“While over Alabama earth
These words are gently spoken:
Serve — and hate will die unborn.
Love — and chains are broken.”

—  Langston Hughes

"Alabama Earth (at Booker Washington's grave)," from the anthology Golden Slippers: An Anthology of Negro Poetry for Young Readers (1941), ed. Arna Bontemps

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Langston Hughes photo
Langston Hughes 79
American writer and social activist 1902–1967

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