Sonny's Corner
"Sonny's Corner" is a regular column in Prairie Fire, featuring commentary on civil rights and justice issues. Our friend and Omaha colleague, Joseph P. "Sonny" Foster, died suddenly at age 54 in August 2005. He left an uncompleted agenda, as did many of our civil rights and justice mentors and heroes. We shall attempt to move forward on that unfinished agenda through this column.
The play “Thurgood” ran on Broadway for over three months in 2008. On Aug. 7 of that year, the star of the play, the incomparable Laurence Fishburne, appeared on the Charlie Rose program broadcast by the Public Broadcasting System.
The play is a biography of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black American to be placed at the nation’s highest court. Fishburne concluded the interview by reciting 11 lines from the conclusion of the play, a portion of the much longer Langston Hughes poem, “Let America Be America Again.”
Thanks to all the people who participated in this long succession of events to produce this version of some particularly relevant literary genius. We were tempted to publish this at various times during Barack Obama’s nomination, election and inauguration. However, in this case, procrastination has become our friend. Hughes’s few words seem to be a more than adequate rejoinder to the conspiracy theorists now stridently attacking our president.
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
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