Selected Letters of Langston Hughes: Edited by Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel

TO ARNA BONTEMPS [TLS]

[On Langston Hughes, 20 East 127th Street, New York 35, N.Y. stationery]

July 17, 1954

Dear Arna,

Well, since my autobiography is due at the publishers the day after Labor Day and I haven’t written a word of it yet, I thought this quiet Sunday afternoon I would get started. So I sat down and wrote three chapters some 30 pages. Between 4 P. M. and now, about 3 A.M. Which isn’t bad. I hope it reads as easily as it writes. If I can keep this up, I’ll have 330 pages in a month—which is with narrow margins, so that would be 400—which is just about a book.

I meant to sort out all the stuff in the basement, take notes, etc., and work from them. But if I wait to get around to doing that, it is liable to be Doomsday, and I’ll never get a book done. So I think I will just write it from memory like I did THE BIG SEA. Then, if I have time, and it needs it, I can check through the basement stuff and see if I’ve forgotten anything important—in which case I can put <it> in Volume III, the next one. I can remember enough without notes to fill an encyclopedia.

If publishers want a really documented book, they ought to advance some documented money—enough to do nothing else for two or three years. I refuses to sharecrop long for short rations! Doubleday’s royalty report was the ONLY one this year that had a check along with it. All the rest sent me BILLS with their reports asking ME to kindly remit to them—for books I had purchased. Sharecropper for true. Anyhow, I did get to the Bahamas for a few days. Don’t reckon I’ll ever get anywhere else. Kindly remember me in your prayers. (I wish somebody would remember me in a will.)

Hope your book is about done. You’ve been writing as long as Ralph |Ellison|!

Sincerely yours truly,
Lang

TO CHUBA NWEKE [TL]

July 25, 1954

Dear son Chuba,²

Since you’ve adopted me—and thus become my one and only son (and I’m very happy that you have), you will have to send me a photograph (just a Kodak snapshot will do, it needn’t be an expensive one) so that I can see how you look. Certainly I am very proud and flattered to be taken as a father by so ambitious a boy as yourself, already working on a novel, and only fifteen years old! Are your father and mother living? How many brothers and sisters do you have? Are you continuing in school, or working? What do you intend to do in life?

Of course, I will read your novel for you. But I cannot guarantee to rewrite it (being awfully busy myself) or to do anything about publication as that is very difficult. But I would be happy to see it, and to give you my comments on it, in the hope that they might be helpful to you. So send it on over here to me. But I hope you have made a carbon copy, so you will have one in case it gets lost. In typing, always make a copy or two of your work, so as to be able to always keep one.

Meanwhile, I am sending you two of my books, one of poems and the other a story. But the boats are slow, as you know, so it will be about six weeks, I’m afraid, before the books reach you, although they were mailed yesterday. But let me know when they arrive, and if you’d like others, I will send them to you. Meanwhile, send me your picture, and write again soon.

With all my love and good wishes to my Nigerian son,

Sincerely,
Langston Hughes

TO MARIA LEIPER [TL]

COPY sent to ROY de CARAVA

January 4, 1954 |1955|

Miss Maria Leiper,
Simon & Schuster,
630 Fifth Avenue,
New York 20, N. Y.

Dear Maria,

We’ve had so many books about how bad life is, that it would seem to me to do no harm to have one along about now affirming its value. So that is what I’m trying to do with those beautiful photographs by Roy de Carava.³ You’ll have about a half ton of pictures along with a minimum of text sometime next week, so don’t try to lift it yourself. Just turn it over, picture by picture, and see if it comes alive.

I’m sending you a copy of my “Jazz” book, too ⁴—just for fun.

Sincerely,
Langston Hughes

TO CARL VAN VECHTEN [TL]

April 3, 1955

Mr. Carl Van Vechten,
146 Central Park West,
New York 23, N.Y.

