Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome

Langston lives in Bronzeville, a part of Chicago also called the Black Ghetto or the Black Belt. Langston and his father moved from Alabama one week after the death of his mama. They live in a kitchenette apartment at 4501 Wabash Avenue. It's a room with two beds, a table and two chairs and walls covered with newspapers to hide the holes but it does have running water and an indoor toilet. Langston attends Haines Junior High School while his father works at the Maxwell Brothers plant. A neighbour, Miss Fulton who teaches high school across town, lives above them and often asks Langston to help her bring groceries up the stairs.

Langston is usually the first one to get to school and sits in the front desk closest to his teacher, Miss Robins. His rundown shoes, overalls and the way he speaks marks him as poor and from the South, with some students calling him "country boy." Every day after school, Langston finds himself confronted by three boys, Lymon, Erroll and Clem but it is Lymon who mostly bullies him. Langston tries to ignore them allowing Lymon to push him around until he gets bored and leaves.

At home, Langston is sad, missing his mama's home cooking and life in Alabama. One day after school, after helping carry out a box for Miss Robins, Langston manages to sneak unseen through the fence away from school. By the time he stops to catch his breath, he realizes he is in a strange neighbourhood with neat homes and large trees. On the corner is a large building called the George Cleveland Hall Library. Remembering that his mama once told him a "library is a place you borrow books", Langston decides to find out what it's like.

A lady who turns out to be one of the librarians,  leads him into the library, telling him he can borrow any book he wants. Langston, scanning the shelves, pulls a book with his first name on the cover. The words in the book resonate with Langston, and he stays until the library closes. When he returns home late Langston lies to his father about the library, telling him he was out playing with some boys.

Langston returns to the library the very next day and asks the librarian, Mrs. Kimble about the photographs of colored people on the walls. She tells him that they are authors from a lecture series held at the library and that the library is named for a prominent Negro physician. Langston returns to the section of the library containing "the book with the words from my heart."  When it comes time to leave, Langston learns from Miss Cook, the children's librarian about taking out books using a library card. Langston is overwhelmed at this prospect and signs out the book of poetry by Langston Hughes.

As Langston struggles to adapt to life in Chicago, the library and the poetry of Langston Hughes prove to be the lifeline he needs to move forward.

Discussion

Finding Langston is a wonderful short novel, set in 1946 Chicago, chronicling a young black boy's struggle to adapt to life without his beloved mama in a strange city.

Langston misses just about everything that characterizes life in Alabama. In Alabama Langston had friends, and life was slower, the people more polite. Often Langston finds himself comparing Chicago to life at home in Alabama. "Streetlights shine through the window in the front of the room. In Alabama only lights I saw at night were the moon and stars. Sometimes so bright a curtain couldn't block them out...."

He finds the crowded busy city of Chicago difficult to get used to.
"Back home, we couldn't see a neighbor for miles. I'll never get used to people living on top of each other. I'll never get used to everybody knowing what time you get up in the morning and what you're cooking for breakfast. And everyone to busy to say a decent 'Mornin' when you see them on the street. Back home I had space to breathe. Had to walk down the road a ways to get to our nearest neighbor, but if somebody got sick, or was in need of a hand, folks were there to help 'fore you knew it. I knew I had to act right, because someone was always watching, waiting to get word back to my folks....."

Langston misses his friends and the sense of belonging. "Back home I had friends. Not a lot, but enough to make me fell like I fit. At lunch, outside, we'd play marbles together, sometimes climb the tree in the back of the school. No one laughed when I talked, or pointed at my run-over shoes and overalls."

But what Langston misses most is his mama. "But Mama made it seem like I was all she ever wanted. Like I filled her up. Like any more would have been too much. ...She loved me hard as she could till she left this world." Langston feels the loss of his mama keenly. "I close my eyes and try to picture Mama. I can still see her smile with the space between her teeth. Smooth brown skin and eyes that laughed along with her. Before I know it, the tears start and won't stop."

In an effort to avoid being bullied, Langston discovers a nearby public library that is open to all people regardless of the colour of their skin. And it is there that he discovers a book by a poet, Langston Hughes who has the same first name. At first, the coincidence of their same first names seems unimportant to Langston, who has no idea why his parents chose his name.

When he reads some of his mama's letters to his father, he comes across several lines of poetry,

Langston Hughes 1942

"My black one,
Thou are not beautiful
Yet thou hast
A loveliness
Surpassing beauty."
Langston is moved by these lines but is certain they were not written by his mama who had no time to read, something she did before she was married, and definitely even less time to write poetry. 

Langston signs out a book, The Weary Blues, by Langston Hughes and discovers a poem, "Poem 4: To The Black Beloved" that has the words he saw in his mama's letter. This makes Langston understand that his mama also loved the poetry of Langston Hughes. He knows his father doesn't know the words in her letter were from a Langston Hughes poem, a secret he decides not to reveal.
"She never told him that Langston Hughes made her heart sing the way he does mine. That she wanted to name her baby boy after the poet she copied in her letters." Langston believes that his mama, in naming him after Langston Hughes whose poetry she loved, gave him a way to deal with the pain of her death and the loneliness of a strange city and ultimately to find a place to belong.

