Background on Everett Hoagland Papers
L to R: Sam Greenlee, Catherine Acholonu, and Everett Hoagland at the Pan-African Writers Association World Poetry Festival in Accra, Ghana, 1999
Born in Philadelphia on December 18, 1942, Everett Hoagland came of age as a poet and a writer during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s and the Black Arts Movement. He graduated with an AB from Lincoln University, a historically black university, in 1963 and began to teach English and adult literacy in Philadelphia public schools. While a senior at Lincoln, Hoagland met with one of his heroes, and fellow Lincoln man, Langston Hughes, who was meeting with student poets. Hughes reported on a couple of things that he liked about Hoagland's manuscript and gave him a few suggestions to improve. One of those poems then won the creative writing award at the University, and over a half-century later, Hoagland would also win the Langston Hughes Society Award, a closing of the circle of his story with Hughes, whose advice had helped the young Hoagland forge his identity as a poet.
Already a published poet, Hoagland would next attend Brown University on a full fellowship, where he graduated with an MA in 1973 after submitting his thesis, a compilation of poems titled Niggers and Flies. Hoagland then began teaching at Southeastern Massachusetts University, now UMass Dartmouth, as a Professor of English, where he taught and mentored for thirty years.
Hoagland is one of the most significant African American poets of the late twentieth century and a significant contributor and supporter of the Black Arts Movement. His work is informed by a sense of history and struggle, and is driven by the weights of racial division, the rhythms of jazz, and both collective and individual stories drawn from African and African American culture and experiences. Broadside Press, the pioneering Black Arts press in Detroit, published Hoagland's second chapbook, Black Velvet, in 1970, and despite often being overlooked by academic critics, he remains widely published and anthologized through to the present day. Writer Maya Angelou described Hoagland as "someone who cares and someone who comprehends."
While the political and personal resound through Hoagland's poems, he also engages heavily with nature and the diversity and flow of the world beyond humanity. He has stated, "It's important that people know that black poets write all kinds of poems, including nature poems." A Baha'i for almost a decade, Hoagland also found in Unitarian Universalism a worldview that matched his own beliefs, particularly "the oneness-in-diversity of humanity, the interconnected web of existence, and universally equal human rights, [and] with no proscription against political activity." Believing that poems should be accessible and direct, and that poets should "distinguish themselves in the afterlife of their words" through their connections and social justice seeking action, Hoagland has worked to engage with readers and communities to evoke change and connection. An example is Hoagland's Just Words, a book of political poetry published in support of the New Bedford non-profit, Treatment on Demand.
Throughout his career, he has won numerous awards and honors. These include a 2023 American Book Award, the Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry from the American Literature Association's Society for African American Literature and Culture, the Gwendolyn Brooks Award for Fiction, two state-wide poetry competitions for Massachusetts Artists Foundation fellowships, the Distinguished Service to University award from UMass Dartmouth, two MA Local Cultural Council grants for book publications, ForeWord Magazine's Best Poetry Book award, and the 2015 Langston Hughes Society Award. Hoagland also served, from 1994 to 1998, as the inaugural poet laureate of his adopted hometown of New Bedford, MA.
