Rick Santorum drops Langston Hughes poem title from campaign

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24* (three way tie) Langston HughesOne of the Harlem Renaissance’s more colorful and legendary figures, Langston Hughes managed to frame issues of African-American identity and pride in terms that seemed as much poetic as they were political. Though he contributed to both the NAACP’s The Crisis and the socialist magazine The Messenger, among other publications, falling in and out of various movements, Hughes’s politics, though decidedly pro-black, never overshadowed his strong individualism. Very in tune with the rhythms and ways of black people, Hughes consistently saw the beauty of black life and culture and not just its problems. Creatively prolific, Hughes left volumes of works, ranging from poetry collections and children’s books to plays, novels and essays. Still, it’s poems like “Harlem,” asking “what happens to a dream deferred?” and “Mother to Son,” where a woman passes on her hopefulness, not her hardships, that still manage to captivate the public imagination so many decades later.(Hulton Archive/Getty)

From Salon:

Long-ago Sen. Rick Santorum is running for president, despite his “Google problem,” and fresh out of the gate he has already invited more mockery. His campaign website features the slogan, “Fighting to Make America America Again” (by which I think he means that America is not America when there’s a Muslim in charge).

As some liberals have noted, “Let America Be America Again” is the title of a poem by Langston Hughes, an avowed leftist who was probably gay. And the poem does not really reflect the Santorum agenda.

Because Santorum is not a very good politician, he allowed himself to be “tripped up” by a student who asked him about how his campaign slogan was written by a gay, black, pro-union leftist poet.

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