The University Press of Florida’s Spring 2012 catalog is out and it’s receiving rave reviews—thanks, in part, to freelance designer Louise OFarrell’s fabulously edgy cover, featuring images drawn from Robert Kerstein’s forthcoming book, Key West on the Edge: Inventing the Conch Republic.

With a back cover by the press’s Design Manager, Larry Leshan, and interiors by yours truly, the piece was printed by the fine folks at United Graphics, Inc.

If you ask me, the press’s intriguing new offerings have never looked better. Thanks to everyone—copywriters, proofers, authors, routers, and designers—who had a hand in creating this season’s catalog!

Best Sellers by Units:

10. History of Andersonville Prison
The oldest title on this list (originally published in 1968), this book has never gone out of print, and it was recently released in a revised edition.

9. Vegetable Gardening in Florida
Originally published in 1999, sales of this book have been steadily climbing for the past six years.

8. Critical Theory Since 1965
Sadly, after 25 years, this book will soon go out of print.

7. The Florida Lawn Handbook
Now in it’s third edition, this book is a perennial best-seller.

6. The Highwaymen
One of three books on these self-taught African American landscape painters we have published

5. Totch
This book will celebrate it’s 20th anniversary in 2013, and it still sells as many a year as it did when it was new.

4. Florida: A Short History
First published in 1993 and revised in 2003, this remains the best single-volume concise history of the Sunshine State.

3. Classical Ballet Technique
The most authoritative text on the subject for more than two decades.

2. Florida Landscape Plants
First edition was described in a review as “The Bible of Florida landscaping.”

1. Columbia Restaurant Spanish Cookbook
If you haven’t eaten there yet, you’re missing out!

And, because it’s always interesting to compare the differences, here are the top ten
Best Sellers by Dollars:

10. Atlas of Florida

9. Ecosystems of Florida

8. The New History of Florida

7. Totch

6. Florida: A Short History

5. Florida Landscape Plants

4. The Highwaymen

3. Critical Theory Since 1945

2. Columbia Restaurant Spanish Cookbook

1. Classical Ballet Technique

Disappointed that your favorite University Press of Florida Book didn’t make the lists? Well, give it time–and encourage your friends to buy more copies!

Estimated hours lost to work-related travel: 288 (an average of one 3-day trip per month)

Estimated hours spent in meetings each year: 194 (a conservative estimate)

Estimated hours spent preparing for meetings: 48 (also a conservative estimate)

Maximum available hours actually sitting behind one’s desk: 1,270

Total number of books published by UPF each year: 95

Average available work hours, per staff member, per book: 13.37 (1,270 divided by 95)

Average number of days the average staff member has available to focus exclusively on the marketing and promotion of a single title—including, but not limited to: writing and editing descriptive copy, preparing metadata feeds, putting together review lists, writing press releases, preparing exhibit materials, designing ads and flyers, and responding to all inquiries about sales and promotional efforts: 1.5

Total number of staff members in the sales and marketing department: 4

Combined average total of number of days we are able to devote to each title, on average: 7.5 (exactly one and a half weeks)

Of course, our tongues are planted firmly in our cheeks. It’s impossible to itemize the amount of time spent on each individual title—and not all titles require the same time and attention from each member of the department. Some need more advertising, others need a greater publicity push, others need special sales efforts, etc. In addition, much work travel and all meetings are, ultimately, about how to maximize sales for present and future publications.

We always lament that we don’t have time to do more, and seeing things boiled down so starkly is attention-getting even to us. For our authors, hopefully this can help offer some insight into why it may take a few days to receive an e-mail response, why we ask for a minimum of two weeks’ notice if you’d like to hand-carry flyers to a conference, why we ask you not to place an order the night before an event, and why we sometimes forget to thank you for all you do to help spread the word about a wonderful group of books.

