America Again,” Hughes proudly depicted the lives of poor blacks through the invention of what was called “jazz poetry.” Factoid: my Monk Media client, jazz label Motema Records, is located inside Harlem’s Langston Hughes House. Free reference work:...

This was the territory Carl Van Vechten — critic, novelist, photographer and, most famously, patron of the Harlem Renaissance — traversed with a singular vigor and preoccupation that bordered on fetishism. He counted the black literati of the era —...

You may write me down in history You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Did you...

But Carl Van Vechten’s most notable role may have been the one he played as patron to the Harlem Renaissance. “Van Vechten,” writes Lynell George in her review of “Carl Van Vechten & the Harlem Renaissance/A Portrait of Black & White” by Emily Bernard,...

In "The Last Holiday," Scott-Heron taps into the far side of that older and weirder America — that is, the fully African-American side. This memoir reads a bit like Langston Hughes filtered through the scratchy and electrified sensibilities of John Lee...

In some lands, Dark night and cold steel prevail, But the dream will come back, And the song break its jail" ('Oppression' by Langston Hughes)Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced this week that the government will soon convene an...