Langston Hughes Festival Advisory Committee

DIRECTOR: Professor. Gordon E. Thompson

The Langston Hughes Committee is committed to bringing great writers of the African American experience to The City College to encourage creative activity within the Harlem community.  In honor of Hughes' adopted home, the Langston Hughes Festival dedicates itself to the community of Harlem, and to highlighting past, present, and future literary and cultural achievements of its denizens.

We, the Langston Hughes Festival Committee, wish to pursue the vision of Langston Hughes in bringing to the people, literature that reflects the voice of the people.  Ultimately, we hope to continue to enrich the vibrant Harlem community with writing inspired by the early promise of the Harlem Renaissance.

The Langston Hughes Festival's Advisory Committee:

• Coordinator of Choral Festival: Charles Frye
• Jeanette Adams
• Barbara Blair
• Myrah Brown-Green
• William Gibbons
• Venus Green
• Jo-Ann Hamilton
• Vanessa Valdes
• Acting Dean Geraldine Murphy, ex officio
  

The Founders:

• Raymond Patterson
• Jerome Brooks ~ Nathaniel Norment
  

We Remember

• Raymond R. Patterson (1929-2001)
• Emeritus Professor of English at The City College of New York
  

A prolific poet, widely anthologized, Raymond is also the author of 26 Ways of Looking at a Black Man and Other Poems (1969), Elemental Blues (1983), and two opera librettos, David Walker and Goree. Prof. Patterson dedicated the greater part of his twenty-five years at CCNY to sustaining the Langston Hughes Festival, funded for many years out of his pocket.  He will be remembered by hundreds of students, scores of poets, and other colleagues.  As long as the Langston Hughes Festival lives, Raymond will always be remembered and loved at CCNY.