The library and poetry books also bring together Langston and his first friend in Chicago. When the boy who has been bullying Langston rips pages out of The Weary Blues, Clem retrieves all the pages and helps Langston explain to the librarian what happened. It is the beginning of a friendship. The two boys discover they have both suffered the loss of a loved one: Langston has lost his mother while Clem's father was killed in the munitions explosion on the SS E.A. Bryan in what came to be known as the Port Chicago disaster.

Langston is an endearing character, whose struggles are portrayed in a genuine and affecting way to all readers by Cline-Ransome. In spite of his loneliness, his sadness over the death of his mama and the difficulties of fitting in, Langston stays true to his southern values of honesty, kindness and helping others. But he also begins to find those same values in people like Clem who has also suffered the loss of someone he loves, and in his neighbour Miss Fulton, who shares his love of poetry.

Finding Langston is a truly beautiful story about loss, hope, starting over and belonging. It is about the power of libraries, and the written word and how books help us deal with life. It is as Clem says, after Langston explains why he likes poetry, " So the poetry you read is a way of putting all the things you feel inside on the outside."  Poetry and stories will always be a help to understanding both the joys and troubles of life.

Author Lesa Cline-Ransome offers some historical context in her Author's Note at the back, explaining the migration of hundreds of thousands of blacks from the South to cities in the North. The result for Chicago was the development of a rich cultural scene that included people like Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters, Gwendolyn Brooks and many others including the poet Langston Hughes. The library in Finding Langston is real. The George Cleveland Hall Branch of the Chicago Public Library was built due to the efforts of Dr. George Cleveland Hall who wanted a library for the constituents of Bronzeville. Unlike libraries in Alabama in 1946, everyone was welcome.

Langston Hall image:  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Langston-Hughes/images-videos#/media/1/274926/11795

Book Details:

Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome
New York: Holiday House    2018
107 pp.

The Girl From The Tar Paper School by Teri Kanefield

In 1951, fifteen-year-old Barbara Rose Johns and her sister Joan attended Robert R. Moton High School - a high school for black students - in Farmville, Virginia. In the 1950's, segregation which kept black and white Americans separate in schools, restaurants, theatres, and in most public areas, was legal in the United States. The high school, for students from the black community, consisted of a main brick building surrounded by temporary classrooms constructed of wood and covered with tar paper. In rainy weather, these wooden "chicken coops" as the students called them, leaked. In cold weather they were heated unevenly by the pot-bellied stoves, meaning those students near the stove were warm while those further away shivered from the cold. In contrast, the school for white students, Farmville High School, "had modern heating, an industrial-arts shop, locker rooms, an infirmary, a cafeteria, and a real auditorium complete with sound equipment."

Barbara questioned her music teacher, Miss Inez Davenport whom she had come to trust, about the unfair conditions of their school. Miss Davenport challenged Barbara to act. Barbara, who lived in Darlington Heights with her parents, considered the problem of the tar paper shacks. Eventually, Barbara came up with the idea of leading her fellow students on a strike to protest the terrible conditions and the lack of action by both the school board and the town officials. The next day Barbara called together students she felt were important leaders in the student community including John and Carrie Stokes (vice president and president of the 1951 graduating class respectively) and John Watson (school newspaper editor-in-chief and member of the school business club). The students decided to strike in the spring in an attempt to force the school board and city to act.

On April 23, 1951 the students of Robert Russa Moton High walked out of class, led by Barbara Johns. The students kept their plans secret knowing that if parents or teachers were aware of the possible strike they might lose their jobs or face other repercussions. Principal Boyd Jones was lured into town by a telephone call informing him that black students were causing trouble in the town. Once Principal Jones had left the school, notes written by Barbara informing the teachers in each class that there was an assembly in the school auditorium distributed. Once the teachers and their classes assembled in the auditorium, Barbara took the stage and asked the teachers to leave. Barbara's speech focused on the terrible conditions at the school, the inability of the parents and the city to deal with this problem and how they had to the right to the same facilities that the Farmville white students enjoyed.

Principal Boyd returned to the school and urged Barbara and the students to quit their strike, telling them that a new school was being worked on. But Barbara asked him to leave and she then led the students on a picket in front of the school. After meeting with Reverend L. Francis Griffin, the pastor at the First Baptist Church in Farmville, Barbara called the NAACP in an attempt to get them involved but they were reluctant, telling her to write a letter.

Some of the Moton High School students who attended the strike.

The (white) superintendent of Prince Edward County Schools, T. J. McIlwaine refused to meet with Barbara and the students, so she along with several other students walked to his office and met with him in the county courthouse. He refused Barbara's demands for black students to join their white counterparts at Farmville High and insisted that a new school was in the works. He also stated there was no difference in quality between the two high schools.

