York College celebrates Black History Month

Peering over her rectangular-shaped reading glasses, Celeste Wortes snapped her finders in time to the rhythm of Langston Hughes’ The Weary Blues as the red crystal earrings that dangled from her ears moved in time with the swaying of her shoulders and the rising volume of her rich voice.
Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway….
He did a lazy sway….
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
Wortes had gathered with a handful of women and one man in the York College Performing Arts Center lobby to celebrate the school’s 18th annual African American Read-In Chain on Sunday, February 4.
Part of a national effort to promote literacy during Black History Month, the event was founded in 1990 by the Black Caucus of the National Council of Teachers of English and takes place on the first Sunday and Monday in February, said Charles Coleman, an associate professor of English at York College and organizer of the event there.
Since its founding, over one million readers in 49 states, the West Indies and Africa have participated in the read-ins in which brief selections from the writings of African American authors are read and discussed.
Wortes, a classically trained professional singer who is also an electric guitarist in a rock band, when not engaged in her duties as an adjunct professor of English at York College, said she chose to read the Hughes poem because, “Music is the air I breathe and music is what makes my heart beat.”
Monica Dyer, also an adjunct professor of English at York College, read from her own book entitled Silk and Steel. The book tells the story of her Jamaica, West Indies-born mother and the struggles she endured throughout her life.
“As a people we don’t allow our children to see our pain,” she said, explaining her reading. “We hide it because we want to spare them and in sparing them we rob them.”