Dear Carlo,

Curiously enough, I was just on the verge of writing you a note when the postman brought that charmingly written little book about you yesterday ⁵—so I stopped to read it, and find it delightfully warm and real and to be no bigger than it is, a pretty thorough coverage of your life, ways, and activities. And certainly your personality comes through. (Incidentally, I love Saul’s picture of you—which I’d never seen before; and that beautiful one of you and Fania |Marinoff|.) And, naturally, I am DE-lighted to be referred to and quoted therein! (Who wouldn’t be?) Thanks so very much for sending me a copy so far in advance of publication.

What I was about to write you about yesterday was (and is) to ask you if by any chance you’ve got a spare hundred lying around loose anywhere you could lend me for a month. Brokeness suddenly descended upon me unawares and my stenographer’s last check bounced. Turned out I was $1.48 short! (And I thought I was $87.00 ahead of that—but I’d neglected to make a deduct on my book.) So I was shocked! I don’t mind being broke myself, but typists live more hand to mouth than authors, and I don’t want to get more than a week or two behind with her—since I’ve just recently been fortunate enough to find her, she’s reliable and very good, and I’ve a mountain of manuscripts in final draft stage to get typed up and turned in this month: FAMOUS NEGRO MUSIC MAKERS (a juvenile) due at Dodd, Mead’s on the 15th,⁶ and the second volume of my autobiography (in which you figure again) due at Rinehart’s early in May—on both of which I’ll collect remaining advances due on delivery of manuscripts of almost a thousand bucks. But right now I don’t have a thousand pennies—having awakened this week-end for the first time in a long time “cold in hand.” (And the Harpers have had some enormous plumbing and heating bills this winter—old pipes bursting, etc.,—and neither have been too well, either. Fortunately, nothing intended for Yale is under any pipes, and lately I’ve almost completed the basement sorting—four BIG boxes of letters alone from you, Walter |White|, Du Bois, Zora |Neale Hurston|, Arna |Bontemps|, etc., mostly already filed under each name. But I want to list and sort them into years before boxing for shipment.)⁷

Anyhow, if you’re broke, too, don’t worry about it. But if you aren’t, and want to help ART and the RACE through the rainy month of April, I’ll send it back to you when the sun shines in May and ASCAP and publishers pay off.⁸ What really broke me has been Africa—I’ve received almost two hundred manuscripts from there in answer to my letters for short stories to Azikiwe’s paper, DRUM, AFRICA, and the BANTU NEWS, as well as various writers. From which I garnered 56 that I think are good, some excellent—Nigeria, Gold Coast, Kenya, South Africa, etc., for an Anthology of stories by African Negro writers—fiction, not folk, contemporary, which Simon and Schuster are now considering. But what a mountain of typing I had to pay for, and air-mail postage for the past six months. But, aside from the manuscripts (some in long hand) I’ve gotten some fascinating letters, and think I’ve discovered two really talented writers in Cape Town, youngsters, one 23, one 24, the former I believe as talented as Peter Abrahams (TELL FREEDOM, etc.) who helped me on this project I started last year.*

Thanks again for C.V.V. AND THE 20s, and tulips and jonquils to you,

Langston

*Amos Tutuola (the PALM WINE DRINKARD guy) sent a story from Nigeria ⁹—and very wisely said, “I will send more when you send money.” It’s all in long hand and most fantastic, so I’m saving the script for Yale.

TO ARNA BONTEMPS [TLS]

[On Langston Hughes, 20 East 127th Street, New York 35, N.Y. stationery]

August 22, 1955

Dear Arna, You being more experienced in these matters, since you’re a Curator and Librarian yourself, kindly give me your opinion on this: I’ve finally gotten around to sorting and filing by name or category some several hundred letters for Yale of persons in public life mostly: writers, artists, actors, NAACP personalities, etc. most of them still living. None of them contain anything which I myself would object to anyone seeing. But since no one wrote with a Library collection repository in mind:

1. Do you think these letters should be restricted in any way? (They can be locked away for any number of years I<,> as donor<,> wish).

2. Do you think perhaps any publication of them or any parts of them should be prohibited without the writer’s permission, although they would otherwise be open to researchers?

