Langston’s Salvation: American Religion and the Bard of Harlem

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By Wallace Best

Published July 25, 2017

Drawing on Langston Hughes’s religious writings, Princeton religion professor Wallace Best makes the case that both Hughes and other African-American writers were participants in a broader conversation about race and religion in America. Langston’s Salvation (NYU Press) also analyzes Hughes’s unpublished religious poems, and puts them in the context of American 20th-century religious liberalism.

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PAW's July/August 2025 issue cover, featuring a photo of people dressed in orange and black, marching in the P-rade, and the headline: Reunions, Back in Orange & Black.
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On the cover: Wilton Virgo ’00 and his classmates celebrate during the P-rade.