Ballad of a Landlord by J.D. Scrimgeour

The Thursday Poets, based in Salem, Massachusetts, is a collective of professional poets. We create, promote, celebrate, and support poetry efforts north of Boston and beyond through readings, gatherings, workshops, publications, and advocacy. Contact us at thursdaypoets11@gmail.com

by J.D. Scrimgeour

In 1965, Jonathan Kozol, a young teacher in his first year in the Boston public school system, shared a poem with his fourth-grade class, Langston Hughes’s “Ballad of the Landlord.” The students, most of them black, appreciated it. They asked Kozol to give them copies, and several memorized it on their own. Soon, most of the students, at their request, had recited the poem in class.

This act got Kozol fired. He was told it was because he had taught a poem that was not in the “Course of Study.” A school department official elaborated that no poem by a black author was “considered permissible if it involved suffering.” He was also told that if a parent complained about a teacher, it would result in automatic dismissal.

The poem is from Hughes’s book, Montage of a Dream Deferred,” a sequence of poems that captures various voices from the Harlem community in the 1940s. I like that it shows, with a simplicity that fourth graders can understand, how the narrative told in the media may not be the whole story.

With public school educators, especially librarians, coming under pressure today about the works that they bring into the classroom, I thought I would share the story about poem. As Kozol writes in his book, Death at an Early Age, from which this story is taken, “it is a poem that really does allow both heroism and pathos to poor people.”

I also share it keeping in mind of Salem’s rising housing costs, and the challenges of the young and the poor to find a place to live in our city.

J.D. Scrimgeour: The author of five poetry collections, the most recent being a book of bilingual poetry, 香蕉面包 /Banana Bread (Nixes Mate Press). He also won the Association of Writers and Writing Program’s (AWP) Award for Nonfiction for his second book of nonfiction, Themes for English B: A Professor’s Education In & Out of Class. With musician Philip Swanson he released Ogunquit & Other Works, a CD blending music and poetry. The musical, Only Human, which he composed with his sons Aidan and Guthrie, premiered at Ames Hall Theatre in Salem, Massachusetts in 2014. A longtime resident of Salem, Massachusetts, he’s written in many genres about the city. Mary Towne Eastey, an ancestor in his direct line, was put to death during the Salem Witch Trials. Another ancestor, Thomas Perkins, sat on the jury that found her guilty.