A Celebration of African American Writers

In 1973, Professor Emeritus Raymond R. Patterson of the English Department and a few of his colleagues conceived of an event that would celebrate the most distinguished writers of the African Diaspora associated with the tradition of Langston Hughes and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Because the group envisioned honoring exceptional writers of poetry, fiction, drama, autobiography and critical essays that celebrate the memory and tradition of Langston Hughes, the event, which debuted on March 17, 1978, became known as the Langston Hughes Festival. On that day, James Baldwin spoke at his “homecoming tribute” and was presented with the Martin Luther King Memorial Medal for his “lifelong dedication to humanitarian ideals.” Since April 1984, when Ralph Waldo Ellison was honored, the festival has presented each honoree with the Langston Hughes medallion. Created by Lawrence F. Sykes of Rhode Island College, the bronze medal’s design was based on a photograph in the Langston Hughes papers at Yale University (courtesy of the late George Houston Bass, executor of the Langston Hughes estate).

The festival is typically a two-day affair that includes musical interludes and student performances. Occasionally, the festival offers conferences and symposia, where distinguished scholars from around the country and the world are invited to discuss Black literature and the arts. In addition, the festival sponsors the Langston Hughes Choral-Speaking Festival, an event that draws 300-400 young scholars from New York City public schools to creatively recite or enact Hughes’ poetry.

In addition to honoring festival awardees and introducing viewers to the archival material, this exhibit re-introduces the City College community to a treasure in its midst—the Langston Hughes Festival, an event that has been made possible through the cooperation and significant support of The Simon H. Rifkind Center for the Humanities and the Arts in the Division of Humanities, the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC) at the CUNY Graduate Center, and other external granting agencies.

This exhibit showcases material in the Langston Hughes Festival Collection held in the City College of New York Libraries Archives. The collection is composed of program covers depicting images of the honorees, digests of their legacy, press releases, photographs of festival celebrants, audio and visual recordings, and posters. The collection made its way to the Archives through the efforts of current festival director, Professor Gordon Thompson, who recognized the material as a valuable legacy for the history of City College and undertook the job of collecting it from several sources.