Danny Glover ...
Danny Glover enjoys using the words of poet Langston Hughes to spark dialog and change.
Last February, at a rally at the Indiana Statehouse in support of union workers, he read Hughes’s “Let America Be America Again.”
“It’s become one of my favorites,” Mr. Glover said in a phone interview last week. “It’s about the possibility of galvanizing people. Even when they feel as if they’ve been disenfranchised and feel they only have their voices and the use of their bodies by occupying, they also have a vision of what this country could be.”
Mr. Glover, 65, will join actor Felix Justice on Feb. 7 for “An Evening With Martin and Langston” at Jefferson Community College. The program depicts a conversation between two iconic orators of the 20th century: poet and writer Langston Hughes (1902-1967) and civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968).
Mr. Justice will recreate the power of King’s speeches in his opening dialogue. He will then introduce his “friend” Hughes, as played by Mr. Glover.
“We’ve been doing variations of this program for the past 20 years,” Mr. Glover said.
The pair met when they were doing theater productions in the San Francisco Bay area more than 35 years ago. Mr. Glover attended San Francisco State College and trained at the Black Actors’ Workshop of the American Conservatory Theatre.
Hughes’s work is most notable for its effect on the artistic contributions of the Harlem Rennaissance of the 1920s. Mr. Glover and Mr. Justice will cross-examine the intersections of art, culture and activism. It will conclude with a question-and-answer segment.
The program, Mr. Glover said, also will explore the issues of “race, poverty, exclusion and loneliness.”
He said King and Hughes lived in an extraordinary time in human history.
“What we find in them are the personal reflection and collective reflection of how people stood in their resolve for change,” he said. “If we look at these two movements’ intersection, these two lives, they both represent a continuum. If you read their work, it’s timeless.”
Mr. Glover said the poem “Let America Be America Again” was often referenced by King and it was also a favorite of the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Glover’s other favorite Hughes poems include “The Hope of Harlem” and “The Ballad of Roosevelt.”
The latter was written during the outset of the New Deal, he said.
“It has a sense of the people’s outrage that not only black people, but all people experience,” Mr. Glover said.
During the program, when he is introduced by Mr. Justice, Mr. Glover said he enters reciting a Hughes poem.
“There are several that I use,” he said. “It’s whatever I feel like at the moment.”
Mr. Glover was asked about one of Hughe’s most famous poems, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” He’s so familiar with it, he can recite it from memory, which he did partially for his interviewer.
“My soul has grown deep like rivers,” Mr. Glover said, concluding with the poem’s last line.
Mr. Glover has appeared in many feature films and is best known for his roles in the “Lethal Weapon” series. Last week he was seen in the premier of Fox’s “Touch” with Kiefer Sutherland. He is also known for his work as a humanitarian and activist. He is board chairman for the human rights and social advocacy organization TransAfrica Forum. He was honored with the 2003 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Chairman’s Award for his dedication to public service. In 2006, he received Directors’ Guild of America honors for his film and television contributions.
In February at the Indiana Statehouse, Mr. Glover told the protesters they were part of a nationwide battle to stop a “vicious attack” to take more from the middle class.
Mr. Justice’s one-man show, “Prophecy in America,” highlighting key writings of King, premiered at San Francisco’s Lorraine Hansberry Theatre in 1981. The show later toured throughout the United States and Africa.
