Sidewalk sale item: Langston Hughes T-shirts; proceeds go to 2002 celebration

LAWRENCE -- As a part of a fund-raising effort for the Langston Hughes' centennial year celebration, including a University of Kansas symposium, several community businesses are sponsoring a T-shirt that will be sold at the Downtown Lawrence Sidewalk Sale, Thursday, July 19.

The "Lawrence Celebrates Langston Hughes" T-shirts will be sold at a booth between the Eldridge Hotel and Silverworks on Massachusetts St.

Lawrence was Hughes' home from 1903 to 1915. KU is planning a major symposium Jan. 31 and Feb. 7 to 10 to honor Hughes' career and work. Pulitzer-prize winning author Alice Walker; acclaimed actors Danny Glover, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis; and Hughes' biographer Arnold Rampersad will attend. In addition, several community events are planned to recognize Hughes, described as the greatest American poet since Walt Whitman.

Community businesses sponsoring the production of T-shirts are: Advanco, Inc.; Alvamar, Inc.; Borders; Charlton Manley Insurance; Coldwell Banker McGrew Real Estate, Inc.; Douglas County Bank; Free State Brewing Company; Kansas Key Press; Peoples Bank; and Stephens Real Estate, Inc.

The symposium planning committee is raising $50,000 so symposium events can be free to the public in the spirit of Langston Hughes. The committee includes Maryemma Graham, English professor, and Bill Tuttle, American studies professor, Heather Hoy and Barbara Watkins of KU Continuing Education, Alison Watkins of the Langston Hughes centennial project, and Nancy Hiebert, Lawrence community representative. The funds are in addition to grants already received from within KU.

"At the booth, we will have additional information about the symposium and the artists, scholars, writers, who will be at the symposium," Hiebert said. "Our booth will be staffed largely by volunteers who are planning the symposium."

The white T-shirts feature a sepia-colored photograph of Hughes by James Allen on a teal background on the front. The back will include the first lines of Hughes' first published poem, "Youth," which reads: "We have tomorrow Bright before us Like a flame." This same quote was placed on the entrance of Lawrence's City Hall building in 1980. The introductory price is $10.

Hughes was born Feb. 1, 1902, in Joplin, Mo., and moved to Lawrence with his mother, Carolina Leary Hughes, to live with his widowed grandmother, Mary Langston Hughes. His grandfather, Charles H. Langston, had settled in Kansas in 1862 as a free man and abolitionist. Charles and Mary Langston were educated at Oberlin College in Ohio, where they met and married in 1869. They returned to Kansas and bought a farm just northwest of Lawrence.

In the 1920s, Hughes moved to Harlem and ultimately became the most prominent figure in the literary, artistic, and intellectual phenomenon known as the Harlem Renaissance. He died May 22, 1967 in New York.

Details about KU's conference, registration and related events in Lawrence are available online at www.kuce.org/hughes.

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