With Frank Reeves before Senator McCarthy’s subcommittee, March 1953 (illustration credit 27)
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
The early 1950s challenged Hughes. The brownstone row house he owned and shared with Toy and Emerson Harper at 20 East 127th Street became his castle. He often left town for lectures and other commitments, and spent part of the summer of 1950 in bucolic Greenwood Lake, New York, but loved to get back to “nice noisy Harlem.” In 1950 he published Simple Speaks His Mind, a comic triumph culled from his Defender columns that featured his black urban Everyman, “Jesse B. Semple,” or Simple. In 1951 came Montage of a Dream Deferred, a memorable book-length “poem on contemporary Harlem” that dramatized both the community’s dignity and humanity, on the one hand, and also its decline mainly in the face of racism, on the other. The short story collection Laughing to Keep from Crying appeared in 1952.
However, Hughes kept writing despite harassment that reached its apex, or nadir, in 1953. That year, Senator Joseph McCarthy forced him to testify before McCarthy’s infamous subcommittee on “un-American” activities (although even the FBI asserted that Hughes had never been a communist). Without naming any of his former leftist associates—much less denouncing them, as some witnesses had done—Hughes again renounced his radical past. He declared that a “complete reorientation of my thinking and emotional feelings occurred roughly four or five years ago.” Disturbed by this experience, and under constant pressure to find money despite living frugally, he let few offers of contracts for new works slip by. He became, or so he joked ruefully, “a literary sharecropper.”
TO NOËL SULLIVAN [TLS]
[On 20 East 127th Street, New York 35, N.Y. stationery]
Sunday, September 3, 1950
Dear Noël,
I was delighted to return from Woodstock the other day to find Eulah |Pharr| here. And we have been enjoying stories of her wonderful trip ever since. (I am envious and jealous!) Unfortunately she and Aunt Toy |Harper| both have had terrible colds all week long and neither of them left the house until last night to have dinner with Nate and Cliff White1 at Nate’s house. Fortunately she is better now, Eulah, but was too poorly to see anything more of New York during her stay.…. As she will tell you, I have been head over heels with shows this summer—three!—and have been out of town most of the summer with one composer or another. THE BARRIER now seems to be all set, revisions and new opening all done, and Lawrence Tibbett is deep in rehearsals of his role and is quite good, they tell me, but I won’t be likely to hear him until general rehearsals start on September 11 as I’ve got to go back up in the country again tomorrow.2 The show in progress of being written at the moment is sort of light opera musical in nature, commissioned by one of the Pennsylvania music societies, to be laid in that state, but otherwise no restrictions as to subject matter. We’ve decided to make it today, a love story set in the Western coal fields with the accent on folk music of the region. Elie Siegmeister is doing the score3 …… The other musical that took me to Ogunquit, Maine, for a summer try-out is just plain musical comedy, and came off rather nicely up there, so much so that Mike Todd has taken an option on it but, as usual, wants the book entirely redone4—which doesn’t affect my part, the lyrics, as yet—nor, I hope, for some months to come—as I’ve had much too many things on my hands all at once. One show is enough! But three—all clamoring for attention in the same summer. Well, they caused me to completely forget a radio interview a month ago that had been arranged for my SIMPLE book. I didn’t remember it until three hours after the program was over! So you see what show business does to one!… … Otherwise I’ve been O.K. except that I’ve been BROKE—all these shows being long term projects that don’t pay off until they open—except small monthly option payments that can’t cover the cost of keeping up with them from Maine to Michigan. (We had a delightful week there at the University with THE BARRIER.) But now they tell me there is already more than Fifty Thousand advance theatre party sales for THE BARRIER, and that we will probably do five weeks on the road before coming to New York—opening in Washington on the 25th of September, then Baltimore, Boston, and perhaps Philadelphia, depending on when the New York theatre they want will be available in the fall.
I was so sorry to find your note about Joel on my return to the city. Eulah and I had spoken about him when she came through en route to Europe and she had said then that he was getting older and frailer and that she hoped nothing would happen to him while she was away. Certainly I shall miss him when I come back to the Farm—as I did Greta the last time.5 That was a most beautiful tribute you wrote to him, and that he lived so long with us all is at least a blessing.
Toy has had her ups and downs this year, since she has so much energy that when she is well, she works herself down again—being in love with this big house and always doing things to improve it. The lawn has given us the most trouble. We’ve had it re-sodded and sown each summer—still it doesn’t grow well. And this summer when it grew too well—ask Eulah to tell you what happened! It is amusing, but it also took most of the grass away!
Well, I wish I were flying out tonight with Eulah. If these shows get all set by the end of the year, maybe I can come out in the winter for a while to see you all again. And if, (as I hope) you do go to Rome, please say hello to us—if only for a minute on the way, and try to spend a few days—or as long as you’d wish—with us on the way back …… Arna |Bontemps| and his three daughters—in their teens—are expected today—we’d hoped before Eulah left—for a day or two before school opens.
All my best to Lee |Crowe|, Kappy,6 Marie |Short|, and Una and Robin |Jeffers| when you see them. And I’ve loved your letters (and oh, yes, thanks so much for the Peyton book!)7 and forgive me for writing so infrequently, but every time I get ready to set pen to paper a composer calls on the phone or else a producer. I never had such a year! But things seem to be clearing up a bit now.……. I think of you often.… … Affectionately,
Langston
TO JESSIE FAUSET [TL]
October 14
1950
Dear Jessie:
Since I did not see you the other night at the Schomburg celebration at the library, I am dropping you this note to assure you that I am delighted to sponsor your application to the Whitney Foundation for an OPPORTUNITY FELLOWSHIP, and certainly I will give you a hearty send-off.8 I wish you the best of luck. (But in talking with Bob Weaver9 not long ago concerning some of the applicants I endorsed last year, whom he and I both thought worthy but who were unsuccessful in receiving fellowships, Bob told me that the Foundation leans strongly towards the younger and less well recognized people—which explains why most of those who received the first fellowships were in this category.)
I agree with you about the very great value which the themes of your books should be to Hollywood, especially since the films have opened up to Negro subject-matter in recent months. I have never been able to have any luck with my own books in Hollywood, even though my agent has a good representative out there, so I have no expert advice to offer you other than, to tap Hollywood at all, judging by what white writers tell me, takes much more than individual effort, and one of the top-notch agents is needed. My agent has even tried some of the foreign film companies but without success. But if you get an agent to handle your books for films, perhaps the Italian or French companies might be interested. Certainly I think they would be worth a try.
Of course, I have read all of your novels and have referred to them often in my lectures and in print as being most important contributions to the record of American Negro life.10 Unfortunately, I am in no position to collaborate with you on turning them into scripts, since I am some six months behind now on two contracts of my own—one for a play and one for a book, having been greatly delayed in my commitments this year by my two shows, THE BARRIER and JUST AROUND THE CORNER, both of which have had try-out productions but have not yet gotten to Broadway, and both of which have required a great deal of changing and reworking. THE BARRIER is now in rehearsal again to open for a pre-Broadway run on October 17 at the Flatbush Theater, to be followed by the Windsor in the Bronx. There is nothing like the theater to take up a great deal of one’s time and, with another show under way, due to be finished this fall insofar as the libretto is concerned, besides the two above commitments that I mentioned, I do not see my way clear before next summer before taking up anything new. At that time I would like to be free to begin the second volume of my autobiography.11 It seems just about impossible for me to keep up with my own work, let alone attempting anything else. But you know my great admiration for you and I hope that you succeed with your projects. With very best wishes, as ever.
Sincerely,
Langston Hughes
TO BLANCHE KNOPF [TL]
November 30, 1950
Mrs. Blanche Knopf,
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.,
501 Madison Avenue,
New York 22, New York.
