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The new year is a season of thanks and resolution — thanks for the accomplishments of the past and a rededication to the ideals held sacred by individuals and nations.
For many, this new year brings trepidation and apprehension.
I sit here on Mount Oread, gazing out over the Kaw River as a young Langston Hughes did, pondering where the river is going and what its dark waters may see and hear as it flows. What unfaltering dreams, unshaken will; what pain and suffering it may come across as it moves into the Missouri and ultimately mixes with the mighty Mississippi.
Does the river soak up the tears of the mourners of the dead in Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan, or the Congo? Do the water ripples form from the screams to stop the continued growth of human hate, xenophobia, and racial violence in the United States and other corners of the Earth?
Will the flowing water absorb the cries of those who suffer poverty in the midwestern river valleys, or the regions of the rivers Hughes knew throughout the world? Does the current come to know the sadness of those whose dreams are deferred in their quest for an education that is full of free thought, growth, exploration, and fulfilled aspirations up here on Mount Oread or in other halls of learning throughout the nation and the globe?
Does the river stop flowing as it consumes all that it comes to know along the way?
Does it give up?
No!
Shall we give up because of what may lie ahead? Shall we hold up our hands, shall we cease complaint? Shall we give up hope as the new year unfolds?
Never!
Up!
Look!
See the Kaw flowing.
As the great Vincent Harding told us, “There is a River.” At times, it rushes. At times, it slows, bends, and turns. At other times, it seemingly, on the surface, comes to a halt, but the undercurrent continues to move.
The river “is hope, … the transformative power, that power that humans create and created them, us, and makes them, us, new persons.” The river is a site of baptism and rebirth.
Let us see and hear in the new year the faint voices captured in the Kaw and all ancient rivers “older than the flow of human blood in human veins” that are carrying the calls and dreams of a more hopeful, peaceful, tolerant, and just world. Let’s take courage and strength from the bubbling brook to the rushing river moving consistently toward “the ocean of humankind’s most courageous hopes for freedom and integrity …”
As we enter the new year, take courage and strength from the Kaw to quicken and inspire the energies that lie wrapped up in millions of human beings, to formulate an ideal not only sufficiently tangible for the current moment, or that which we can see on the horizon, but rather a program to create a defense of the immediate and a path for the new day upon which we are entering.
About this column
“The Way of the Wide, Wide World” is a regular column about race, history and politics by Shawn Leigh Alexander, professor of African & African-American Studies at the University of Kansas. Dr. Alexander is the author of, among other titles, “An Army of Lions: The Struggle for Civil Rights before the NAACP” (2012) and “W. E. B. Du Bois: An American Intellectual and Activist” (2015). He is also a frequent consultant and contributor on PBS documentaries, including “Reconstruction: America After the Civil War” (2019) and “Niagara Movement: The Early Battle for Civil Rights” (2023).
Read more of “The Way of the Wide, Wide World” at this link.
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August Rudisell/Lawrence TimesShawn Alexander: The new year, with apologies to and inspiration from Langston Hughes (Column)
”Let us see and hear in the new year the faint voices captured in the Kaw and all ancient rivers ‘older than the flow of human blood in human veins’ that are carrying the calls and dreams of a more hopeful, peaceful, tolerant, and just world,” Shawn Alexander writes in this column.