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A weekend ago, in a rare show of college-aged filial piety, I went home to visit my parents. Now, besides commiserating with my mom and step-dad, who had both caught some kind of cold around the same time I did, I managed to spend a bit of time with a good friend of mine, Nicole. Hanging out with…

More than sixty years after the largely forgotten 1950 senate contest between George Smathers and incumbent Claude Pepper, Red Pepper and Gorgeous George: Claude Pepper’s Epic Defeat in the 1950 Democratic Primary asserts the historic significance of this election on both the national and state level. Historian James Clark takes the reader back to a bygone era of Florida politics in a dazzling effort that revivifies the past and illuminates the present. Though the average Floridian might be hard-pressed to identify either contender today, this senate election both influenced and was influenced by the changing political tides that anticipated McCarthyism and even the Culture Wars of the 1960s. At the heart of it all were two extremely compelling political figures.

Though it was Claude Pepper who will be remembered for his long and varied political career, the man who upset him in the 1950s was no less interesting a character. Close friends with two presidents, archrivals Kennedy and Nixon, he was personally acquainted with many more presidents in his life. Yet in 1968, at the ripe age of 55, Smathers chose not to run for re-election. What might George Smathers have accomplished for his constituents had he not given up on politics only a few years after the assassination of one of his closest friends, President John F. Kennedy?

Pepper’s career, on the other hand, demonstrates the sometimes mixed results of a stubbornness and dogged persistence. His appearance on the cover of Time twice nearly fifty years apart demonstrates the depth of that persistence. Pepper was a man with ideas who was not afraid to fight for them, sometimes at the expense of his popularity. Throughout his political career he demonstrated a penchant for making enemies and alienating constituents. Homely and brash, Pepper stood in stark contrast to the charismatic and attractive Smathers, whose looks earned him the nicknamed Gorgeous George. Pepper’s failed bid to steal the 1948 democratic presidential nomination from Truman enraged the sitting president. In response to the abortive effort, Truman personally recruited his friend Smathers to defeat Claude Pepper in the Florida senate election.

By all accounts, Smathers was a natural at politics. Where Pepper divided voters by taking firm positions on important issues like Civil Rights, Smathers managed to avoid taking a clear stance by deferring to States’ Rights. With the support of President Truman, he engineered a powerhouse campaign that unseated an incumbent whom few, least of all Pepper himself, thought could lose. Indeed, though Smathers was officially a democrat, his cutting edge campaign strategies provided the model for successful Goldwater and Nixon campaigns.

Smathers would later emerge as a powerful Florida business tycoon and one of the largest financial benefactors to his Alma Mater, The University of Florida. In 1991, the university renamed its library system in honor of Smathers following one of the largest donations it has ever received.

Though rapidly changing population demographics, fierce division over the question of Civil Rights, and the beginnings of the red scare all constitute the tumultuous socio-political background, most readers will find the real drama in the two compelling figures at the forefront of it all.

Clark sheds light on a political and historical reality that for many readers will be simultaneously familiar and totally alien. The events he recalls take place in a postwar South ruled by the Democratic Party and during a brief window of time in which the American stance toward Soviet Russia and communism was far from homogenous. Yet the election also ushered in modern campaign strategies and was one of the first major contests where a candidate’s communist sympathies were effectively wielded against him as a political weapon. Clark writes, “For the first time in its history, Florida became a focal point for political developments nationally.” Indeed, though Smathers was officially a democrat, his cutting edge campaign strategies provided the model for successful Goldwater and Nixon campaigns.

Clark’s work reflects a staggering amount of original research and engagement with hundreds of primary sources. At the center of this important story is the incumbent Claude Pepper, a man who few realize holds the rare honor of appearing on the cover of Time magazine twice. Though firmly grounded in the historical record, Clark presents a compelling psychological portrait of Pepper that will engage the reader as thoroughly as the details of the contest itself. Mr. Clark paints a picture of Pepper as a man alternately high-minded and petty, charismatic and bumbling, confident and deluded, finally leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions. Surely Pepper, with his tendency toward inconsistency, would have enjoyed a much shorter political career in the age of YouTube.