Dear Blanche,
In accordance with our previous conversations, your last letters to me, and our mutual desire I am submitting to you the manuscript of my selected poems, PRELUDE TO OUR AGE, The Selected Poems of Langston Hughes.12
It contains the best poems from my various books, including those most popular and most widely known, judging from reprintings, anthologies, translations, and lecture response—such as THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS, I, TOO, FREEDOM TRAIN, and the MADAM TO YOU series, as well as the widely used radio poem, FREEDOM’S PLOW, twice performed on a national hook-up by Paul Muni.
There are poems from FINE CLOTHES TO THE JEW long out of print and so unavailable to the general public, and from the privately printed DEAR LOVELY DEATH and other booklets which never had a wide circulation and that have become collectors’ items. It also contains a careful selection of my best blues, and the largest group of Negro humorous poems since Paul Laurence Dunbar,13 as well as lyrics and ballads.
As you know, my first book, THE WEARY BLUES, appeared in 1926 so next year, 1951, will round off a quarter of a century of my publishing with you. PRELUDE TO OUR AGE contains 224 poems, a careful selection of my work over a 25 year period. When the next 25 years roll around, perhaps we will bring out a COLLECTED POEMS. Now, however, I think a SELECTED POEMS would be in order. At my programs, people have been asking for several years now where they can get their favorite poems of mine all in one volume. I have tried to assemble those poems here.
The book contains a number of poems never before published in book form, and about a dozen not heretofore published anywhere. (I will not submit these to magazines, but hold them unpublished until the book appears, which will give it added freshness and value.) It does not contain all of the poems from any one volume of my other books—so each of them would still be essential to libraries or collectors wishing my complete works.
I believe we agreed that this book should have a Preface. Since my work is used a great deal by schools and colleges, the Preface should contain enough biographical and background material to be of value to students, as well as being a kind of overall summary of and commentary on my poetry. Since last talking with you, I have given quite a good deal of thought as to whom might write such a Preface. Perhaps Arna Bontemps might be a good choice as he has written interestingly about poetry, is himself a poet and anthologist, critic and well known writer, and also being a historian, could relate my work to the times and the people from which it comes. Carl Van Vechten might be another choice; Louis Untermeyer,14 Ridgely Torrence, Robert Morss Lovett,15 or perhaps Carl Sandburg. Or maybe Ralph Bunche,16 if we seek someone outside the literary field. In any case, it should be someone who could either do a good interpretative and literary evaluation, or else a penetrating social one<,> relating the poetry to the problems of our times in relation to democracy and the Negro people and showing how even the blues have deeply social roots.
Perhaps you might think of other possibilities to write a Preface. Please let me know whom you might think suitable. (For whomever is chosen, I have a good carbon of the manuscript I can let him have, so you won’t need to send out your copy.)
Since a large number of my poems have been set to music and are sung by Marian Anderson, Lawrence Tibbett, Todd Duncan,17 Roland Hayes, and others, I thought it might be interesting to both readers and musicians to include a list of those poems which have been published in sheet music available to singers, so I have done this at the back of the book.
All of the poems in PRELUDE TO OUR AGE either come from Knopf books, are new poems, or else I hold the copyright on them myself except for nine poems—four of them recently in magazines requiring simply the transfer of copyright; and five of them in the forthcoming Henry Holt book, MONTAGE OF A DREAM DEFERRED.18 So there will be but little securing of permissions or copyrights to do.
I am, of course, open to suggestions as to revisions or rearrangement of the poems in PRELUDE. I hope the book can be published in the fall of 1951—in time for Christmas sales next year—and my annual autumn Book Week lecture tour. (I’ve just gotten back from college appearances in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. And in February, Negro History Week, I go to the Deep South—Fisk, Dillard, and other colleges. But this season I can only be out of town for a couple of weeks at a time, having another show on my hands to finish. However, next fall I shall probably do a much longer tour such as I usually do every other season—probably<,> in the autumn of ’51<,> through the Southwest to the Coast again.)
I await your comments on the above ideas and the manuscript I am submitting to you.
It was nice to read about the appreciation the Latin Americans have for what you have done for their literature here. Certainly you deserve it.
My continued good wishes to you, as ever,
Sincerely yours,
Langston Hughes
P.S. The letters after many poems in the manuscript indicate the books from which they came. For example TWB indicates THE WEARY BLUES. This for editorial use and identification only.
TO W. E. B. DU BOIS [ALS]
[Draft of a telegram]
WESTERN UNION
To Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois Feb. 23 195119
Essex House, 160 Central Park South
Testimonial Dinner
New York, N.Y.
YOUR BOOK DARK WATER20 GREATLY INFLUENCED MY YOUTH. I GREW UP ON YOUR EDITORIALS. AS EDITOR OF THE CRISIS YOU PUBLISHED MY FIRST POEM. IN GRATITUDE ON YOUR EIGHTY THIRD BIRTHDAY I SALUTE YOU AS ONE OF AMERICA’S GREAT MEN AND THE DEAN OF NEGRO WRITERS AND SCHOLARS.
Langston Hughes
Morgan College
SIMPLY HEAVENLY
April 16, 1951
Mr. Maxim Lieber,
253 West 101st Street,
New York, New York.
Dear Maxim,
So busy with those two auditions last week I couldn’t get around to mail. And not having Nate |White|’s assistance (he’s resigned) has caused letters to pile mountain high.
But, as you can see from the enclosed carbon, I would be happy to make a personal appearance along with the SIMPLE show next fall in Newark.21 You may also O.K. this, if you wish, and are writing the lady again.
Did your representative in London say he would send us an air check on the BBC broadcasts of SIMPLE? I hope so, at my expense, of course.
I’ve got Mr. Battle piled up here in front of me to work on tonight—a new and more adventuresome beginning—so I hope—about the numbers.22 But there will be no making an Ethel Waters out of this respectable pillar of the community—not at this late date in his comfortable old age. He is on too many Y. M.C. A. boards, etc. to tell ALL.
<“>Simple,<”> however, has no such qualms. In the new novel—and NOVEL it will be—he relates his love life from A-B-C to J-O-Y-C-E as you will note in the pages I am sending you this week for submission to Maria Leiper.23 I have assembled 20 chapters (100 and some odd pages) as the first draft of the opening section of the book, with a synopsis of the remainder. Since Simple will probably continue indefinitely as a character in the DEFENDER, you can offer Simon and Schuster an option on the third volume, as well, which will concern his married life with Joyce. Then we will have a trilogy: THE SAGA OF SIMPLE, eventually. I like S. & S. as publishers, so wouldn’t mind being tied up with them for an option or so, in case they take this novel. Anyway, I shall continue the Simple stories in the paper, writing them more with an eye toward a consecutive plot line in the future. This particular manuscript, I could promise to deliver completed by January 15, 1951 |1952|. (I would say January 1, but that’s a holiday!)24
The ASP seems to be presenting “Just A Little Simple” in Philadelphia.25 I saw a bill announcing it when I was over there last week with |Elie| Siegmeister.
Best to Minna, and to you, as ever,
Sincerely,
TO INA STEELE [TL]
April 21, 1951
Dear Ina,26
I guess you’ll think I’m the worst invitation-turner-downer ever—but I am under oath not to leave town again (except for my last two lectures of the season next week-end) until I get the man’s book done, having been away so much this winter. It was due last January1st!!! Now he’s after me, my agent’s after me, and the publishers—and I have long since spent the advance!27 Now, I am nothing but a literary sharecropper, and can’t go any place, as much as I would like to see the Eastern Sho’ in May, and especially attend the “Q” dance with you and Youra. I’ve been working until daybreak the past ten days trying to get out from under. But still have stacks of notes, albums, clippings, and a tape recorder full of what he told that I haven’t even listened to again. The next time I do anybody’s life it will be my own. No one else’s a-tall! Besides what Negro can compete with Ethel Waters—and still live? I even had to turn down a chance to see GUYS AND DOLLS the other day—some rich folks had tickets. But I did go to the Press Club Dinner last night and saw Sweet28 there taking pictures for OUR WORLD29 and he asked to be remembered to you. Added to current excess of work, my secretary |Nate White| resigned to become a writer himself, and my in-a-pinch assistants (man and wife) went to Japan to teach last month—so all I do now is put the morning’s mail in a drawer and hide it. (Two drawers are full so I’m moving my sox over.) This year I thought Easter was Christmas, my DEFENDER fans were so kind: a box of oranges from Florida, twelve cartons of cigarettes from Ohio, a box of fudge from an invalid in Illinois, maple syrup from Vermont, two ties, and a table cloth from a crazy lady in Mississippi who writes me all her troubles every day nearly. (As nearly as I can gather she has some sort of persecution complex, but writes very sane and sometimes charming poetries.) So tonight I’m trying to acknowledge those nice gifts—late. Since Youra reviewed SIMPLE so beautifully, maybe she’d like to see what England is saying about it—excerpts enclosed. When she goes through to Texas, why don’t you come as far as Harlem and we’ll all have a drink at the Theresa, huh? Or the Shalimar—or from the corner store. (In Montgomery only one licker store is open to cullud. In Harlem there’s one per block!)…… Well, I will close,
Regretfully,
June 20, 1951
Miss Era Bell Thompson,30
NEGRO DIGEST,
1820 South Michigan Avenue,
Chicago 16, Illinois.
