The Backlash Blues from the collection of Black Artists Archive

Front

The Backlash Blues, 1967

cardstock

11 x 8 in

Inv: 2026.01.047

Title: The Backlash Blues (from “The Panther and the Lash”)
Series Title: Broadside series
Series Issue: No. 13
Issue Date: July 1967
Date: 1967
Creator: Langston Hughes
Edits and Introduction by: not stated on page
Publisher: Broadside Press, Detroit, Michigan
Reprinted with permission from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Scope and Context:
Langston Hughes wrote songs throughout his career and collaborated with major musicians, including Kurt Weill and Duke Ellington. In 1967, he wrote “Backlash Blues” for Nina Simone; the poem later appeared in his final book of protest poems, The Panther and the Lash. Simone then set Hughes’s words to music, turning the poem into the song “Backlash Blues.” After Hughes’s death, Simone honored him during a July 1967 performance at the Newport Jazz Festival.

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Additional Details

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