3. In the case of your own letters (at the moment I’ve come across a hundred or more from the ’30s to now) which carry a thread of the history and personalities of our times—nothing that I see objectionable to anyone’s eyes. Would you wish them restricted in any way? Or would you rather they be not given at all now? (With hurricanes, leaking roofs, bursting pipes, they ought to be somewhere safe for posterity’s delectation and enlightenment)?

I’ve boxes more to sort in the basement. But would value your opinion as to propriety in regard to museums and other people’s mail, before sending the present boxes off. So when you get rested from your vacation, let me know, please.¹⁰

Georgia Douglas Johnson, I hear, is not well.

Sincerely,
Langston

TO NOËL SULLIVAN [TLS]

[On Langston Hughes, 20 East 127th Street, New York 35, N.Y. stationery]

November 14, 1955

Dear Noël,

I’m doing you like some of my fans do me—sitting down and answering you right back. But you’re not to take answering me seriously—for who knows better than I what letter writing entails. And I’ve seen your desk, too! Of course, I’m always glad to hear from you. But don’t feel you’re remiss when I don’t.

Coincidentally, your name came up at a meeting at the John Hay Whitney Foundation this morning (I didn’t bring it up, either) and when I got home, here’s your letter! I got up at 7 A.M. believe it or not! for a 9 o’clock conference of scholars and writers and a publisher to help plan a series of Centennial volumes to be published in the 1960s celebrating the One Hundred Years of Freedom of the “race.” And in considering possible honorary sponsors of the project, when it came to the West Coast you and Wallace Stegner ¹¹ were mentioned. But all of this is very long range, and at this preliminary meeting nothing much was decided upon except that all of us should submit memos and ideas to be perhaps incorporated into a general publishing plan to be considered at the next conference in December.

I’m certainly sorry to hear that you’re temporarily laid up, and hope you’re not in pain—or bored. And if you need me, I’ll get on a plane and come out there. I’ve been sort of planning in the back of my head to come out in the late winter for a week or two just to say hello again, or sooner if I can finish the two current projects I have on hand for late Spring publication. (At the moment, I’m weeks behind, so one or two more wouldn’t make much difference. All year I’ve been rushing to be late, and feel sort of weary myself. But I still find sleep a great restorer—and sometimes go into another world for twelve hours and wake up all right.) As you know, I’m a great travel sleeper, and can sleep my way to the Coast and be out there tomorrow, if my presence would be of any value to you. This quite seriously, as I’m sure you know—so you have only to let me know: LEhigh 4-2952, or otherwise. In any case, I shall see you after the holidays, and I’m holding all the good thoughts in the world for you.¹² (And hope you’ve given up Christmas cards—as I say I’m going to do this year. Maybe make it an every-other-year pleasure.)

Dorothy I haven’t seen since her concert. But am happy to hear from you that she is headed your way. Some things she sang so beautifully she made folks cry at her concert—a kind of art from the heart.¹³

The TIMES has just sent me James Baldwin’s new book of essays to review.¹⁴ I’ve long thought him a very talented fellow, writing provocatively and beautifully. I met him briefly last summer. He’s back in Paris now, I hear.…. Leonard de Paur ¹⁵ invited me to dinner to tell me how wonderful you were, and what a happy summer he had with the Williams and his other Highland neighbors, and apparently didn’t go out much. I have the same feeling you do about him—and his chorus that sings beautifully, but don’t really move me.

Take it slow now! You’ve got to be here in 1963 to see us 100 years free!

Yours,
Langston

TO JAN MEYEROWITZ [TL]

January 23 P.M., 1956

Mr. Jan Meyerowitz,
27 Morningside Avenue,
Cresskill, New Jersey.

Dear Jan,

Art thou Ahasuerus? A mere piece of paper on my part does not constitute a decree. So, by what manner of reasoning do you waken me out of my sleep at the ungodly hour of 10 A.M. to shout imprecations on the phone, without even a “goodmorning?” Especially after I have been up all night working on ESTHER so that I might post additional scenes to you in ample time—your mails being so slow.¹⁶ I finished the corrections about 8 A.M. and took the material over to the Post Office to mail to you (perhaps you have it by now) and so did not get to bed until after 9 and had seemingly just gone to sleep good when the phone rang. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to unplug it, so kindly forgive me for unplugging it then. I am sure you know one cannot discuss anything intelligent in one’s sleep. So, for your sake, not to waste your time talking to a zombie, I suggest in the future, you call me much later in the day. Otherwise, naturally, I forgive you.