Clark is a deft storyteller and his book does not want for illuminating anecdotes. To the unacquainted reader, certain passages could pass for alternative history; one such highlight is Pepper’s friendly visit to Stalin, or “Uncle Joe” only weeks after the war ends. Even more incredible from today’s vantage point was Pepper’s conviction that his soft stance on communism was the asset that would propel him to the presidency. As the most outspoken critic of what soon became the only acceptable attitude toward the Soviets, Pepper’s political career was inextricably linked to his stance on communism.

The historic election crystallizes similar struggles occurring in Florida and across the country. Business interests versus human interests.

Like many people I associate certain writers and artists with particular places: Hemingway with Spain, Toulouse-Lautrec with Paris, Dickens with London, Georgia O’Keeffe with New Mexico, and Paul Gauguin with Tahiti, and so on.  If you mention Hawaii and the South Pacific, I might think of flower leis, milk white beaches, and James Michener. The ultimate goal for any writer or artist is to have his or her name linked with a particular place. And for me, and for many people, Michener’s name still conjures up the magic of the South Seas.

I’ve often speculated why this is true. Perhaps it’s the dedication he showed to his craft, perhaps it’s the integrity that many readers associate with his name, or perhaps it’s the sound of the name itself, a name which sounds literary without being pretentious. He wrote about the South Pacific in his first novel, Tales of the South Pacific, and in a later works, Return to Paradise and Hawaii. Other writers have written more than Michener about the area; for some reason his name continues to be associated with the region. The South Pacific. It is an area that invites escape, a place where the soul luxuriates in its own peace, where people willingly surrender the modern world to encounter something much more elemental and rewarding in their lives. It is still the enduring symbol of paradise, a timeless spot that resides as much in reality as in our imaginations.

When Tales of the South Pacific was published after the Second World War, many people did not know what to make of it. It was certainly an unusual book and treated war as something of an interruption in people’s lives rather than as a patriotic enterprise. It was one of first war books to deal with humor behind the lines. Before Tales, few if any war novels dealt with a buffoonish, rag tag band of anti- heroes as well as with the actions of brave men. The book, however, inspired an entire generation of television shows and novels featuring rebellious and frequently improper men in uniform—McHale’s Navy, F Troop, and Hogan’s Heroes, and Catch-22.

When Rodgers and Hammerstein adapted Tales for the stage in the form of South Pacific, Michener’s reputation reached a whole new level. Over the years, the musical went through several revivals until its present, lavish restaging by Lincoln Center Theater in New York. The themes of racial prejudice and intolerance continue to resonate. The novel was Michener’s first look at racial discrimination, but he continued to explore its themes in his subsequent novels. The issue fascinated and infuriated him throughout his life.

This is one of the reasons why Michener still matters and why I attempted to capture these themes in my new book, Michener’s South Pacific. He wrote about many lands—the American West, Chesapeake Bay, South Africa, Poland, Spain, Israel, Afghanistan, to name a few, but his name will always be associated with the sunny isles of the South Pacific. I know this to be true–he wrote the book on it.

Stephen J. May is also the author of Michener: A Writer’s Journey, which served as the basis for the PBS documentary James Michener: An Epic Life. He has also written a two-volume biography of Zane Grey and served as technical advisor for the most recent Broadway revival of South Pacific.

PRESS RELEASE: Immediate

FROM: Florida Humanities Council

Carl Hiaasen Wins Florida Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing

Carl Hiaasen, a best-selling author who virtually invented the Florida Noir mystery genre, has won the 2011 Florida Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing. The award will be presented on March 23 in Tallahassee at a special luncheon held at the Governor’s Mansion.

A Florida native who began as a Miami Herald reporter at age 23, Hiaasen has received wide recognition in journalism, commentary, and literature. He has published both fiction and nonfiction, and his work has been translated into 34 languages. Hiaasen, who turns 58 on March 11, has produced a dozen novels, three books for young readers, two works of nonfiction, and two collections of his Miami Herald columns—which he still writes on a weekly basis.