Dear Era Bell,
Just a quick note to tell you I’ll do my best to do a piece for you on the theme of DO BIG NEGROES KEEP LITTLE NEGROES DOWN.31 But I don’t quite see it as all one-sided—some do, and some don’t. Therefore, shouldn’t we put in the positive elements as well. Just recently I’ve come across a couple of examples of fine generosity on the part of professional Negroes to the less well-off. And my dentist, for example, (as his way, no doubt, of being a patron of the arts) never sends me a bill. (Dentistry being as high as it is, I couldn’t pay him anyhow.)
I hope I’ll see you if you come to town.
Sincerely,
Langston Hughes
December 7, 1951
Mr. Maxim Lieber
Apartado 235
Cuernavaca, Morelos
Mexico32
Dear Max,
It is so nice to hear from you at last and to know that you are settled in so beautiful a place. I’ve justly recently gotten back from a lecture tour of the Carolinas as far down as Savannah, and I find your letters awaiting me. Thanks for them, and the Chappelle statement.
I am writing the Dramatists’ Guild to follow through in collecting on THE BARRIER.
The Harold Ober Office is negotiating the new Henry Holt contract,33 and will handle my future books, including the Battle book which is almost done. Leah Salisbury34 is handling my plays including the Siegmeister musical on which we are still working |“The Wizard of Altoona”|.
Everybody was certainly sorry to see you go out of business and we all hope that you will be quite well again soon. Minna was very sweet about taking care of things and she certainly had a big job closing down both the office and the house. Please give her and the children my love and let me hear from you when you have time. If you see Willard Motley there give him my regards.35
All good wishes to you,
Sincerely yours,
LANGSTON HUGHES
February 6, 1952.
Mr. Elmer Rice, Chairman,
Committee on Blacklisting,
Authors’ League of America,
6 East 39th Street,
New York 16, New York.
Dear Elmer,
Here are my answers to the questionnaire re the FCC and blacklisting in TV and radio:36
1. The publication of my name in RED CHANNELS has not affected my employment in TV or radio. Being colored I received no offers of employment in these before RED CHANNELS appeared, and have had none since—so it hasn’t affected me at all.
2. Answered above.
3. Negro writers, being black, have always been blacklisted in radio and TV. Only once in a blue moon are any colored writers given an opportunity to do a script and then, usually, with no regularity, and no credits. Like Hollywood, Negroes just simply are not employed in the writing fields in the American entertainment industry.
4. My personal experience has been that in my 25 years of writing, I have not been asked to do more than four or five commercial one-shot scripts. These were performed on major national hook-ups, but produced for me no immediate additional jobs or requests. One script for BBC was done around the world with an all-star cast. No American stations offered me work. My agents stated flatly, “It is just about impossible to sell a Negro writer to Hollywood or radio, and they use Negro subject matter very rarely.” Even the “Negro” shows like “Amos and Andy” and “Beulah” are written largely by white writers—the better to preserve the stereotypes, I imagine.
During the war I did a number of requested scripts for the Writers’ War Board, used throughout the country. Most of the white writers serving this committee also got any number of paying jobs to do patriotic scripts. Not one chance to do a commercial script was offered me.
My one period of work in radio covering several weeks was a few summers ago scripting the NBC show, “Swing Time at The Savoy”, a Negro variety revue. This was achieved at the insistence of the N.A.A.C.P. that objected to the stereotypes in the audition scripts written by white writers. NBC had <at> that time had not one Negro writer on its staff—which would have saved them making the mistakes the N.A.A.C.P. objected to and which were offensive to the general Negro public. As far as I know, Negro writers are, however, “blacklisted” at NBC. I know of none working there regularly.
Richard Durham in Chicago and Bob Lucas and Woody Bovell in New York are excellent radio writers but, being Negroes, they work with great irregularity—not due to being red but due to being colored.
5. No point in my appearing—the color bars everyone knows have been with us since radio began, before TV was born, and long ere that.
I’d like to add, however, my personal gratitude to you and the committee for your very fine stand in relation to the freedom to work—for those writers who are white enough to work (when not red-baited) and I hope as well for those writers who have been blacklisted from birth.
And to you for your personal stand, Elmer, my very great admiration.
Sincerely yours,
Langston Hughes
March 9, 1952.
Mrs. L. B. Smith,
966 East Terrell,
Fort Worth 6, Texas.
Dear Mrs. Smith,
I’m just back in New York from my month long tour—arriving home in time for the heaviest snowfall of the season!
I was certainly sorry you were forced to cancel your program.37 It seems that Pres. Clement of Atlanta University had the same trouble in Houston, and Pres. Mays of Morehouse not so long ago in Indiana, Lillian Smith in Savannah and Pearl Buck in Washington when both were to speak for Negro sponsors. It looks as if reactionary whites are out to destroy interracial good will in so far as audiences and speakers go, especially in the South. It would, of course, be much better from our viewpoint if they would use their energies attacking the evils of segregation, instead of the reversing the process and attacking Negro and white leaders and writers who are opposed to it. I hope they at least made you a donation large enough to get the kids a drinking fountain. I have thought that usually those making the loudest outcry are those who do |the| least for colored people, and the kind of “democracy” they claim to be protecting is the kind that keeps the FOR WHITE signs up all along the line, and not just in the South.
I wrote the publishers that the books would be returned directly to them, and I trust that you have been so kind as to see that they went back.
I was sorry not to have seen the Barnwells again. Please give them my best regards.
Again I regret all the inconvenience caused you by the forced cancellation, and I hope it will not happen again concerning future speakers in your city. If it continues, after a while we won’t be able to listen to anyone other than the disc-jockies because almost every Negro speaker we have has been under such attack recently in one place or another—even such distinguished leaders as Mrs. Bethune and Dr. Tobias.38
My thanks to you for taking care of the return of the books, and all my good wishes ever,
Sincerely yours,
Langston Hughes
TO INA STEELE [TL]
April 17, 1952
Dear Ina,
I was hoping they’d forget that way last fall I’d accepted a May date for a program for an interracial group at Cornell (non-profit—but last year they had Roger Baldwin39 and the year before that Mrs. Roosevelt—so cullud could hardly turn them down—I didn’t) and now they’ve just written that it’s all announced and they’re expecting me for a dinner and a program and then a day of classes. So I’ll be way upstate in New York and can’t come to the Omega dance—AGAIN.40 Which I really do regret, especially if you WON’t never no more invite me! This Ithaca business is my last public appearance of the season but one, Brooklyn, June 1 for a cullud church. Then I retire to the country for another summer of book writing and composers, still having that biography to finish and the show of last season.41 After which I’d like to retire for GOOD, these past two years having been about the most contracted and committed years of my whole life! Nothing but a literary sharecropper! I do not intend again to work on anybody’s books or shows but my black own! If them!.…. I missed the Marquand pieces, but if they’re as good as your letters, I’ll have to borrow the New Yorkers from a roomer downstairs and read them!42 You are a good writer your own self.…. Ellison is my protégé! Dick Wright and I (me first because I introduced him to Dick) started him off writing—and look at him now. Wonderful reviews!43 He and his wife just wrote me a swell letter sharing their new good fortune (in spirit). I expect he’ll make some money, too!.… So sorry I can’t come to that dance, see all those Q, Youra |Qualls|, AND YOU! Thanks immensely anyhow!
