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Great Gay Poets Friday! Langston Hughes

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Editor’s Note:

This is our fourth and, sadly, final post in honor of National Poetry Month, thanks to guest blogger Julia Garbowski, who conceived the idea and has done an excellent job sharing with us some of her favorites, including last week’s Edna St. Vincent Millay. Julia also shared with us great posts about Oscar Wilde and Hart Crane, and Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. This week, Julia looks at several poems by Langston Hughes.

I’m pleased to announce that Julia will be permanently joining our quickly-growing team here at The New Civil Rights Movement, and she’s working on some great ideas for future pieces. Welcome, Julia!

Langston Hughes, born in 1902, wrote one of his most well known poems at the age of seventeen. He wrote it on an envelope that he had in his pocket while riding on a train from Missouri to Mexico where he hoped to reconnect with his father. Raised mostly by his storytelling grandmother who had been one of the first women to attend Oberlin College, he had a strong sense of his black heritage.

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 rivers.

His “rivers” included a family history of prominence and folk heroes although financial stability was lacking. His white grandfather had staunchly insisted on marrying the black woman he loved, his Great-Uncle, John Mercer Langston, was the first black man to be elected to Congress in Virginia, and his grandmother’s first husband had been killed as a result of John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry. From a very early age he was given a purpose in life, –to work for equal rights for Black Americans.

In “Black Poets of the United States” Jean Wagner says of the poem that it “heralded the existence of a mystic union of Negroes in every country and every age.” But Langston Hughes’ rivers also included a stream of sexuality that he chose to hide. He carefully guarded his sexual preferences leaving some to suspect that he had none at all, while others point out that in order for him to be prominent in the Harlem Renaissance and continue to work toward black civil rights, he could not have revealed himself as gay during that time period. He died in 1967 which was two years before the Stonewall Riots that are often cited as the beginning of the gay rights movement .

When I read his poems they call me back to the black civil rights movement, but as in the following example written when he was just 20, they also speak to a greater truth about equality and human worth.

Question [1]

By Langston Hughes

When the old junk man Death

Comes to gather up our bodies

And toss them into the sack of oblivion,

I wonder if he will find

The corpse of a white multi-millionaire

Worth more pennies of eternity,

Than the black torso of

A Negro cotton-picker?

While Arnold Rampersad’s most definitive work on his life “The Life of Langston Hughes,” does not provide irrefutable evidence that he was gay, it does include sufficient evidence to build the argument. Even Rampersad writes that Hughes was attracted to black men, finding them “appealing and sexually fascinating.” But more compelling is that the question of his sexuality brings his work and life into coursework for Gay Studies at major universities and colleges throughout the country, including Yale, the University of Chicago and U.C. Berkeley.

The truth is that his sexuality was a secret; he did not claim or deny it in any case. Hughes is widely believed to have been gay because of connections to gay men and gay culture, long close friendships with out gay men, travels with companions, such as black gay artist Zell Ingram, and lack of relationships with women. Some of his poems also are given as evidence including “Young Sailor,” “Waterfront Streets,” “Café 3AM,” (about a police raid on a gay bar), and a series of unpublished poems claimed to be to a black male lover named “Beauty.”

The film “Looking for Langston” written and directed by Isaac Julien, produced by Nadine Marsh-Edwards in 1992 gives a much more definite portrayal of him as homosexual. I would love to think that Hughes thought his sexuality did not matter and therefore kept it private, but, knowing about his focus on the inequality of blacks in America, and knowing that he held close connections with gay culture; I cannot help but believe that he knew of a need to fight for the civil rights of gays as well, even if he was not ready to embrace that challenge.

I like to read my favorite Langston Hughes poem in the context of gay rights and the New Civil Rights Movement.

I, Too, Sing America

By Langston Hughes

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.

For more: “The Life of Langston Hughes” Vols I, II, by Arnold Rampersad, (Oxford University Press, 1986) “Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten” edited by Emily Bernard (Vintage Books, 2001). Also recordings at Smithsonian Folkways Records were made in 1955 of Langston Hughes reading his poems. Listen online at various sites, or look for CD: “The Dream Keeper and Other Poems of Langston Hughes” of the Folkways recordings.

Julia Garbowski lives in Royal Oak, MI and has returned to writing after 25 years of running a farm and market in Door County WI. She grew up in Sag Harbor, NY. Her B.A. in Communications is from the University of Wisconsin. She belongs to the Michigan Literary Network and her twitter name is @driftnotes.

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Stephen Miller Melts Down on Live TV: ‘I Will Be as Excited as I Want to Be!’

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White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller repeatedly had to be asked to “calm down” during a wide-ranging CNN interview on Tuesday that has set the internet on fire.

“This president, for the first time in history, is committed to restoring accountability at every level of the federal government,” Miller declared. “You may assert there’s no waste in the Pentagon. You may assert there is no waste in Treasury. You may assert there’s no waste in HHS.”

