afro-art-chick:

“When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul.”

“Motto

I play it cool
And dig all jive
That’s the reason
I stay alive.
My motto as
I live and learn is
Dig and be dug in return.”

“Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid.”

“I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.”

“An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.”

“We younger Negro artists now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren’t, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too… If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn’t matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, as strong as we know how and we stand on the top of the mountain, free within ourselves.”

Happy Birthday to poet, playwright, novelist, columnist and social activist James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902)

And so begins what I think will be a pretty dope Black History Month.