Regretfully,
May 27, 1952
Mr. Richard Morford,44
Executive Director,
National Council of
American-Soviet Friendship, Inc.,
114 East 32nd Street,
New York 16, New York.
Dear Mr. Morford,
Regretfully I must resign from membership in the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship. I was under the impression that my membership had long since lapsed, but I note on the April 23 Report that my name is still carried on the Membership List.
A major portion of my income is derived from lecturing in the Negro schools and colleges of the South. As you no doubt know, many of these institutions are now being forced by state boards or local politicians to screen their speakers according to the highly controversial Attorney General’s list.45 As I am sure you know, too, Negro speakers do not have the vast area of white women’s clubs (with their teas and other social aspects) from which to secure engagements. So our fees must come almost entirely from Negro institutions. Most Negro college heads are certainly not in sympathy with censorship or blacklisting, but seemingly must at this period submit to it in order to maintain their already decreasing grants. And some colleges now ask speakers to indicate on signing of contracts that they do not belong to “listed” organizations.
I would, therefore, appreciate your removing my name from the membership list of the National Council.
Very sincerely yours,
Langston Hughes
March 28, 1953
Mr. Claude Barnett,46
Associated Negro Press,
3507 South Parkway,
Chicago 15, Ill.
Dear Claude,
Just in case your reporter present at my appearance last Thursday before the McCarthy Permanent Committee on Senate Investigations47 did not send you any of the actual testimony verbatim, here is the entire latter portion of the proceedings as taken from the radio transcription of the hearings.
Not given in this is when, in the earlier portion of my questioning, I was asked about a chapter in my book, SIMPLE SPEAKS HIS MIND called “When a Man Sees Red” as to when and why it was written. I replied that in my opinion the chapter indicated clearly that Americans had freedom of press, speech, and publication, and the right of which we are all proud to freely criticize any branch of our government or any elected persons. And that this chapter was written just after, and grew out of, an incident that occurred in the Un-American Committee when a member of the Committee called a Negro witness a name which I could not repeat on the air (the hearing being televised) but which comes under the heading of “playing the dozens” to Harlemites, namely talking badly about someone’s mother. This incident greatly shocked Negro citizens and others of good will. And many translated it into terms of unfairness toward members of our race. So, in his imagined satire on the Un-American Committee the fictional character, Simple, was simply voicing his criticism which reflected a general community feeling.48 After this answer, the McCarthy Committee did not pursue the subject further.
In general the entire hearing in relation to me mostly concerned my very early poems of the Scottsboro and Depression period when some of my work which never appeared in any of my books, but did appear in magazines and pamphlets, used leftist phraseology and in some cases reflected left ideas, particularly when such ideas coincided with the Negro desire for freedom from segregation, lynching, poverty, and Jim Crowisms—which I frankly admitted and explained to the Committee. I also stated clearly and unequivocally under oath in both the closed and open televised hearing that I am not now and have never been a member of the Communist Party, which I welcomed as an opportunity to get this on record. The hearing ended, as you can see from the enclosed transcript, with my being commended for my frankness and, although it was thought my early works should not be in the State Department’s overseas libraries, such works might be replaced with my later and more recent works and books. In other words I was exonerated of any Communistic influences today.
Since some of |my| work has (to my pleasure and delight—and I hope to that of readers, |as| well) been syndicated through ANP, although this was never in any way brought up in Washington, I wanted you to have this resume of the hearing. With all good wishes,
Sincerely,
Sunday, March 29, 1953
Mr. Frank D. Reeves,49
1901 11th Street, N. W.,
Washington, D. C.
Dear Frank,
No words—and certainly no money (even were it a million dollars) could in any sense express to you my gratitude or from me repay you for what you have done for me in a time of emergency. Without your able help and kind, considerate, patient, and wise counsel, I would have been a lost ball in the high weeds or, to mix metaphors, a dead duck among the cherry blossoms! This note, or any letter that I might write, could only be a most inadequate expression of thanks and my indebtedness to you. And I do not feel that in any way this small check means anything in that regard. But I did want you to have this immediately—which is all the weekend affords—as a token, at least, of my deepest and sincerest sense of obligation to you for your sacrifice and generosity in terms of both your time and talent, your willingness to help me, and your personal kindness in doing so. Certainly you acted way “beyond the call of duty” personally and professionally, and I am deeply grateful. There is no way for me to repay you.
The hospitality of your home made me much more comfortable than I would have been at the Statler or any other hotel, and the constant nearness of your counsel made me feel more secure than I could have possibly been had I stayed with other friends. And among the many pleasant memories I shall retain of your home is your mother’s apple sauce and your adorable puppy!
The phone calls which I personally made on your home phone and listed in my pocket note book were two to New York, one March 24: 60¢, and one March 25: 5.23; and on March 25 one call to Chicago: 2.65—totaling 8.48. With the addition of 25% tax, this sum is $10.60.
Kindly add this amount to the total telephone charges for which I am responsible that we may have run up, and whatever other expenses my stay in Washington might have involved, and I will send you a check as soon as possible.
Friday evening I had cocktails with Lloyd Garrison50 and dinner with Walter White. Mr. Garrison went with me to Walter’s and both heard the playback of the later portion of the open hearing which I had taken off on my tape recorder from the air Thursday midnight—a copy of which I’ll have typed out and send you tomorrow. I gave them a detailed account of what went on, and am to see Lloyd Garrison within a few days regarding your follow-up suggestions and a few that I’ve thought of, too. I’ll let you know the results of that conference.
I left my raincoat in your closet, so please put it in a manila envelope or parcel and post it to me. Thanks! And my very best regards to your wife, and office staff. At your convenience I await your financial statement. And surely hope that it will not be too long before we meet again under less pressing circumstances. I shall phone Mrs. Reeves whenever she’s back in Manhattan. Meanwhile
Sincerely yours,
TO FRANK D. REEVES [TL]
April 8, 1953
Mr. Frank D. Reeves,
1901 11th Street, N. W.,
Washington, D. C.
Dear Frank,
I’ve had a talk both with Lloyd Garrison and with Arthur Spingarn and have told them how helpful you were to me—and that without your logic and advice the TV show might not have come off nearly so well!51
1. All agree with us about resigning from the one remaining questionable organization to which I may still belong. That I’m doing.
2. Re Cohn or Schine’s52 suggestion regarding the FBI. Arthur Spingarn feels that especially since the FBI has interviewed me on two or three occasions concerning folks who’ve worked for me or given my name as reference in applying for government jobs (which they got), if the FBI wished to interview me, they would come or send for me. Therefore I shouldn’t bother them. He quoted an old French proverb: “The man who excuses himself, accuses himself”. Lloyd Garrison seems to agree with him, but suggests that, if you think wise (and I) you might send the FBI a copy of the transcript of my testimony for their files with a brief covering note, since Cohn told us Hoover once used “Goodbye, Christ” in a speech, and perhaps should therefore be advised that this no longer represents my views in any way. Please let me know your opinion on this, and I’ll be guided thereby.
3. Lloyd Garrison feels that we might also draw up a brief statement using portions of the transcript of the open hearing to send the American Legion (or give directly) to some of the high officials of intelligence and goodwill who might pass the word down to the red-baiters in their Indianapolis office who’ve been sending out mimeographed material a la Red Channels on a number of writers and artists, to correct their material on me, at least to the extent that it conform with my sworn testimony. I think I have friends who can personally contact top officials. In any case, such a brief statement would be good for publishers to have in case of future charges, should they come up. Do you agree? All of my publishers are pleased with the outcome of the hearings, have backed me up beautifully, and are going ahead with their publishing plans in relation to my work. But it would do no harm to have a brief resume and interpretation of my testimony on tap, if needed, and I’ll draw one up (getting your and Garrison’s O.K before giving anyone copies) as soon as I get the transcript.