Concerning the letter of collaboration, you are perfectly free to draw up your own, as I suggested you do weeks ago. Send yours to me and I will forward it on to my agent for his approval, since you know that I do not handle my own business matters.

Gifts of Purim to you! Sincerely,

TO ARNA BONTEMPS [TLS]

[On Langston Hughes, 20 East 127th Street, New York 35, N.Y. stationery]

5 A. M.
April 26, 1956

Dear Arna,

I’ve been out nightclubbing with Jack Robbins & Yvonne Bouvier—Inez Cavanaugh at the Valentine, and Mabel Mercer at the Byline ¹⁷—and came back to cut a dozen more pages from my LIFE. From 783 pages I’ve got it down to about 500 and am working on the last sequence now from which I hope to extract 20 or so more pages. Unfortunately, in the cutting our Alabama Christmas and the meatless roasts got cut out. But the tale of Watts and the white lady who came a-begging remains—when we wrote BOY OF THE BORDER which I wish you’d add to while I’m cutting this, please!¹⁸ Let there be a stampede or a chase or something kicking up lots of dust.

My No. 2 LIFE is going to be good. I never really read it before until this week. I’ve now cut out all the impersonal stuff, down to a running narrative with me in the middle on every page, extraneous background and statistics and stories not my own gone by the board. The kind of intense condensation that, of course, keeps an autobiography from being entirely true, in that nobody’s life is pure essence without pulp, waste matter, and rind—which art, of course, throws in the trash can. No wonder folks read such books and say, “How intensely you’ve lived!” (The three hundred duller months have just been thrown away, that’s all, in this case; as in THE BIG SEA, too. And nobody will know I ever lived through them. They’ll think I galloped around the world at <top> speed.) Well, anyhow,

I remain,

Sincerely,
Langston

TO W. E. B. DU BOIS [TL]

May 22, 1956

Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois,¹⁹
31 Grace Court,
Brooklyn 2, New York.

Dear Dr. Du Bois,

I have just read again your The Souls of Black Folk—for perhaps the tenth time—the first time having been some forty years ago when I was a child in Kansas.²⁰ Its beauty and passion and power are as moving and as meaningful as ever.

My very best regards to Shirley²¹ and continued good wishes to you both,

Sincerely,
Langston Hughes

TO MAXIM LIEBER [TL]

SEPTEMBER
SEVENTEENTH
1
9
5
6

Dear Maxim:

I am delighted to have your recent letter and thought that I had written you but it might be that I did not since I have been behind the literary eight ball for the past several months and am more of a writer-sharecropper than ever. But at last things seem to be clearing up a bit and the two major jobs that took so much time are now at the printers; A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE NEGRO IN AMERICA (Crown),²² and the second volume of my autobiography, I WONDER AS I WANDER (Rinehart). Both will be out in November, and a new juvenile, THE FIRST BOOK OF THE WEST INDIES (Franklin Watts) has just appeared.²³ But with all this work, bills rather than royalties fall out of publishers’ envelopes. I have just gotten a bill from Simon and Schuster for $1080. and another from Watts for some $700. for books that I purchased in the past. So it is my intention never to sell or give away another book, only to write them from now on and let the volumes fall where they may.

Arna |Bontemps| was in town last week, and said he would be delighted to receive whatever royalties you have for him. He may be addressed at the Fisk University Library, Nashville 8, Tenn. He never did finish his big book on Douglass, Washington and Du Bois. But I read some of the earlier portions and they were beautifully written. He seems to be increasingly burdened with academic duties and is a sort of right hand man to the President of Fisk, and he never did write very rapidly anyhow. But I shall pass on to him what you said about the book and its possibilities in Europe. I certainly hope he will finish it.