“With their ripped-from-the-headlines timeliness, Hiaasen’s novels are hilarious, insightful and firmly rooted in Florida,” said Janine Farver, executive director of the Florida Humanities Council, which originated the award last year, oversees the nomination process, convenes a panel of independent judges, and announces the winner. The Florida Humanities Council is the statewide, nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In selecting Hiaasen from what they described as “a very strong field of nominees,” the judges said they were impressed not only by the breadth of Hiaasen’s work in both journalism and literature, but also by the impact it has had.

“Despite a distinguished pool of nominees, Carl Hiaasen emerged the committee’s choice when considering the overall quality and variety of his journalism, editorial writing, and popular fiction and, no less, its importance,” the judges wrote. “Hiaasen’s writing embodies a consistent, often inspired, voice for preserving and protecting Florida and Floridians.”

The University Press of Florida (UPF), publisher of some of Hiaasen’s books, nominated him for the award.

“If bestselling author Carl Hiaasen had never been born, we might have had to invent him,” stated the UPF letter of nomination. “His columns, novels and nonfiction—based on sensitive reporting, an eye for colorful characters, an ear for authentic dialogue, and an insightful interpretation of the world—simultaneously call attention to the underbelly of Florida politics and culture even as they romanticize the state as an exciting place to live.”

In 2010, Hiaasen received the Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists for writing with “wit, style and an abiding sense of justice.” His work has also appeared in many well-known magazines, including Sports Illustrated, Playboy, Time, Life, Esquire and even Gourmet.

Hiaasen has also received numerous state and national honors, including the Damon Runyon Award from the Denver Press Club and the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers’ Book Award. His 2002 book Hoot won the Newberry Award from the Association for Library Services to Children.

A University of Florida graduate, Hiaasen rose through the newspaper ranks from general-assignment reporter to the Herald’s prize-winning investigations team. He became a regular columnist in 1985; one year later his first solo book, Tourist Season, became a national best-seller. Its zany humor and oddball characters set the tone for Hiaasen’s other Florida Noir novels. Double Whammy followed and since then, there have been nine others: Skin Tight, Native Tongue, Strip Tease, Stormy Weather, Lucky You, Sick Puppy, Basket Case, The Downhill Lie, Nature Girl and Star Island. Strip Tease became a New York Times bestseller, and in 1996 was made into a major motion picture starring Demi Moore.

Before he launched his career as a solo novelist, Hiaasen co-wrote three mystery thrillers with the late William Montalbano, a good friend and distinguished journalist.

In addition to Hoot, Hiaasen’s popular books for young readers include Flush (2005), which tells a pro-environmental story about a casino ship polluting the ocean, and Scat (2009), a humorous mystery set in the Everglades.

Hiaasen’s nonfiction has wielded great influence in defining what makes Florida uniquely Florida. His work includes Team Rodent: How Disney Devoured the World (1998) and Downhill Lie: A Hacker’s Return to a Ruinous Sport (2008). The readership of his newspaper columns expanded with the publication of two collections, Kick Ass (1999) and Paradise Screwed (2001). As a newspaper columnist, Hiaasen has become known for his passionate conviction and willingness to confront powerful interests in pursuit of the public good.

The winner last year of the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award was Michael V. Gannon, the eminent Florida historian and University of Florida professor emeritus.

The Florida Humanities Council, established in 1973, uses the disciplines of the humanities to develop public programs and resources that explore Florida’s history, literary and artistic traditions, cultural values, and ethics.

The members of the judging panel are: Tara Zimmermann, Literary Events Coordinator at the Florida Center for the Book; John Fenstermaker, who is Fred L. Standley professor of English emeritus at Florida State University; Colette Bancroft, Book Editor at the St. Petersburg Times; Lester Abberger, board member of the Florida Humanities Council; and Gary Mormino, who is Frank E. Duckwall professor and Director of the Florida Studies Center at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

“Let here a date be chosen. That date shall be no more than eight and no less than six weeks ere a book should arrive in our warehouse. Let this date then stand as a beacon for media to call out across the land, in great praise and jubilation for a new book arrives this day! So shall it be that on such day, readers in great numbers shall rise; shall put down thine coffee; set aside thine newspaper wherein thee readeth hue and cry of this new book, and ye shall run, yea run, to yonder book store, for an intelligent person shall wait in patience to serve you there.”