4. So: Would you get for me a couple of copies of my portion of the testimony in full, please, and send it on as soon as it is ready, letting me know the cost? (I agree with you, unless I was mentioned later in the hearing, we don’t need it all.) If it is quite costly, perhaps one copy would do, and I could have it typed for Garrison, Spingarn, and Walter White. Use your own judgment on this. If it doesn’t cost too much, get copies for all of us.
5. I gather from Garrison and Spingarn that the NAACP may (or is—not quite clear) assuming expenses for the hearings. (I have in the past done some radio scripts and mass meeting continuities, etc. for the Association without charge, waiving payment when offered. And am, of course, deeply grateful to them should they return the courtesy in this way.)53 But in no sense do I want you to “be out of pocket”. And, as I told you in my last letter, I do not feel that I could ever really repay you personally for your round-the-clock attention to my problems while in Washington. So that’s out of the question. But anyhow, when you have a chance, please let me know exactly about the financial end of it all, and I’ll certainly assume the obligation should it be one that I cannot meet in full now.
I think that’s all the business. Trust you got the AMSTERDAM NEWS clippings I sent you. Theirs was the best coverage. Dozens of letters have come in from the Coast and all around of folks who saw the TV screening of the hearing. Several women want to know who “that fine looking fellow” was sitting with me! So I judge we both must have televised well!
Did you, by any chance, come across my raincoat in your closet? If not, don’t worry. If so, maybe your wife could bring it along when she returns to town and I’ll phone her and pick it up. It’s the kind that doesn’t take up any room in a bag.
If phoning is easier for you than answering letters, my number is Le. 4-2952 (private, so don’t give out, please) and usually after two in the afternoon on until midnight is best to reach me. Reverse charges.
Should you drive your wife back, or be coming to New York soon, hope I’ll have the pleasure of offering you a drink, and having you and your wife—and the Indian princess from Georgia—around to my place.
My new book, SIMPLE TAKES A WIFE, is almost ready, so you’ll be getting a copy soon. It just missed being a Book of the Month Club selection—was a runner up until the last three choices, so the publishers tell me!
Continued good wishes to you, and hoping to hear from you at your convenience,
Sincerely yours,
Langston Hughes
July 25, 1953
Dear Mr. Baldwin,54
Just a note to send you some extra copies of reviews I’ve cut out for you. Sure you’ve seen them all, but extra copies, I’ve discovered, never hurt to have to give away or something. I’m very happy your book has been getting such good write-ups.55 It and “Simple” was reviewed together a couple of times, but my clippings bureau only sends one copy, so no extras on those. We both came out mutually O.K.
What I liked best in your book was the story about the sad boy who killed himself. That’s the part I read over twice lately. It’s beautiful!
If you go to Geneva look up a very good friend of mine (and lots of other writers) who has just flown over there for the summer with her brother who is head of UN Health organization there. (They’re coulored. *I put the u in the wrong place: coloured, I mean.) She is:
Miss Dorothy Peterson,
c/o Dr. Sidney Peterson,
6 Chemin des Crets de Champel,
Geneva, Switzerland.
And did you ever meet Nancy Cunard in France? Should. Lemme know if you go there. She is unique in this world.
If you want to die, be disturbed, maladjusted, neurotic, and psychotic, disappointed, and disjointed, just write plays! Go ahead!
Sincerely,
*Man, after reading
your piece in “Per-
spectives” I didn’t
expect you to write
such a colored book
—without the u.56
February 27, 1954
Dear Mr. Durem,57
I can hardly believe my eyes! Getting some good poetry in the mail! I receive at least a hundred or so envelopes of poetry a year from folks I don’t know, and most of it is bad, illiterate, or dull. Some is conventionally good, or fairly good in spots. Once in a great while there is one good poem mixed in with several mediocre ones. And once in a blue moon a Gwendolyn Brooks turns up!58
I don’t believe I’ve gotten quite so interesting a collection of poems out of the blue as yours are since Gwendolyn Brooks sent me her early work ten or twelve years ago. Usually I glance at the first page or two of writing that comes in the mail, and put it away in a drawer with all the other unread manuscripts to await a time when I can struggle with it. But yours I read all the way through as soon as I opened the envelope. And most of the poems I like very much, particularly those humorously satirical ones like “Some of my best friends.…” and the “.… punch in the mouth” one, etc. I wish we’d had these a few years ago when Arna Bontemps and I were preparing our anthology, THE POETRY OF THE NEGRO, which seems to be serving as the source for most of the anthologies of Negro poetry that have been coming out abroad in the last three years—Germany, Sweden, Japan, and China. Certainly you would have been included therein.
There’ve been already two recent good anthologies of American Negro poetry in German. A third anthology of world-Negro poetry is about to go to press in Frankfurt in a couple of weeks. I’ve just had a letter from the man asking for help on last minute details, and wanting a few more poems from cullud poets who haven’t answered him. So (since time is pressing) I am taking the liberty of sending him a half dozen or so of your poems (copies enclosed) in the hope that he might have space left to include some of your work. If this is O.K. by you, drop him an airmail note granting him permission to use them, and giving him some biographical notes on yourself—place and date of birth, etc., and work, publications, etc. (Send me a copy, too, please.) His name and address are on front of your poems.
If I were you, I’d try these same poems (plus others) on PHYLON, Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia; and on THE CRISIS, 20 West 40th Street, New York, N. Y. Also on some of the little magazines like EXPERIMENT in Seattle, and THE PARIS REVIEW, c/o of Peter Matthiessen,59 2 Columbus Circle, New York 19, N. Y. (Their U. S. office); and maybe also on POETRY in Chicago—altho at the moment they don’t go for “race” poetry very much, or anything social.
I’m about to take off for a month’s lecture trip to Middle West and Deep South, but will probably have more ideas re publication later, when I’m not so rushed trying to finish up odds and ends myself and get out of town. This is just to tell you I really like your work very much. (If the poems had titles, I’d list more I like especially.) Will so do next time I write. At the moment, hastily, but sincerely,
May 28, 1954
The Honorable Nnamdi Azikiwe60
British Consul General
350 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York
Dear Zik,
I was certainly delighted to receive both of your letters and look forward to seeing you during your visit to the U.S.A. I have had many wonderful letters from readers of your papers in Nigeria who have seen my poems therein, perhaps a hundred or more during the last two years, and many of them speak of you and your leadership in glowing terms.
My home address is as above, and my telephone number is: ATwater 9-6559. But I rather expect you will be too busy to have much time for personal friends, and so I will say only that if you do find yourself with an hour leisure when you just wished to sit down and talk and have a drink, I would, of course, be most happy to receive you here at my home. Failing that, however, I shall surely see you at Lincoln during the Commencement period and our centennial celebration. I suppose you know that one of your poems is included in the LINCOLN UNIVERSITY POETS: Centennial Anthology, which I helped to edit.61 And we have a copy of the book for you.
Welcome again to America and my continued good wishes to you, as ever.
Sincerely yours,
Langston Hughes
May 30, 1954
Mr. Peter Abrahams,
37 Jessel Drive,
Loughton, Essex,
England.
