by Iyanla Vanzant #6 – Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey by Marcus Garvey #7 – The Ebony Cookbook: A Date with a Dish by Freda DeKnight #8 – The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors by Frances Cress Welsing #9 – The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson
#10 – John Henrik Clarke and the Power of Africana History by Ahati N. N. Toure
#11 – Fail Up: 20 Lessons on Building Success from Failure by Tavis Smiley
#12 –The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
#13 – The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life by Kevin Powell
#14 – The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore
#15 – Why Men Fear Marriage: The Surprising Truth Behind Why So Many Men Can’t Commit by RM Johnson
#16 – Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire by Carol Jenkins
#17 – Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority by Tom Burrell
#18 – A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle
#19 – John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism by Keith Gilyard
#20 – Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher by Leonard Harris
#21 – Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife by Carleen Brice
#22 – 2012 Guide to Literary Agents by Chuck Sambuchino #23 – Chicken Soup for the Prisoner’s Soul by Tom Lagana #24 – 101 Things Every Boy/Young Man of Color Should Know by LaMarr Darnell Shields
#25 – Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class by Lisa B. Thompson
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By Larry Neal
“What we have been trying to arrive at is some kind of synthesis of the writer’s function as an oppressed individual and a creative artist,” states Neal (1937-1981), a writer, editor, educator and activist prominent in the Black Arts movement of the 1960s and ’70s. Articulate, highly charged essays about the black experience examine the views of his predecessors–musicians and political theorists as well as writers–continually weighing artistic achievement against political efficacy. While the essays do not exclude any readers, Neal’s drama, poetry and fiction are more limited in their form of address, more explicitly directed to the oppressed. The poems are particularly intense in their protest: “How many of them / . . . have been made to /prostitute their blood / to the merchants of war.” Rhythmic and adopting the repetitive structure of music, they capture the “blues in our mothers’ voices / which warned us / blues people bursting out.” Commentaries by Neal’s peers, Amiri Baraka, Stanley Crouch, Charles Fuller and Jayne Cortez, introduce the various sections.Publishers Weekly
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By Tracy K. Smith
Tracy K. Smith, author of Life on Mars has been selected as the winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In its review of the book, Publishers Weekly noted the collection’s “lyric brilliance” and “political impulses [that] never falter.” A New York Times review stated, “Smith is quick to suggest that the important thing is not to discover whether or not we’re alone in the universe; it’s to acceptor at least endurethe universe’s mystery. . . . Religion, science, art: we turn to them for answers, but the questions persist, especially in times of grief. Smith’s pairing of the philosophically minded poems in the books first section with the long elegy for her father in the second is brilliant.” Life on Mars follows Smith’s 2007 collection, Duende, which won the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, the only award for poetry in the United States given to support a poet’s second book, and the first Essence Literary Award for poetry, which recognizes the literary achievements of African Americans. The Bodys Question (2003) was her first published collection.
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By Gil Scott Heron
Shortly after we republished The Vulture and The Nigger Factory, Gil started to tell me about The Last Holiday, an account he was writing of a multi-city tour that he ended up doing with Stevie Wonder in late 1980 and early 1981. Originally Bob Marley was meant to be playing the tour that Stevie Wonder had conceived as a way of trying to force legislation to make Martin Luther King’s birthday a national holiday. At the time, Marley was dying of cancer, so Gil was asked to do the first six dates. He ended up doing all 41. And Dr King’s birthday ended up becoming a national holiday (“The Last Holiday because America can’t afford to have another national holiday”), but Gil always felt that Stevie never got the recognition he deserved and that his story needed to be told. The first chapters of this book were given to me in New York when Gil was living in the Chelsea Hotel. Among the pages was a chapter called Deadline that recounts the night they played Oakland, California, 8 December; it was also the night that John Lennon was murdered. Jamie Byng, Guardian
Gil_reads_”Deadline” (audio) / Gil Scott-Heron & His Music Gil Scott Heron Blue Collar Remember Gil Scott- Heron
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The Black Arts MovementLiterary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s
By James Edward Smethurst
Emerging from a matrix of Old Left, black nationalist, and bohemian ideologies and institutions, African American artists and intellectuals in the 1960s coalesced to form the Black Arts Movement, the cultural wing of the Black Power Movement. In this comprehensive analysis, James Smethurst examines the formation of the Black Arts Movement and demonstrates how it deeply influenced the production and reception of literature and art in the United States through its negotiations of the ideological climate of the Cold War, decolonization, and the civil rights movement.
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A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family thats about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrinas inexorable winds is the voice of Wards narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her familys raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brothers blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt. Her fathers hands are like gravel, while her own hand slides through his grip like a wet fish, and a handsome boys muscles jabbered like chickens. Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isnt usually just metaphor for metaphors sake.
She conveys something fundamental about Eschs fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, whats salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.
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The White Masters of the World
From The World and Africa, 1965
W. E. B. Du Bois Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization (Fletcher)
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan / The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll / Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery /
George Jackson / Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804 / January 1, 1804 — The Founding of Haiti
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update 5 July 2012
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Home Marcus Bruce Christian Selected Letters Selected Diary Notes I Am New Orleans Table (Poems) Fifty Influential Figures
Related files: Langston Hughes Bio New Negro Poets U.S.A. In Praise of Langston Hughes Sermon and Blues Notes of a Native Son (Langston Reviews Baldwin)
Socialist Joy Langston Hughes to Christian New Negro Poets U.S.A. Langston Hughes Life and Works