And so it was. So it shall be. But that doesn’t mean you can’t order books long before the publication date. Try us: we’ll ship them right out! (In all seriousness, you can order direct by calling 800-226-3822 or online at upf.com)

One of the truly lovely things about working in publishing is the great number of rituals and archaic language. One such thing is the elegant publication date.

This Sunday, March 6 is the first of our publication dates for spring 2011 books. If you’ve not yet browsed through our spring catalog, take a look here.

So today we’re celebrating this early spring blossom from our general interest list:

Sunshine Paradise: A History of Florida Tourism by Tracy J. Revels is, according to James Denham (Professor of History and Director, Lawton M. Chiles Jr., Center for Florida History, Florida Southern College), “A readable, concise history of Florida tourism from the earliest European discovery to the present. Revels’s prose sizzles.  Her ability to summarize and analyze more than 300 years of Florida tourism in just over 200 pages is truly stunning. It is a remarkable achievement.  Sunshine Paradise both entertains and informs on every page, and it should be required reading for policy makers and everyone else who needs to know how current Florida came to be.”

And we here commemorate and pluck the first spring fruit of scholarship:

Girls of the Factory: A Year with the Garment Workers of Morocco by M. Laetitia Cairoli,who spent a year in the ancient city of Fez. Girls of the Factory tells the story of what life is like for working women. Forced to find a factory job herself so that she could speak more intimately with working women, she was able to learn firsthand why they work, what working means to them, and how important earning a wage is to their sense of self.

In Search of Asylum: The Later Writings of Eric Walrond edited by Louis J. Parascandola and Carl A. Wade. Compiles Walrond’s European journalism and later fiction, as well as the pieces he wrote during the 1950s at Roundway Psychiatric Hospital in Wiltshire, England, where he was a voluntary resident. Louis Parascandola and Carl Wade have assembled a collection that at last fills in the biographical gaps in Walrond’s life, providing insights into the contours of his later work and the cultural climates in which he functioned between 1928 and his death in 1966.

History of Andersonville Prison, revised edition by Ovid L. Futch with a new introduction by Michael P. Gray. In this, the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War, the University Press of Florida is pleased to present a revised edition of this book first published in 1968 and has never been out of print. Ovid Futch cuts through charges and counter-charges that made the camp a subject of bitter controversy. He examines diaries and firsthand accounts of prisoners, guards, and officers, and both Confederate and Federal government records (including the transcript of the trial of Capt. Henry Wirz, the alleged “fiend of Andersonville”).

Foundational Essays in James Joyce Studies by Michael Patrick Gillespie is a great read to gear up for St. Patrick’s Day (especially if you’re among those who commence an annual reading of Ulysses in time for Bloomsday). Foundational Essays in James Joyce Studies makes this trailblazing scholarship readily accessible to readers. Offering three essays each on Joyce’s four main works (Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake), editor Michael Patrick Gillespie provides a contextual general introduction as well as short introductions to each section that describe the essays that follow and their original contribution to the field. Featuring works by Robert Boyle, Edmund L. Epstein, S. L. Goldberg, Clive Hart, A. Walton Litz, Robert Scholes, Thomas F. Staley, James R. Thrane, Thomas F. Van Laan, and Florence L. Walzl, this is a volume that no serious scholar of Joyce can be without.