Dear Peter,
Knopf sent me your book to read and I think it’s wonderful!62 (As you can see from the statement I sent in.) Where you lived as a kid sounds about like 18th and Vine in Kansas City where I lived! I hope you’ll continue it on with London and all. I am hoping to spend this summer writing the second part of my autobiography—have a contract for it. Lots to put in it which I hope will be as readable as THE BIG SEA. (By the way, error in spelling in your English sheets—it’s Sterling Brown63—with an e not an i.) That business about your first going to school—and the market lady—and the Bantu center—and school teaching at the Cape—and the dung hunting—and the kaffir boy and the African kings—is wonderful! And the old preacher! And the humor of that prayer! But it’s all wonderful! Great! I love that book! So alive and immediate and real and moving! From your pictures you don’t look like you can write like that. But who does—in a picture! I don’t think authors ought to have pictures on books. I try to keep mine off, but not much luck. Anyhow, I’ll be doing a column about TELL FREEDOM in my paper I write for when it comes out …… I met Alan Paton64 last week at a big colored party for him, Ralph Bunche and all there. He spoke most effectively.…. Thanks a lot for those addresses of African writers. I’d already written several folks in South Africa, Liberia, Gold Coast, etc., and to my college mate, Ben Azikiwe whom I’ll see here next week, so hope to be getting quite a few stories soon. Have a few already. Have a publisher interested, so kindly send me your stories, too, soon, if you can. Knopf won’t mind you being anthologized.65 Good publicity for your books, as anthologies go in lots of libraries and schools that a book may not, unless it’s a classic, or something similar. If your short stories are anywhere as near as good as that autobiography, they ought to be great. LEMME SEE!……… I’m glad to hear DRUM is planning an anthology (which I didn’t know) and will be happy to collaborate with them in any way they wish, sharing my material with them or/and vice versa, or working with them, or however they desire—the main thing being to get an anthology published here, too, in the U.S.A.—so please tell Sampson that for me. And I shall write the same to Nxumalo.66 Usual American custom is to allot a set sum for anthology payments, and pro rata a flat sum to each of the contributors, depending on the number and amount of each person’s work. Example: from the recent ESQUIRE anthology I received a payment of $75.00 for my story used therein67 …… I’m delighted, of course, that AFRICA is running parts of “Simple”. They’re welcome to use it all, if they wish, from both books. And I’d be happy to see them use the BIG SEA or other work of mine, too, providing it’s OKed through my agent or publishers, since I’m not free to grant the rights myself.…. About going to South Africa, naturally, I’m pleased no end to be invited. But can’t even think about going for a year or two—I’m tied up with a play in the works for next season, and three book contracts (the autobiography being one, a rather big job) and none of them even started in the writing—so I have about 15 months of steady work ahead of me. But if I see my way clear a year or so from now, I might take my friends there in Johannesburg up on it. I want to go to that bioscope you went to!! But right now I’m a literary sharecropper tied to a publisher’s plantation.…. I met a man at the Paton party who knows you, Daniels of the U.N., and told me quite a bit about you that I reckon will be in your memoires No. II.…. I know how hard it is to write letters—and books, too, so you don’t have to answer right back this year—JUST SEND THE STORIES. With gratitude, as ever
Sincerely,
[On Langston Hughes, 20 East 127th Street, New York 35, N.Y. stationery]
June 2, 1954
Miss Nancy Cunard,
Lamothe-Fénelon,
Lot, France.
Dear Nancy,
It’s always nice to get a letter from you—being one of my favorite folks in the world! And to know that you’ll have a book coming out soon is great news indeed.68 I certainly hope there’ll be an American edition.
Surely, I’m delighted you’re calling “Famous American Negroes” to the attention of Secker and Warburg.69 It being a juvenile, agents and publishers here make no effort to sell foreign rights, so anything you do would be most appreciated. I’ve another little book for young folks coming up next fall, “THE FIRST BOOK OF JAZZ”, a brief history and appreciation and explanation of jazz, that I think might interest publishers abroad, too.70 I’m just finishing up the record lists, and it will be going to press in a month or so. Columbia Records may bring out an album of jazz for children, too, to accompany it.
I’ve had several letters from Bridson recently, who is hoping maybe to get “The Barrier” done on BBC.71 The Dutch broadcast received a lot of attention there and was, I though<t>, quite well done. (They sent me a tape of it that wouldn’t play at any speed the machines use in this country—so it took TWO days to retape it here at a speed at which one could play it! The U. N. ought to internationalize the speed of tape recorders!) Just this week some of the music was played on WABC here.
When you go to the P.E.N.72 if you see our American delegate, John Putnam, introduce yourself. I believe I was the first cullud member of the New York P.E.N.—during the war days when a wave of democracy swept over our hitherto lily white institutions—said wave being one I hope to describe in my next autobiography which I intend to start writing this summer.
At the moment I’ve been having some correspondence with Peter Abrahams in London (whose TELL FREEDOM I’ve just read in proofs and like immensely) who had promised to send me some short stories of his for an anthology of African short stories I hope to edit (if enough material can be gotten together that’s good) for a publisher here. Do you know any African writers of color writing in English other than Abrahams whose names and addresses you could send me soon? If so, needn’t take time to write a letter, just jot down the addresses and air-mail them to me, as I’m already assembling material and have some very good stories from South Africa. Help, Please, m’am!
And if you go to Africa, let me know. I get lots of fan letters from all-over there, a few of which are from really interesting-sounding people whose names I’d like to give you, especially in Nigeria. And a good friend of mine, Griff Davis, the photographer and his wife are in Monrovia, who used to live here in our house.73
You’ve probably read that William Pickens died at sea on the Mauretania last month.74 And two wonderful old-time comedians, Dusty Fletcher and Hamtree Harrington died, too, recently75.…. And your book NEGRO is quoted at $50.00 in the University Place Bookshop catalogue. (Mine I see right now in my bookcase, thank God!)
Continued good wishes ever,
Langston
I’m sending the carbon of this to Lloyd’s |Bank| in case.
1 Nathaniel V. White, an aspiring writer, was Hughes’s secretary from 1945 to 1951. They had met in 1944 at Noël Sullivan’s Hollow Hills Farm. Nate’s brother Cliff (1922–1998) was a professional guitarist.
2 The baritone Lawrence Tibbett (1896–1960), a star of the Metropolitan Opera and motion pictures, was cast on Broadway as the white father in The Barrier, Hughes’s opera with the composer Jan Meyerowitz based on his 1935 play Mulatto.
3 When the American composer Elie Siegmeister (1909–1991) was commissioned by the American Opera Company of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Federation of Music Clubs to create an opera set in Pennsylvania, he asked Hughes to write the libretto. For the opera, called “The Wizard of Altoona,” Siegmeister drew on the folk music of western Pennsylvania. The work was never finished.
4 Hughes’s musical play set in the Depression, Just Around the Corner, had a summer tryout at the Ogunquit Playhouse in Maine starting on July 29, 1950. The work featured the lives of three young men in Greenwich Village, with a book by Abby Mann and Bernard Drew, music by Joe Sherman, and lyrics by Hughes. The producer Mike Todd (1909–1958), who was in town with another play, optioned Just Around the Corner. However, the project died after he insisted on a new book.
5 Joel was Noël Sullivan’s pet dachshund. Greta was the German shepherd who had kept Hughes company during his stay in Carmel in the early 1930s.
6 Probably Kappo Phelan, a cousin of Noël Sullivan who published short stories and poetry and had been a fellow with Hughes at the Yaddo writers’ colony in 1943.
7 Thomas Roy Peyton’s Quest for Dignity: An Autobiography of a Negro Doctor appeared in 1950.
8 John Hay Whitney (1904–1982), a philanthropist, created a foundation in 1946 to fund educational and community projects for minority ethnic groups. The John Hay Whitney Opportunity Fellowships were awarded to deserving individuals from these groups.
9 Dr. Robert C. Weaver (1907–1997), a Harvard-educated economist and urban housing expert, directed the fellowship program of the John Hay Whitney Foundation from 1949 to 1955. President Johnson appointed him as the first secretary of the new Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1966, making Weaver also the first African American to serve in a presidential cabinet.
10 Fauset published four novels: There Is Confusion (1924); Plum Bun (1928); The Chinaberry Tree (1931); and Comedy, American Style (1933).
