Queens Library’s Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center to be a Literary Landmark

Image source: Wikimedia Commons – Langston Hughes in 1936

On Saturday, February 9, the Queens Library’s Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center in Corona-East Elmhurst (100-01 Northern Boulevard – GMAP) will be nationally recognized at a Literary Landmark by United for Libraries. Each year the library holds a Langston Hughes Celebration and it will be during that event – the 28th annual – that a plaque will be placed at the library. All are welcome and admission is free!

United for Libraries’ Executive Director Sally G. Reed wrote a letter to Queens Library’s CEO Thomas W. Galante, saying “I am most pleased that you’ve applied for this designation for a man who had such significant impact on African-American literature and American literature generally.”

This library was named in honor of Langston Hughes – the celebrated poet, author, journalist, and essayist – in 1969, two years after his death. It is an important center for black history, as the home of the Black Heritage Reference Center of Queens County. The collection contains New York State’s “largest public circulating collection of print and non-print material on the Black Experience. This collection is now estimated at over 45,000 titles, including approximately 1,000 volumes of Theses and Dissertations on Black Literature.”

Here is the agenda for the celebration and event:

11:00am – A screening of the biographical film, Hughes Dream Harlem by Darralyn Hudson
Noon – Plaque presentation by Rocco Staino and a lecture by author Jamal Joseph with a special musical rendition of Hughes’ poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by the IMPACT Performing Ensemble.
1:00pm –  “The Jacob Lawrence Migration Series” by MOMA staff member Marcia Garcia
3:30pm –  A lecture on Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance by historian Rashidah Ismaili Abu Bakr.
4:00pm – Queens Borough President Helen M. Marshall will present six scholarships for African American Heritage Month
4:30pm – A musical performance, “Music from the Mind of the Trumpet” by Eddie Allen and Friends.