Missionary Positions: Evangelicalism and Empire in American Fiction by Albert H. Tricomi. From Melville’s Typee and Omoo to Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible, from Michener’s Hawaii to LaHaye’s Left Behind series, Tricomi traces the various manifestations of the missionary novel over time. His close readings of individual works also treat selected novels of Sedgwick, Cooper, Hobart, McKay, and Lewis, as well as several examples of Twain’s short fiction. Weaving together political, theological, and literary analyses, this original, thought-provoking investigation examines a broad range of works, featuring both those that celebrate and those that criticize American missionaries at home and abroad. Tricomi illuminates fascinating relationships between Christian evangelicalism and American destiny, including cultural and religious imperialism, and concludes with a disturbing judgment on the limitations of contemporary versions of the genre.

…and just in time for Mardi Gras, 3/8

Carnival and National Identity in the Poetry of Afrocubanismo Thomas F. Anderson offers thought-provoking new readings of poems by seminal Cuban poets, demonstrating how their writings on and about these traditions both contributed to and detracted from the development of a recognizable Afro-Cuban identity. This volume is the first to examine, from a literary perspective, the long-running debate between the proponents of Afro-Cuban cultural manifestations and the predominantly white Cuban intelligentsia who viewed these traditions as “backward” and counter to the interests of the young Republic. Including analyses of the work of Felipe Pichardo Moya, Alejo Carpentier, Nicolás Guillén, Emilio Ballagas, José Zacarías Tallet, Felix B. Caignet, and Marcelino Arozarena, and Alfonso Camín, this rigorous, interdisciplinary volume offers a fresh look at the canon of Afrocubanismo and offers surprising insights into Cuban culture during the early years of the Republic.

We are saddened by the recent news of Jane Russell’s death at age 89. Russell was a voluptuous pin-up girl, admired by millions of soldiers during World War II, long before many of those same soldiers had ever seen her perform in a film. The marketing genius of Howard Hughes brought her to the big screen in classics including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes alongside Marilyn Monroe.

What few people remember about Jane Russell is that in 1955, she starred in what was to be the last film she would make under the direction of Howard Hughes. The treasure-search adventure Underwater was filmed at Silver Springs.

In 2008, the University Press of Florida teamed up with Gary Monroe to publish his book, Silver Springs: The Underwater Photography of Bruce Mozert. Among its many accolades, the book was featured in a Smithsonian Magazine article titled “The Life Aquatic with Bruce Mozert.”

During the heyday of Florida theme parks, Bruce Mozert created some of the most memorable kitsch photography of the era. His underwater shots of beautiful models in crystal-clear waters were sent out on wire services and helped establish Silver Springs as Florida’s premier tourist attraction. In the 1950s, his work helped lure the postwar generation to a land of fantastic, tropical, and mass-produced amusement.

Silver Springs’s popularity never depended upon parrots, monkeys, alligators, airboats, water-ski shows, or models dressed as mermaids. Instead, its appeal was primarily beneath the surface of the water and cruises on glass bottom boats were the major attraction.

Mozert was Silver Springs’s official photographer for nearly forty-five years, and his images were designed to sell the park. No one came up with ideas as zany or as memorable as he. A model cooks at a stove, wooden spoon at her mouth to taste, while condensed milk rises from a hidden can (to look like smoke); another bathes in a tub, scrubbing her toes; yet another relaxes on a chaise lounge while a nearby air conditioner hums away.

Gary Monroe has collected some of the best underwater shots by this remarkable photographer. These photographs—many unseen for decades—capture those heady times in all of their whimsical glory.

Do you have an event, person, place, trend (Twitter or otherwise) you’d like us to connect to a UPF book in six degrees? Email your idea to sw@upf.com and win a copy of the book we connect to your idea!

By W. Jason Miller, author of Langston Hughes and American Lynching Culture

“We deserve to be heard when we’ve listened first.  Black History Month provides an opportunity to hear about the subject of lynching.  Lynching challenges many listeners’ assumptions about America.

Lynchings sometimes lasted for five hours.  They often included brutal beating, castration, and burning.  Lynch mobs often used chains rather than rope.   This prevented the noose from burning over the long course of torture.  As a result of heat, eyes exploded.  Small children took fingers, teeth, and toes home as souvenirs.

