Eight-year-old Amanda Walker finds encouragement in the words of Langston Hughes’ poem “Youth.”

It begins with the line, “We have tomorrow bright before us like a flame.”

Students at Langston Hughes School launch balloons from the school's playground. The school celebrated the centennial of Hughes' birth Friday afternoon by releasing the balloons, each of which contained a Hughes poem and a message from students.

“It means that every day is a new and special day and that we should be very thankful,” Walker said of the poem.

The third-grader at Langston Hughes School chose the poem to roll up and stuff inside a balloon that she set sailing on the wind Friday afternoon outside the school.

About 250 students at Hughes’ namesake joined Walker in releasing a sea of silver and blue balloons in honor of the centennial of the author’s birth. The students tucked a Hughes poem of their choice inside their balloons and included a message explaining what the poem meant to them. They also included contact information for the school, so they can find out where their balloons end up.

“We wanted to have an activity every day this week that would remind students of all the events going on throughout the community,” said principal Myron Melton.

Lawrence is staging a communitywide celebration in honor of Hughes, who spent most of his childhood here. An international symposium to discuss the art, life and legacy of the late writer began Thursday at Kansas University.

Langston Hughes School students, from left, Amanda Walker, 8; Willow Darcia, 8, and Ciara Reagan, 8, watch their balloons head to the sky, after launching them in honor of Hughes' 100th birthday. Students celebrated Friday afternoon.

Maryemma Graham, a KU English professor and the symposium’s co-director, said the event was off to a great start, with more than 500 people in attendance from as far away as Japan and Germany.

“It’s more successful more exciting than we’d hoped,” she said. “We registered a lot of people, and they came. There’s a lot of energy. Clearly, Langston Hughes’ impact is being felt more than ever before.”

Regennia Williams, a Cleveland State University history professor, was picking up a few books about Hughes during a break in the symposium Friday afternoon. She is helping plan a similar event in April in Cleveland, where Hughes graduated from high school.

“I love Langston,” she said. “He wrote about hate and love and war everybody can relate to that. He has a universal appeal. He was a poet for the masses.”

New Orleans poet Kalamu ya Salaam, a presenter at the symposium, visited sixth-graders at Langston Hughes School this week to talk about poetry and how Hughes influenced his work, Melton said.

“The students are really beginning to understand he’s not just important to us at Langston Hughes School … but he’s significant nationally and worldwide,” Melton said.