11 Hughes began writing his second volume of autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander (Rinehart, 1956), on July 17, 1954. The volume covers his life from 1931 through New Year’s Day 1938. Earlier, on November 10, 1949, Blanche Knopf had rejected Hughes’s proposal for the work: “The Autobiography sounds to me in reading the outline pretty weighted and I don’t feel in fairness to you, and certainly in fairness to ourselves, much as I regret having to say this to you, that we should make any commitment for it until you have written some of it so that we can read it. If this means you feel that you should take it elsewhere, I think I will have to free you to do it with great regret.”
12 Citing its large stock of unsold books of Hughes’s poetry, for years Knopf resisted his pitches for a volume of this kind. Finally, in late 1957, the firm gave in. In 1959 it published Selected Poems of Langston Hughes. (See letter of November 30, 1957.)
13 Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906), the son of former slaves, was the first African American poet to gain a national reputation. Dunbar published his first volume of poetry, Oak and Ivy, in 1893. His third volume, Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896), with a preface by the eminent editor, critic, and novelist William Dean Howells, made him widely known.
14 Louis Untermeyer (1885–1977) was perhaps best known for his anthologies of poetry, which he began publishing in the 1920s. He served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress from 1961 to 1963.
15 Robert Morss Lovett (1870–1956) was editor of The New Republic from 1921 to 1940. After the federal government fired him in 1943 from his job as government secretary of the Virgin Islands over his alleged communist associations, the U.S. Congress passed a bill barring him from the federal payroll. In 1946, the Supreme Court overturned this action (United States v. Lovett).
16 Dr. Ralph Bunche (1904–1971) was a Harvard-educated political scientist and diplomat. For his work as a mediator with the United Nations in Palestine, he won the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP in 1949 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950.
17 The baritone Todd Duncan (1903–1993) originated the role of Porgy in George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (1935) and later became the first African American singer to join the New York City Opera.
18 Montage of a Dream Deferred (Henry Holt, 1951) is a book-length poem in six parts. Hughes designed each part to be autonomous, yet unified them by repeated invocations of the motif of the dream (of justice) deferred and by employing rhythms drawn from the relatively new bebop jazz. Knopf had declined this book, as well as his second volume of autobiography.
19 Du Bois’s eighty-third birthday found him recently indicted by the United States for allegedly operating as an unregistered agent of a foreign government because of his work at the Peace Information Center, an organization with ties to the Soviet Union. A judge would summarily dismiss the case against Du Bois and his five colleagues on November 13, 1952. Many people chose not to attend this dinner (on Du Bois’s birthday in 1951) because of his indictment, but Hughes’s greeting was read to the audience. (Hughes himself was then visiting Morgan College in Baltimore, Maryland.) In his newspaper column Hughes also defended Du Bois. He declared: “The Accusers’ Names Nobody Will Remember, But History Records Du Bois.” However, Hughes later appeared to bow to political pressure when he omitted Du Bois from his book Famous American Negroes (1954).
20 Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil (1920), by W. E. B. Du Bois, is a collection of essays, poems, and short fiction about race, gender, and politics.
21 After the successful publication of Simple Speaks His Mind in 1950, and taking a cue from Alice Childress (see below), Hughes began planning a musical based on Simple called Simply Heavenly. It was first performed in 1957.
22 In 1911, Samuel Jesse Battle (1883–1966) became the first black policeman in New York City. After a long career, he retired as a parole commissioner. Around 1950, a Hollywood screenwriter proposed a movie about Battle’s life if a biography were published first. Signing a contract that would assure him of a share of revenue earned by the book and the film, Hughes accepted $1,500 from Battle and began working on a biography called “Battle of Harlem.” Various publishers, including Simon & Schuster, Henry Holt, and John Day, rejected Hughes’s manuscript as inadequate. It was never published.
23 Simon & Schuster published Hughes’s second edited collection of Simple newspaper columns, Simple Takes a Wife (1953).
24 Hughes delivered the manuscript on September 26, 1952.
25 Alice Childress (1916?–1994), an African American actress and playwright, adapted a portion of Simple Speaks His Mind as a one-act play called Just a Little Simple. It was first produced in September 1950 at the Club Baron Theatre in New York.
26 Hughes met Ina Steele (then Ina Qualls) and her twin sister, Youra, two young academics at Texas College in Tyler, Texas, on April 1, 1932, during his poetry reading tour of the South. He corresponded with both sisters for the next three decades. (See also Hughes’s letter of April 9, 1963.)
27 The advance was for Samuel Jesse Battle’s biography.
28 Moneta J. Sleet, Jr. (1926–1996), whom Hughes incorrectly names “Sweet,” was a photojournalist whose work in part documents the civil rights movement. In 1950, he was a reporter for the Amsterdam News when Our World hired him as a staff photographer. Five years later, Sleet became a photographer for Ebony magazine. He received a Pulitzer Prize for a photograph, printed first in Ebony, of Coretta Scott King at Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, funeral in 1968.
29 Founded by the lawyer and activist John P. Davis (1905–1973) in 1946, Our World was a nationally distributed magazine written for an African American audience. In circulation for eleven years, the publication addressed topics such as history, politics, and entertainment.
30 Era Bell Thompson (1906–1986) became the editor of Negro Digest in 1947 and associate editor of Ebony magazine that same year. At Ebony, she held several other major positions until her retirement. She published an autobiography, American Daughter, in 1946.
31 Hughes’s article “Do Big Negroes Keep Little Negroes Down?” appeared in the November 1951 issue of Negro Digest.
32 Implicated in the infamous Alger Hiss spying affair, Lieber was publicly identified as a communist operative and fled the United States for Mexico. Minna Lieber, his wife, helped Hughes transfer his account to Ivan von Auw, Jr., of the Harold Ober Agency of New York City, which also listed among its clients writers such as J. D. Salinger and Agatha Christie.
33 Henry Holt published Laughing to Keep from Crying, a volume of short stories by Hughes, in 1952.
34 Leah Salisbury, Hughes’s drama agent, dropped him as a client in 1952 after her repeated clashes with his collaborator Jan Meyerowitz.
35 Willard Motley (1909–1965), who began as a writer for The Chicago Defender, published his first novel, the best-seller Knock on Any Door, in 1947. In 1951, he emigrated from Chicago, his place of birth, to Mexico, where he wrote his last four novels.
36 On November 15, 1951, Elmer Rice (who had worked with Hughes on Street Scene) resigned in protest as a member of a group of playwrights because its commercial sponsor, the Celanese Corporation, began to investigate the political beliefs and activities of certain actors. After Rice spoke out on the matter, the Authors’ League of America sent questionnaires to fifty authors identified as subversive in the controversial pamphlet Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television. (In June 1950, Red Channels had published the names of 151 persons, including Hughes, allegedly linked to communism.)
37 Lucile B. Smith, the president of the Business and Professional Women’s Club of Fort Worth, Texas, had invited Hughes to help raise funds for a local black school. The club had to cancel the program. Prominent writers such as Pearl Buck and Lillian Smith, as well as the presidents of Atlanta University and Morehouse College, ran into similar trouble with their own interracial efforts.
38 Channing H. Tobias (1882–1961), a cleric, joined the YMCA in 1905 and worked toward improving interracial relations. Retiring in 1946, he became director of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, an institution dedicated to the cause of African and African American education. The same year, President Truman appointed him to the Civil Rights Committee. Tobias won the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP in 1948.
39 Roger Baldwin (1884–1981) was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1920.
40 See Hughes’s previous letter to Steele dated April 21, 1951.
41 In early May 1952, Hughes borrowed a cottage in Greenwood Lake to work on the biography “Battle of Harlem.” He completed his sixth and final draft of the book in Harlem on August 9.
42 In 1938, the novelist John P. Marquand (1893–1960) won a Pulitzer Prize for The Late George Apley (1937). The March 29 and April 15, 1952, issues of The New Yorker ran a profile of Marquand entitled “There Is No Place.”
43 That month, Random House published Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man (1952).
44 A Presbyterian minister, Richard Morford (1903–1986) served as executive director of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship from 1945 until 1981. The Friends of the Soviet Union, which Hughes supported in the 1930s, evolved in 1941 into the National Council on Soviet Relations and later into the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship.
