Langston’s story begins post-World War II in the fall of 1946. The economy is booming and factories are hiring recent arrivals from the South, Northern blacks, and men newly returned from the war.
Langston and his father are just two of the seven million blacks who migrated north during what is now called the Great Migration. From 1916 to 1970, Chicago’s Union Station received more than five hundred thousand blacks who left the South in search of a better life in the North. Chicago’s black population grew from two percent to thirty-three percent in just over fifty years.
The growing black population in Chicago grew the cultural scene as well, providing a home to musicians and singers such as Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Muddy Waters, and Mahalia Jackson, visual artists Charles White and William Edouard Scott, and the writers Lorraine Hansberry, Arna Bontemps, Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wright, and of course Langston Hughes, all of whom formed the Chicago Black Renaissance.
Langston Hughes spent much of his writing life in New York City, but his brief time in Chicago was well spent. Hughes lived in the Hotel Grand at Fifty-First and South Parkway, and spent much of his time in the spring of 1939 at the George Cleveland Hall Branch library working on the first draft of his autobiography, The Big Sea. He later donated the manuscript drafts of The Big Sea to the Special Negro Collection at the library. He also wrote the Jesse B. Semple columns for the Chicago Defender newspaper. He, along with writers Richard Wright, Arna Bontemps, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Margaret Walker, were featured speakers at the library’s Book Review and Lecture Forum series, which was begun in the 1930s by librarian Vivian Harsh as a way to introduce the surrounding community to works by prominent writers of color. Vivian Harsh was Chicago’s first black librarian and the first head of the Hall Branch.
Chances are, Langston would not have been able to visit a library in rural Alabama in the 1940s. Not only were libraries racially segregated, but of all the libraries in the state of Alabama, fewer than one-third were available to black residents.
The George Cleveland Hall Branch of the Chicago Public Library, where much of the story takes place, was the brainchild of Chicago surgeon and civic leader Dr. George Cleveland Hall. He was the second African-American to serve on the board of directors for the Chicago Public Library, and he made it his mission to build a branch in the Bronzeville neighborhood, the first of its kind to serve its community members and promote African-American culture and history. He enlisted the support of the NAACP, the Chicago Urban League, and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, who donated land he owned at the corner of Forty-Eighth Street and Michigan Avenue. During its construction, Dr. Hall passed away and the board voted unanimously to name the library in his honor. On January 18, 1932, the George Cleveland Hall Branch first opened its doors to the public.
The Hall Branch has been called the Black Jewel of the Midwest, and today serves ten thousand visitors each month.
Lesa Cline-Ransome
Special thanks to my editor, Mary Cash, who saw a seedling of this story and watered it and loved it and helped it grow strong into a beautiful magnolia. And a loving thanks to my dear friend, Ann Burg, whose confidence, words, and guidance helped me find my way to novel writing and Langston.
And to my two favorite readers, James Ransome, who listened again and again to every draft, offering invaluable input and Leila Ransome, aka my Assistant Editor, who endured months of readings in my office when she tried to tiptoe past to her room. Her keen, youthful perspective, unfiltered critique and literary analysis helped to bring Langston to life.
The amazing team at Holiday House Publishers, thank you all—Terry Borzumato-Greenberg, Emily Campisano, Emily Mannon, Faye Bi and Derek Stordahl, and the rest of the HH family, for their continued support.
For the Malden Public Library and all the libraries and librarians who change the lives of children every day by leading them to books and opening worlds.
As always, thank you to my wonderful family—Linda Cline, Bill Cline & Darlene Azadnia, David Jennings, J.E. & Marlene Williams, Patricia Richardson, Tita & Leigh Carter, my mother-in-law Margaret Williams, and my saintly mom, Ernestine Cline, who showed me the transformative power of books.
My deepest gratitude for my cubs—Jaime, Maya, Malcolm, and Leila (and my snoring office companion, Nola), who always inspire, uplift, and motivate me to #keepgrinding.
Finding Langston Page 8