Chair Williams discusses book 'There Was a Party for Langston'

But first, a few words about our oversight topic, which also honors the recent 100th anniversary of the Schomburg Center.

I have this book.

You know, it's a library.

You can clap for books.

So a staff member happened upon this beautiful book, lovingly written by best-selling and award-winning author Jason Reynolds and brilliantly illustrated by acclaimed brothers Jerome and Jared Pumphrey.

It is titled, There Was a Party for Langston, King of Letters.

The cover page illustration shows a stream of party goers entering the Schomburg Center of the New York Public Library just as you entered today for our hearing.

The first page goes like this.

There was a party for Langston at the library, a jam in Harlem to celebrate the word-making man.

Here are the party goers entering the Langston Hughes Auditorium at its grand opening in February 1991, just as you entered for our hearing.

So today is not exactly a party for Langston Hughes, but it is a recognition and examination of the work our city's libraries do to preserve and present his poems

and his stories and his nonfiction works and the poems and stories and nonfiction works of so many other writers shown here.

And there's so many people.

I was like amazed at this book.

So from James Baldwin to W.E.B.

Du Bois to Count T.

Collins to Claude McKay to Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Gwendolyn Brooks, Richard Wright, and more.

It is also a recognition and examination of the work being done every day at the Schomburg Center for the past 100 years.