Justice was blind to these events.  The term lynching, unlike hanging, means that the murders were committed without juries, testimony, or evidence.

Throughout the twentieth century, the main targets were African Americans.  Thousands of these victims were innocent.  They were the sons, brothers, sisters, or mothers often killed when the accused could not be located.  Or, they were killed for whistling.  Those who committed these murders went unpunished even after they posed in broad daylight for photos with their victims.  By 1909 sales from lynching postcards featuring these photos reached the staggering sum of $50 million.  These were stamped and mailed.

Lynching cannot be a assigned to America’s frontier past.  The last officially recorded lynching took place in 1968.  In 1998, James Byrd, Jr. was dragged to death by a rope attached to a truck bumper.  In 2002, three deaths by hanging were labeled as suicides despite each family’s adamant denials of the investigation’s forensic evidence.

In 2002, a 1.82 million dollar lawsuit was brought against a Chicago company when employees displayed nooses, and another similar $1 million suit was filed in Miami.  A total of thirteen different nooses were uncovered between 1998 and 2004 at the Atlanta based Georgia Power company.  A noose appeared on the campus of N.C. State University in 2007.  In 2008, the desire to lynch Barack Obama was written in spray paint.  No one should regard these as trite pranks.  The cultural record emphatically reminds us that a noose has nothing to do with political incorrectness.  A noose resurrects threats of sadistic murder.  The target is African Americans.

Why are there still news stories about the Jena 6?  Shouldn’t education have ended this already?  Perhaps it might have if the subject of lynching was taught consistently in our institutions.  It is not.  Lynching is often deemed too graphic for high school students who now won’t even encounter the “n word” when they read Huck Finn. Yet, we wonder, why aren’t there photographs of lynchings in the same textbooks that so willingly present images of Nazi holocaust victims?  Not every teacher can be an expert on how to address racism.  But, when relevant, most can discuss murder.

College courses sometimes address this issue, but how many engineers, scientists, and businesswomen will take more than the bare requirements of humanities courses?  Thus, after seventeen years of formal schooling, many students still picture a hanging scene from a western movie when they hear the word “noose” rather than recall Emmett Till, Ernest Green, or Harry Moore.

Poetry has the power to change this.

No poet spoke about lynching more than Langston Hughes.  Behind many of his best poems, the ghosts of lynch victims hover like watermarks on bonded paper.

His anti-lynching poem “Christ in Alabama” was so controversial that Hughes’s appearance at UNC-Chapel Hill on the first day of its publication in 1931 required that a police guard be stationed outside Gerrard Hall for his public reading.  Advertizing spots in the magazine where the poem was published immediately dropped from ten to a mere one ad by the very next issue.  Addressing lynching was not easy for Hughes or his publishers.

Despite facing intense censorship, Hughes kept responding to lynching throughout his lifetime.  His “Dream Deferred” is one the world’s most well-known poems.  Here he quietly but assertively interrogated equal opportunity in America by using lynching as a coded analogy.  He reactivated the idea of fruit made famous in Billie Holiday’s song “Strange Fruit.” Where Holiday sang of fruit “for the sun to rot,” Hughes updated the metaphor by asking if dreams “dry up like a raisin in the sun?”  His poem is America’s most memorable record of the emotional scars left by lynching.  Hughes used stealthy imagery to suggest that dreams could be figuratively added to the list of things that could be lynched.

Hughes’s poems move small truths across the waters that divide head from heart.  They turn what students didn’t even know into something they can feel.  And though a classroom is a small court, it is a place where lynch victims can get a hearing.

Literature is news that never goes out of print: it’s in constant circulation and perpetual demand.  After reading Hughes, students get racism.  So, we save the humanities because its humanitarians work to make us human.

We cannot fear the Neuse only when it floods.”

Jason Miller is a Professor of English at North Carolina State University.  He is the author of Langston Hughes and American Lynching Culture (January 2011).