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
  • omnibus

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


  • Mohammed El-Kurd
    Guilty by Affiliation
    13 Aug 2025
    The Israeli murder of heroic Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif was bookended by accusations that he was part of Hamas. For many of our allies, the instinct is to prove his innocence by proving…
  • Edzorna Francis Mensah
    Understanding the plot to break Ghana and destroy the AES Countries
    13 Aug 2025
    When Ghanaian hospitals run out of basics and power grids fail, it’s not mismanagement; it’s the deliberate unraveling by the west of a society that dared to partner with anti-imperialist neighbors.
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Trump and Democrats Fuel the Washington DC Crime Panic
    13 Aug 2025
    Donald Trump’s takeover of the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department is not merely a result of his racist and authoritarian tendencies, nor is it new. It is part and parcel of a history of…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    INTERVIEW: Fatima Bernawi: The Tragedy of a People, 1978
    13 Aug 2025
    “The reason for these military operations was, and still is, to tell the Israeli occupation that we defy it and are willing to resist and go anywhere to express our defiance.”
  • Isaias Afwerki
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Isaias Afwerki: My Struggle for Eritrea and Africa
    13 Aug 2025
    Michel Collon has interviewed Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki and says the world must listen to him.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us