Dr. MaryLouise Patterson is a pediatrician living in New York City. She and her childhood friend, Evelyn Louise Crawford, co-edited Letters from Langston: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Red Scare and Beyond (University of California Press, 2016), a book of letters exchanged over 40 years between their parents, political activists, and the legendary African American poet/novelist/playwright/activist, Langston Hughes (1901-67). Dr. Patterson will speak about the contemporary significance of Hughes's work, the legacies of her parents' involvement in the radical black freedom struggle from the 1930s to the early American Civil Rights Movement.