Over the past year, I’ve made a concerted effort to get outside of my own very limited and limiting world by reading and consuming content by authors unknown to me. As someone who struggled with reading comprehension in school, I avoided books and missed a ton of the well-known works that so many adults know well. This is doubly so for African American writers. Enter Langston Hughes.  Where have you been all my life? 

I read a new-to-me but old standard so apropos to our 4th of July holiday recently. “Let America be America Again” touches me and reminds me that so much needs to be done in my country that espouses to be the home of the free when so many are not.  May our country be a place where “…opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.”

Rebecca Keith, President

First United Church