Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

In Langston’s Home
BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner
06 Nov 2019
🖨️ Print Article
In Langston’s Home
In Langston’s Home

In Langston’s home
Harlem
You do as Langston
Did
Love the Jazz, the Blues,
Words, acts, pages and stages
In Langston’s home
Harlem
You do as Langston
Did
Love the People, their 
Problems, pains and triumphs

In Langston’s home
Harlem
You do as Langston
Did
You wake asking, “What 
has Harlem become
This morning?”
Each day is different!
This Manhattan morning
Your favorite coffee shop’s
a bank; and by noon
the other bank will be
another phone store—
the former phone store
a dog grooming salon
and so forth and so on…

In Langston’s home
Harlem
You do as Langston
Did
You wake asking, “What 
has Harlem become
This morning?”
And you find the cute
couple with the quiet
kids are gone—disappeared—
Deported to Haiti, though they
are Jamaican and Mexican;
You find the bodega brothers
are headed back to Yemen
to be bombed by backwards
Butchers of fossil fuel infamy…

In Langston’s home
Harlem
You do as Langston
Did
You wake one morning
Smiling. You speak. You say,
“Good morning, Revolution….

© 2019. Raymond Nat Turner, The Town Crier. All Rights Reserved.

Raymond Nat Turner is an accomplished poet and performing artist, and an official of the National Writers Union. Find more of his work at http://upsurgejazz.com

COMMENTS?

Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/blackagendareport

Or, you can comment by emailing us at comments@blackagendareport.com

 

Black communists

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

ESSAY: I Go to Jail for the Scottsboro Boys, Ada Wright, 1932
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
ESSAY: I Go to Jail for the Scottsboro Boys, Ada Wright, 1932
21 June 2023
Mrs. Ada Wright, mother of two of the “Scottsboro Boys,” traveled the world to advocate on their behalf.
ESSAY: The Struggle for the Leninist Position on the Negro Question in the United States, Harry Haywood, 1933
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
ESSAY: The Struggle for the Leninist Position on the Negro Question in the United States, Harry Haywood, 1933
26 April 2023
On the 153th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin, we present Harry Haywood’s theoretical work on imperialism, capitalism, and Black self
INTERVIEW: A Voice from the Monster: Charlene Mitchell in Tricontinental, 1971
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
INTERVIEW: A Voice from the Monster: Charlene Mitchell in Tricontinental, 1971
15 February 2023
A 1971 interview with the late Charlene Mitchell reminds us of both the need for Black radical struggle against capitalism, militarism, and rac
Social Democracy Will Not Save Us
Benjamin Woods
Social Democracy Will Not Save Us
16 November 2022
The author makes the case that liberalism is a dead end and that socialism is the only tool for Black liberation.
Three Revolutionary Black Women
Dr. Gerald Horne
Three Revolutionary Black Women
31 August 2022
Dr.
Essay: Record of Revolts in Negro Workers’ Past: Mary Adams, May 1, 1928
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
Essay: Record of Revolts in Negro Workers’ Past: Mary Adams, May 1, 1928
04 May 2022
A May Day 1928 essay by Black communist Williana “Liana” Jones Burroughs – aka Mary Adams – recounts the history of African revolt in the Ameri
Claudia Passport
Lola Olufemi
Claudia Jones: A Life in Search of the Communist Horizon
26 September 2021
This is the foreword to the new edition of Marika Sherwood’s Claudia Jones: A Life
Silencing Black Radicalism Since the Cold War 
Denise Lynn
Silencing Black Radicalism Since the Cold War 
10 December 2020
Anti-communists used the full powers of the state to silence, imprison, or deport radical Black activists.
A Southern Vanguard, The Lost History of Communism Below the Mason-Dixon Line
Robert Greene II 
A Southern Vanguard, The Lost History of Communism Below the Mason-Dixon Line
01 July 2020
Alabama Communists helped lay the foundation for the organized civil rights movement that emerged in the late 1940s and early ’50s.
BAR Book Forum: Margaret Stevens’s “Red International and Black Caribbean”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Margaret Stevens’s “Red International and Black Caribbean”
27 March 2019
Some of the best leaders of black working class people were communist or worked alongside communists.

More Stories


  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    New York Times Attacks “Peace-peddling” Jill Stein as the Presidential Race Comes Down to the Wire
    23 Oct 2024
    The New York Times scapegoats Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein as polls indicate a dead heat between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
  • Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report Contributor
    United Nations Releases New Report on the Death of Former Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold in 1961
    23 Oct 2024
    Apparent assassination and cover-up occurred during a critical period in African history.
  • Jon Jeter
    John Mearsheimer’s Folly: How Whites Agree to Misinterpret the World to Fulfill Their Racial Contract
    23 Oct 2024
    Systemic racism and reactionary violence are embedded into the foundation of the US political and social system, despite false claims of any sort of progress. Denying this reality is an act of mere…
  • Black Alliance for Peace Haiti/Americas Team
    MOLEGHAF: Update on Armed Attacks in Port-au-Prince
    23 Oct 2024
    Western imperialist-backed paramilitary violence in Port-au-Prince, Haiti has escalated in the last year. As the conditions on the ground worsen, MOLEGHAF puts out this call to allies around the…
  • Jonathan Cook
    The West's Support for Israel's Genocide is Destroying the World as we Know it
    23 Oct 2024
    The old world is dying once again, but the US-Israel axis is wrong to suggest it is slaying monsters. It is the monster.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us