Google kicks off its celebration of Black History Month marking the birthday of Harlem Renaissance icon, James Mercer Langston Hughes. Mr. Hughes’ Google doodle is a caricature of Hughes working at his typewriter, with the melodious sounds of jazz playing in the background, as lines from his poem I Dream a World filter across the screen. A fitting tribute to a legendary poet whose mission, through the written word, it was to “illuminate the Negro condition in America.” Forty-eight years after his death in 1967, Langston Hughes continues to teach and inspire generations of young poets of all backgrounds. tlb
Related resource: Jazz Poetry & Langston Hughes [National Endowment for the Arts]