Three days into the strike, on April 25, 1951, two NAACP lawyers, Spottswood Robinson and Oliver Hill arrived to speak with Barbara and the striking students. They encouraged the students to go back to class because their strategy had changed. Instead of seeking schools of equal quality for black students, they were now working towards desegregation. Barbara's goal for the strike was a new building. Instead, the student strike at Robert R. Moton High would become part of a much larger push to achieve desegregation. Barbara Johns' initiative to improve schools for black students had suddenly blossomed into a much larger effort, the beginning of the struggle to end segregation of black students in America.

Discussion

The Girl From The Tar Paper School, which was written for children and teens, does an excellent job of recounting this important event which marked the beginning of efforts to desegregate schools in the United States.

Kanefield begins by describing the school that Barbara Johns and other black Americans in Farmville, Virginia must attend, and her decision to do something about the inequality experienced by black students in the county.

To help readers understand the factors that may have molded Barbara Rose Johns and motivated her to act, Kanefield delves into her family history. Readers get the sense of a close-knit family helping one another, with deep roots in Prince Edward County. Barbara, through the efforts of her Uncle Vernon Johns, a Baptist minister, learned about black history and was most definitely exposed to his volatile preaching which called out both blacks and whites. Like many black Americans, Barbara experienced racial prejudice, some of which is recounted.

Like her Uncle Vernon, Barbara "...put into words what needed to be said..." at the very beginning of the strike. Barbara's actions stunned her fellow students "...who saw her as reserved and something of a loner..." Her leadership qualities were very much in evidence during the initial stages of the strike. She boldly confronted the white superintendent, Mr. McIlwaine,

Accompanying Kanefield's narrative are a few family photographs - most were lost when the family home burned down in 1955 - as well as photographs of important lanmarks and areas that were important to Barbara and her story.

Social change is always difficult and often not without resistance. In the chapter titled, The Lost Generation, Kanefield recounts one of the unintended consequences of the fight to desegregate schools. Many readers will be shocked to learn that when desegregation was determined to be unconstitutional through the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the Prince Edward County school board refused to desegregate even though they were ordered to in 1959 by the Federal District Court. They closed all the Prince Edward County schools meaning that black children had no means of education while white students were able to attend a private school. This mean spirited action meant no schooling for black students until 1964, a situation that affected these families for years to come. Amazingly it took a Supreme Court decision to force the schools to reopen and "it was not until the 1980s that Prince Edward County schools were fully integrated and funded adequately enough so all children in the county could be educated."

If anything, The Girl From The Tar Paper School, helps young readers understand how racial prejudice can be so harmful both to those who hold these beliefs and to those who are victims of such prejudice. Kanefield portrays the extraordinary efforts black Americans had to go to simply to achieve the right to attend schools like other Americans and how these efforts were often peaceful and required great determination and courage.

The back matter contains an extensive Author's Note, A Select Civil Rights Timeline, Endnotes detailing the sources of quotes, a Sources page listing resources used, Image Credits and an Index. Well-written, enlightening and very moving.

image credit: http://www.newseum.org/2015/02/26/unsung-heroes-farmville-student-strike/

Book Details:

The Girl From The Tar Paper School: Barbara Rose Johns and the Advent of the Civil Rights Movement  by Teri Kanefield
New York: Abrams Books For Young Readers    2014
56 pp.

February: Black History Month

As most of us know, February is Black History Month. Here are few resources that I've come across this month that might be of interest.

One of the best movies about the abolition of the slave trade is Amazing Grace which was released in 2006. Directed by Michael Apted, it tells the remarkable story of William Wilberforce, a young British parliamentarian who worked relentlessly to abolish the transatlantic slave trade. British slave ships brought Africans to the West Indies to be bought and sold as property. Wilberforce was working against cultural biases which viewed the dark-skinned people of Africa as less intelligent, less modest, less virtuous - in short, less human than people with white skin. In addition to this, many British parliamentarians and wealthy persons owned plantations or had a stake in the slave trade.  Ioan Gruffudd gives a stellar performance as Wilberforce while excellent supporting performances are given by Benedict Cumberbatch as William Pitt and Michael Gambon as Sir Charles Fox.

The title of the film, Amazing Grace, comes of course, from the hymn of the same name, written by John Newton, a slave ship captain who converted to Christianity and whom eventually became an Anglican priest. His conversion to abolitionist came about gradually. In 1788 he published his Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade which described the terrible conditions on board slave ships traveling to the Americas. Wilberforce was eventually successful with the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807 which abolished the slave trade but did not free those already enslaved. Sadly, that did not happened until 1833.

In America, where the slave trade flourished, and eventually led to civil war, it took well over 200 years to abolish slavery and to establish equality for African Americans. In the 1930's, during the Great Depression, men and women were hired to record the stories of slaves, those who were still alive some 70 years after Emancipation and could who could recall life as a slave. Often these people had been slaves as children or adolescents. The project, called the Federal Writer's Project, was part of an initiative to write about American history. Former slaves were interviewed from all Southern states as well as many other states such as Rhode Island, North and South Carolina, Texas and Alabama.

The Slave Narratives can be found on the Library of Congress website. These narratives contain 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery. There are also hundreds of archived photographs.An interesting discussion of the limitations of the Slave Narratives can be found here. Please explore this site in detail as it has much information on the Slave Narratives.