25 September
On 25 September 1924, the black poet Langston Hughes sent a letter to his friend and mentor, Howard University professor Alain Locke, from Genoa, in Italy.
‘I’ve done a couple of new poems,’ he wrote. ‘I have no more paper, so I’m sending you one on the back of this letter.’ The poem, published two years later, was to become a classic.
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
‘Eat in the kitchen’
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed –
I, too, am America.
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365 days is co-authored by Steve Platt and Fiona Osler
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