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Stamp Unveiling and Theatrical Performances Will Mark the Occasion
Lincoln University will host two events on Thursday, February 7, 2002 to mark what would have been the 100th birthday of world-renowned poet and 1929 Lincoln alumnus Langston Hughes and his literary accomplishments.
At 1 p.m., in the lobby of the Langston Hughes Memorial Library, President Ivory V. Nelson and U.S. Postal Service Lancaster (Pa.) District Manager Michael Benson will preside over the unveiling of a new stamp created to commemorate Hughes.
The 34-cent, first-class stamp, which features a black and white photograph of a youthful Hughes in New York City, is the 25th stamp in the Post Office's Black Heritage series. It marks the series' 25th anniversary. Other similarly honored African-American historical figures include 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; slain civil rights activist Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz); pioneering aviator Bessie Coleman, who became the first woman to obtain an international aviator's license; and journalist Ida B. Wells who unstintingly reported on the gruesome cases of lynching in the United States.
The Postal Service will set up a station from noon to 2 p.m. to make stamps as well as special souvenir cards available for sale. For further information, contact 610-932-1090 or visit Lincoln's Web site at www.lincoln.edu.
In tribute, Assistant Professor of Music Doris M. Mayes will perform a three-part selection title "Three Dream Portraits" written by Margaret Bond with lyrics by Langston Hughes. Hughes wrote the lyrics to the three parts: "Minstrel Man," "Dream Variation" and "I, Too." Prof. Mayes is the Artist in Residence at Lincoln's Music Department and teaches voice.
After the unveiling, the Jahannes Company will perform "Sweet Flypaper, Dream Variations and Tambourines to Glory: Celebrating the Centennial of Langston Hughes '29" at 2 p.m., in the Mary Dod Brown Memorial Chapel. Another performance will be held at 7:30 p.m. The stamp unveiling and the performances are just two of the multitude of special events being held this year to salute the literary giant.
The stamp will also be unveiled on Friday, Feb. 1 at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, N.Y. On the same day, the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C. will open an exhibit on Hughes' life and work. It will run until August 2, 2002. Hughes' stamp is also the second installment in the Postal Museum's "Stamps with Personality" series. The first was baseball legend Roberto Clemente. Missouri native Langston Hughes (1902-1967) came to Lincoln in 1926 after writing his first book, "The Weary Blues." He was equally gifted in writing poetry, plays and fiction and his writing spans the gamut of those genres. Some of his most popular works include the play "Black Nativity" and the poem "I, Too, Sing America." One of the young artists of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance, Hughes' literary contemporaries included James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen and Claude McKay.
Founded in 1854, Lincoln University is a premier, Historically Black University that combines the best elements of a liberal arts and sciences-based undergraduate core curriculum and selected graduate programs to meet the needs of students living in a highly technological and global society.
Lincoln University is ranked first in Pennsylvania and second in the nation in graduating African Americans with baccalaureate degrees in the physical sciences. Lincoln is also the only university in the Commonwealth and one of but 20 universities nationwide where 40 percent or more of its physics graduates are women.