45 The Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations, first published in 1947, was originally compiled as part of President Truman’s attempt early in the cold war to determine the loyalty of federal employees.
46 Claude Barnett (1889–1967), a Tuskegee Institute graduate, founded the Associated Negro Press (ANP), a news agency that operated from 1919 to 1964. Hughes sent a transcript of his Senate testimony to approximately 155 journalists, educators, publishers, and friends.
47 Hughes was subpoenaed on Saturday, March 21, 1953, to appear the following Monday before Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations in Washington, D.C. When Hughes asked for a one-week extension to prepare for the meeting, the committee gave him twenty-four hours. Unlike some witnesses who appeared before McCarthy’s committee, Hughes declined to plead the Fifth Amendment. He instead answered all questions in a compromise worked out in private with McCarthy’s staff.
48 In “When a Man Sees Red” Simple reveals what he might say if called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities:“I would say, ‘Your Honery, I wish to inform you that I was born in America, I live in America, and long as I have been black, I been an American.’ How come you don’t have any Negroes on your Un-American Committee?’ And old Chairman Georgia [referring to Chairman John Stephens Wood (1889–1968), Representative from Georgia] would say, ‘Because that is un-American.’ ” Simple’s words appear in the chapter “Something to Lean On” in Simple Speaks His Mind (1950).
49 Frank D. Reeves (1916–1973) of the NAACP served as Hughes’s attorney at his McCarthy hearing. In New York, his colleagues in the NAACP Arthur Spingarn and Lloyd K. Garrison of New York City also helped Hughes to prepare for the hearing.
50 Lloyd K. Garrison (1897–1991), a great-grandson of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1897), was an NAACP official and a senior partner in the New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, & Garrison. He counseled others who testified before McCarthy’s subcommittee.
51 Hughes’s appearance before McCarthy and his subcommittee was televised nationally.
52 Roy Cohn (1927–1986) was Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel. G. David Schine (1927–1996) was a consultant to the subcommittee. Cohn’s attempt to interfere with Schine’s military posting would help to bring down McCarthy in the controversial Army-McCarthy hearings.
53 Noting all the work Hughes had done free of charge for the organization over the years, the NAACP paid his expenses for the hearing.
54 James Baldwin (1924–1987) was born and grew up in Harlem. He published his first article in 1946, and within two years had established himself as an essayist. In 1948, he received a Rosenwald Fellowship. He then moved to Paris, where he wrote the novel Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953).
55 Knopf published Baldwin’s first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, in 1953. Hughes didn’t like the book. Reading it before its publication, he wrote to Arna Bontemps that “Baldwin over-writes and over-poeticizes in images way over the heads of the folks supposedly thinking them—often beautiful writing in itself—but frequently out of character” and that the book was a “low-down story in a velvet bag—and a Knopf binding” (Hughes to Bontemps, February 18, 1953). Nevertheless, he sent Knopf a note or blurb endorsing the novel.
56 James Baldwin and fellow African American writer Richard T. Gibson’s “Two Protests Against Protest” in Perspectives USA (Winter 1953) argued, among other things, that “the young writer might do well to impress upon himself that he is the contemporary of Eliot, Valéry, Pound, Rilke and Auden and not merely Langston Hughes.” On March 7, 1953, in response to this slight, Hughes wrote to Baldwin: “I agree that the more fences young writers jump over, the better. What a bore if they kept on repeating the old! More power to you!”
57 The American poet Ramón “Ray” Durem (1915–1963) joined the Communist Party in 1931. In March 1937, he went to Spain to fight for the antifascist cause in the Civil War. Durem’s militant poetry, which appeared in various newspapers, literary journals, and anthologies, anticipated elements of the Black Power movement. Hughes would include Durem’s poem “Award” in his anthology New Negro Poets: USA (1964).
58 When Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) was sixteen and living in Chicago, she met Hughes for the first time. He read her poems and encouraged her to keep writing. Brooks received Guggenheim Fellowships in 1946 and 1947. In 1950, when she won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Annie Allen (Harper, 1949), she became the first African American to receive this prize in any category.
59 In 1953, the American author Peter Matthiessen (1927–2014) cofounded the literary magazine The Paris Review with Harold L. Humes (1926–1992) and George Plimpton (1927–2003).
60 Benjamin Nnamdi “Zik” Azikiwe (1904–1996), an alumnus of Lincoln University (where he met Hughes), was a leader in the Nigerian nationalist movement. In 1937, Azikiwe founded a newspaper in Lagos, the West African Pilot. Within a decade, he was running six newspapers throughout Nigeria. When Nigeria became independent from Britain in 1960, Azikiwe was named the country’s first governor-general.
61 Lincoln University Poets: Centennial Anthology, 1854–1954, coedited by Lincoln alumni Waring Cuney, Langston Hughes, and Bruce McM. Wright (1917–2005), appeared in 1954. The volume includes Azikiwe’s poem “To Lincoln.”
62 Peter Abrahams (b. 1919) is a South African novelist whose autobiography Tell Freedom: Memories of Africa (Knopf, 1954) recounts at one point how Hughes’s work inspired him. Hughes had just read the galleys of Abrahams’s book.
63 Sterling Brown (1901–1989) was an influential poet, critic, and teacher who served for some forty years as a professor at Howard University. In his poetry, he built upon Hughes’s pioneering use of the blues, as in Brown’s collection Southern Road (1932). He also published landmark essays on race and American literature.
64 Alan Paton (1903–1988), one of South Africa’s leading humanists, was the author of the novel Cry, the Beloved Country (1948). Hughes met Paton at a party given by his friends Henry and Molly Moon.
65 In March 1955, Hughes sent two anthologies to publishers for consideration. The first collected fifty-four short stories by twenty-eight authors from seven African countries. The second, intended for a teenage audience, was called “Big Ghost and Little Ghost.” The publishers rejected both manuscripts. Hughes’s efforts to sponsor literary works by African authors culminated in his publication of An African Treasury: Articles / Essays / Stories / Poems by Black Africans (Crown, 1960).
66 Henry W. Nxumalo (1917–1957) was assistant editor of Drum: Africa’s Leading Magazine. Hughes would serve as a judge for short story competitions organized by Drum.
67 “Seven Moments of Love,” which Hughes called “an un-sonnet sequence in Blues,” was published in the May 1940 issue of Esquire. The piece later appeared in The Girls from Esquire (Random House, 1952), an anthology of material about women from the magazine.
68 In 1954 in London, Secker & Warburg published Nancy Cunard’s Grand Man: Memories of Norman Douglas. Douglas was the author of the once widely admired novel South Wind (1917).
69 Famous American Negroes, Hughes’s collection of biographical essays for children, was published by Dodd, Mead in 1954.
70 Hughes’s The First Book of Jazz (Franklin Watts, 1955) appeared to excellent reviews. It was apparently the first book about jazz written for children.
71 Douglas Geoffrey Bridson (1910–1980) was an interviewer and producer for the British Broadcasting Corporation.
72 PEN (Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, Novelists) is an international writers’ association founded in 1921.
73 Griffith Jerome Davis (1923–1993), a photographer, was a student of Hughes in 1947 when he was a visiting professor of creative writing at Atlanta University. Davis started working for Ebony magazine that same year. In 1948, when he enrolled at Columbia University in its Graduate School of Journalism, he boarded with Hughes and the Harpers while he earned his master’s degree.
74 Yale-educated William Pickens (1881–1954), field secretary of the NAACP in the 1920s and author of the autobiographies The Heir of Slaves (1911) and Busting Bonds (1923), died during a pleasure cruise with his wife aboard the RMS Mauretania.
75 Dusty Fletcher (c. 1900–1954) and Hamtree Harrington (1889–1956) were popular African American vaudeville performers. They collaborated on a short musical film called Rufus Jones for President (1933), which also featured Ethel Waters and a young Sammy Davis, Jr. (1925–1990).