CNN’s Brianna Keilar made clear no one is asserting there is no waste.

READ MORE: ‘Ridiculous’: Federal Judge Scorches Trump DOJ Lawyer Over Military ‘Pronoun Use’

“Then why are you not celebrating these cuts if you agree there is waste, if you agree there is abuse, if you agree there is corruption, why are you not celebrating the cuts, the reforms that are being instituted?” Miller, shouting, asked.

“Every day that no action is taken —” Miller, still yelling, continued.

“Stephen, let’s calm down,” Keilar insisted.

“The entire salaries of American workers that are taxed disappear forever —”

“Stephen, let’s calm down,” Keilar again asked. “We’re not having a debate.”

“Well you are clearly trying to debate me,” Miller claimed. “And I will be as excited as I want to be about the fact that we are saving Americans billions of dollars, that we are ending the theft and waste and grift and corruption, that we are stopping American taxpayer dollars from subsidizing a rogue federal bureaucracy that has been relentlessly weaponized against the American people.”

Many have questioned the Trump administration’s assertions.

That exchange led veteran journalist John Harwood to declare, “Stephen Miller is bat— crazy.”

READ MORE: ‘Bloodbath by Design’: Trump’s Russia Negotiators Criticized for ‘Almost No Experience’

In another exchange, Miller condescendingly told Keilar, “The way that Article II” of the Constitution “works is a president wins an election, and then he appoints staff.”

CNN’s Ana Navarro-Cárdenas, a co-host on ABC’s “The View,” responded to a clip of Miller. She wrote: “Insane? Hysterical? Deranged? Off his meds?”

Miller, whose “ideology” is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “Anti-Immigrant,” is the architect of President Donald Trump’s family separation policies during his first administration. Over one thousand children have yet to be reunited.

“From March 4, 2015, to June 27, 2016, Miller,” the SPLC reported, “sent over 900 emails to Breitbart News editors.”

“Throughout the emails, Miller promotes literature, conspiracy theories, and policies supported by white nationalist and anti-immigrant hate groups,” according to the SPLC.

Watch the video above or at this link.

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‘Ridiculous’: Federal Judge Scorches Trump DOJ Lawyer Over Military ‘Pronoun Use’

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A federal judge sharply criticized an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice over Pentagon policy asserting that the U.S. Armed Forces could somehow be compromised simply by requiring service members to use a colleague’s preferred pronoun.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee, appeared skeptical of both the President’s and the Department of Justice’s stance on transgender service members during Tuesday’s hearing.

Reyes “asserted flatly that the idea that the greatest fighting force in the history of the world would be adversely effected by the need to use specific pronouns for a few thousand members of the military is, ‘Ridiculous,'” Fox News producer Jake Gibson reported.

READ MORE: ‘Bloodbath by Design’: Trump’s Russia Negotiators Criticized for ‘Almost No Experience’

According to Politico’s Kyle Cheney, this is how the exchange went:

“REYES: Can we agree that the greatest fighting force… is not going to be impacted in any way by less than 1 percent of the soldiers using a different pronoun than others might want to call them?

DOJ ATTORNEY: I can’t agree with that here.

REYES: Would you agree with me that if our military is negatively impacted in any kind of way that matters… We all have a lot bigger problems than pronoun use. We have a military that is incompetent. Any common sense rational human being knows that it doesn’t. It is pretext. It is frankly ridiculous. If you want to get me an officer of the U.S. military who is willing to get on the stand and say that because of pronoun usage the U.S. military is less prepared because of pronoun usage. I will be the first to give you a box of cigars.”

An estimated 15,000 service members are transgender.

In another striking exchange, Judge Reyes also called Trump’s executive order on transgender service members “unadulterated animus.”

Currently, the Pentagon has ordered service branches to stop accepting new transgender recruits into the military, and to pause any gender-affirming medical care for transgender troops.

READ MORE: ‘Sociopathic’: USAID Worker Sues Alleging State Dept. Medevac Refusal for Pregnant Wife

“One of the plaintiffs,” in the case, WUSA9‘s Jordan Fischer reports, “Koda Nature, a 23-year-old transgender man from Texas, said he had been working with a recruiter to join the U.S. Marine Corps when he was informed last month he would no longer be able to enlist. Nature said joining the military had been his dream since he was 5 years old – a dream to follow in the footsteps of 17 generations of his family.”

President Donald Trump has signed at least four executive orders restricting the civil rights of transgender people in the United States, including one that could be used to ban open service by transgender troops, under the guise of prioritizing military excellence, readiness, and “unit cohesion” — tropes that for decades were also used to try to prevent lesbian, gay, and bisexual troops from serving openly in America’s armed forces.

“Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service,” Trump’s January 27 executive order reads. Trump also alleged that “adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life. A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”

That order specifically targeted the use of preferred pronouns, which he called, “invented and identification-based pronoun usage.”

“It is the policy of the United States Government to establish high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity. This policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria. This policy is also inconsistent with shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex.”

READ MORE: ‘Unconstitutional Threat’: Trump Border Czar Under Fire Over AOC DOJ Request

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‘Bloodbath by Design’: Trump’s Russia Negotiators Criticized for ‘Almost No Experience’

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After a week of disastrous messaging by U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, resulting in a 180-degree turn and leaving European leaders and some Americans wondering what U.S. foreign policy is, the Trump administration is once again under fire as critics charge the team he has assembled to start discussions with Russia over its illegal war against Ukraine does not match the “heavyweights” Russia is sending.

The U.S. is already in the hot seat as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — who has made clear his country will accept no peace deal if they are not part of the negotiations — appears to have been frozen out of the initial talks, which were held Tuesday in Saudi Arabia.

European officials attending the Munich Security Conference last week, “stressed the need for Ukraine to be part of peace talks to end the war. Vice President JD Vance met with Zelenskyy in Munich Friday, telling him the U.S. wants a ‘durable, lasting peace,’ while Zelensky asked for ‘security guarantees,'” CBS News reported.

“Zelenskyy told the conference of world leaders that Ukraine would not accept a deal made ‘behind our backs without our involvement,’ and called for the creation of ‘armed forces of Europe’ amid the possibility of a changing relationship between Europe and the U.S.”

READ MORE: ‘Sociopathic’: USAID Worker Sues Alleging State Dept. Medevac Refusal for Pregnant Wife

Early Tuesday afternoon the Associated Press, calling it “an extraordinary about-face in U.S. foreign policy,” reported: “Russia and US agree to work toward ending Ukraine war in a remarkable diplomatic shift.”

CNN reported that the “United States and Russia agreed on four principles following talks that lasted more than four hours in Saudi Arabia, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday, including appointing a high-level team to help ‘negotiate and work through the end of the conflict in Ukraine’ in a way that’s ‘acceptable to all the parties engaged.’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was not invited to the talks, said Ukraine will not ‘give in to Russia’s ultimatums’ and earlier said he would refuse to sign any agreement negotiated without Kyiv’s involvement.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who reportedly was part of Tuesday’s talks, described them as “useful.”

The talks are expected to continue after this initial meeting. Trump administration officials at the talks in Saudi Arabia included U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

Foreign policy expert and historian Sławomir Dębski, a former Russia foreign policy analyst, over the weekend described Russia’s team.

He named, “Yury Ushakov, the Kremlin’s chief foreign policy adviser, who has worked in diplomacy for over half a century,” “Sergey Naryshkin, Ushakov’s top spy, who served alongside Putin in the Soviet KGB,” and “Kirill Dmitriev, a financier educated at Stanford and Harvard, who has ties to the Kremlin chief’s family and, according to the publication, could play a key role as an unofficial ‘backchannel’ to Trump’s negotiators.”

“A rumour says that Vladymir Medinsky is to join the Russian team in Riyadh,” Dębski added. “He is a former Minister of Culture. Now he is Putin’s key adviser on ideological aspects of Russian aggression on Ukraine.”

Bloomberg News on Friday reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin “is assembling a heavyweight team with decades of experience in high-stakes negotiations to face off against US President Donald Trump’s representatives for a deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.”

“That Putin is opting to rely mostly on highly skilled and experienced negotiators to represent Russia in any talks is hardly a surprise,” Bloomberg added. “The personnel choices underscore just how determined the Russian leader is to secure a favorable outcome in any negotiations and potentially how little his demands in relation to Ukraine have changed in the three years since he ordered the full-scale invasion.”

READ MORE: ‘Unconstitutional Threat’: Trump Border Czar Under Fire Over AOC DOJ Request

Yale University Professor Timothy Snyder, a historian and expert on the Soviet Union and the Holocaust, is the author of the popular bestseller, “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.”

Responding to Dębski’s post, Snyder warned: “The American team has almost no experience in high-level international negotiation, no regional expertise on Ukraine and Russia, and no relevant foreign language knowledge. Not true of the Russians, to put it mildly. Looks like a bloodbath by design.”

Brad Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, blasted the Trump administration.

“It was a mistake for the Trump administration to negotiate with the Taliban without the Afghan government at the table. It is a mistake to negotiate with Putin without including Kyiv,” he wrote. “When the topic is the future of Ukraine, Kyiv has a right to be at the table, especially in light of the sacrifice and bravery of Ukrainians in defending their homes against Putin’s unprovoked invasion. Putin understands that the United States and Europe are more powerful together. That’s why he wants to divide us. We should not help him.”

READ MORE: Federal Judge ‘Skeptical’ of DOGE: Report

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