bridges.” In keeping with the stipulations that
Hughes dictated in his will, funeral services were
held in a Harlem funeral home with music pro-
vided by a jazz combo, the Randy Weston Trio.
The full life and stunning career of Langston
Hughes underscore the richness, power, and depth
of the Harlem Renaissance.
Bibliography
Bernard, Emily, ed. Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters
of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten,
1925–1964.New York: Knopf, 2001.
Berry, Faith, ed. Good Morning Revolution: The Uncol-
lected Social Protest Writing of Langston Hughes.
Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill, 1973.
———. Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem.
Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill & Company, 1983.
De Santis, Christopher C. Langston Hughes and the
Chicago Defender: Essays on Race, Politics, and Cul-
ture, 1942–62.Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1995.
Langston Hughes Papers, James Weldon Johnson Memo-
rial Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University;
Moorland-Spingarn Research Library, Howard Uni-
versity; Fisk University Library; Amistad Collec-
tion, New Orleans; and Bancroft Library of the
University of California at Berkeley.
Nichols, Charles H., ed. Arna Bontemps–Langston Hughes
Letters, 1925–1967. New York: Paragon House,
1990.
Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes: I, Too,
Sing America.Vol. 1, 1902–1941.New York: Oxford
University Press, 1986.
———. The Life of Langston Hughes: I Dream a World.
Vol. 2, 1941–1967.New York: Oxford University
Press, 1988.
Wood, Gregory. “Gay Re-Readings of the Harlem Re-
naissance Poets.” In Critical Essays: Gay and Lesbian
Writers of Color,edited by Emmanuel S. Nelson.
Binghamton, N.Y.: Haworth Press, 1993.
“Humor of Teaching, The” Anna Julia Cooper
(1930)
One of several essays that philosopher and educa-
tor ANNA JULIACOOPER published during the
Harlem Renaissance. The accomplished scholar
published her most influential work, A Voice from
the South, in 1892. She maintained the intense
feminist perspective on education, culture, society,
and politics articulated in A Voice from the South
throughout her public life.
A highly respected educator and former prin-
cipal of the prestigious M Street, or DUNBARHIGH
SCHOOLin WASHINGTON, D.C. She was prompted
to write “The Humor of Teaching,” which ap-
peared in the November 1930 issue of THECRISIS,
in response to an ongoing debate on education
published in the magazine.
Cooper proposed that teachers and students in
segregated schools suffered in part from flawed and
distracting self-imposed standards of excellence.
The attention to minute details at the expense of
immersion in “the very atmosphere of current life
and thought” was, according to Cooper, “a handi-
cap unknown and unsuspected in the teaching
body itself.” She lamented the fact that many of
the teachers in segregated schools were “largely
bookfed” and spent too much energy attempting to
maintain a potentially unreliable intellectual status
quo advanced by white scholars whose work also
suffered from the pressures of academic perfor-
mance. Cooper used her essay “The Humor of
Teaching” to call for a return to learning for learn-
ing’s sake.Bibliography
Gabel, Leona C. From Slavery to the Sorbonne and Be-
yond: The Life and Writings of Anna J. Cooper.
Northampton, Mass.: Smith College, 1982.
Johnson, Karen Ann. Uplifting the Women and the Race:
The Educational Philosophies and Social Activism of
Anna Julia Cooper and Nannie Helen Burroughs.
New York: Garland Publishers, 2000.Hunch, TheEulalie Spence(1927)
A one-act play by EULALIESPENCEthat won sec-
ond prize in the 1927 literary contest sponsored by
OPPORTUNITY. The Hunchwas one of three Spence
entries that earned recognition and awards in that
competition. The play further cemented Spence’s
reputation as a talented playwright.
The play is set in a HARLEMapartment owned
by Mrs. Reed, a landlady who rents out a well-ap-
pointed room to Mavis Cunningham, a young
southern woman. The play opens as Mavis packs
and prepares for her wedding to Bert Jackson, a258 “Humor of Teaching, The”