Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership

Sometimes, looking in the rearview mirror can guide and protect us from the mistakes made in the past. Today, as our country moves a decade beyond the 50th anniversaries of the signing of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we as a country continue to grapple with the barriers and obstacles that continue to divide us as a nation. Langston Hughes’s short story One Friday Morning opens the door for readers to learn from these wrongs.

First published in 1941, this story by the celebrated poet, novelist, and playwright Langston Hughes (1902–67), describes a terrible wrong in the life of a talented and proud American high school student, Nancy Lee Johnson, whose family had moved from the Deep South to the North so that she might have better opportunities. Even in the not-officially-segregated North, there was often a wide gulf between the color-blindness of the American dream and the racial discrimination in daily life, which, early in their lives, crushed the aspirations and dashed the hopes of many promising young black Americans.

Using the backdrop of One Friday Morning, this interactive workshop invites participants to discuss the importance of belonging, togetherness and community in our world/country/state/city/neighborhood today.