I would be delighted if I could get in American money whatever royalties are due me for Russian translations of my books, as the New York Times sometime ago stated that such royalties were now payable in Valuta.²⁴ I find Ivan von Auw an excellent agent and am most grateful to Minna for having suggested him.²⁵ The only thing is that if something is not sold, he does not bother to give it away for sheer pleasure of publication as we used to do.

Have you heard that |Joseph| McCarthy has lost 43 lbs recently and is slowly dying? In the third volume of my autobiography, since I am now through I WONDER AS I WANDER, I will record my TV show with him when he was certainly in full possession of his faculties. He asked me if I would consent to appear on TV and I said—“Delighted!” I figured I photographed as well as he did.

All my good wishes to Minna and the children, as ever,

Sincerely yours,
Langston Hughes

LH/g

TO ZELL INGRAM [TL]

September
Twenty-Eighth
1
9
5
6

Dear Zell:

The book has now gone down to the publisher and the editor says he would like very much to see the drawings, so if you have any more done, or do any over the weekend, bring them by on Monday or Tuesday and I will see that they get downtown.²⁶ Here are a few suggestions for more of the chapter heads, but of course you do not need to follow them if they do not excite your imagination:

THE FIX (10)—Rather than show a whole policeman receiving graft, we might show a hand with an official looking cuff and Laura’s hand slipping a $10 bill into it and maybe the other hand with a billy club be worked in on the side.

ETHIOPIAN EDEN (11)—A Sarah Vaughan-like Eve clad partially in vine leaves and maybe looking at a dollar; the S of which is a snake with an apple in its mouth, or the snakelike bill alone might be used as headpiece for another chapter—APPLE OF EVIL. Perhaps for the mural, Sarah Vaughan and Joe Louis as Adam and Eve without the snake.²⁷

STRAY CATS STRAY DOGS (18)—There might be an alley cat, a mongrel and a pair of feet that look as though they belong to a stray person.

WATCH WITH ME (32)—There should certainly be some jail bars with a placid but solemn face behind jail bars (Essie).

These suggestions are not obligatory at all—just ideas. I tried a couple of times to get you on the phone but found no one at home so I am sending this note instead.

Regards to Garnett.

Sincerely,
Langston Hughes

TO ROY BLACKBURN [TLS]

[On Langston Hughes, 20 East 127th Street, New York 35, N.Y. stationery]

November 6, 1956

Dear Roy,

Thank you so much for so kindly sending me so promptly the clippings about Noël.²⁸ Marie |Short| and others sent me the Carmel and Monterey notices and tributes, so I was able to show them to friends of Noël’s here in New York who were not so fortunate in such thoughtful friends on the Coast in that regard.…. Me. I am behind several assorted 8-balls as usual—one being a book due yesterday that I haven’t even started, so I told the MAN <I’d have it> on the 15th<,> on the phone today, so have to WRITE it in about a week. Fortunately, it’s for teenagers, so not too long²⁹.…. But this is just a hasty note to tell you I’ve ordered sent you from Rinehart’s my 2nd autobiography, I WONDER AS I WANDER, and to explain to you re the Carmel section that you were included therein in the 780 page version that had to be cut down to 400, <but> in the condensing, since I was pushed for time (working on the PICTORIAL HISTORY then going to press in sections as I turned them in) whole chapters had to be jerked out (almost 20) and I had no time to weave any of the material into other portions. A description of Willa’s parties, a wonderful bullfight in Mexico, and several of my friends disappeared from the book in the process of hasty but absolutely necessary cutting before it went to press. But I can use much of it in the 3rd LIFE I’ll do in a couple of years or so.…. The same thing happened with the PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE NEGRO. I told Lester Granger’s wife the other day his picture was in the book, only to discover when I got copies yesterday, it WASN’T.³⁰ Some 30 photos had to be dropped at the last minute at the printers. So will I be embarrassed when I run into the guy!<*>…… Both these big old books cost $6 bucks, so I can’t buy hardly nary one myself. Since I’m only co-collaborator on the Pictorial, it’s not mine no how! Best to Marie,³¹ Roy, and Marty. Hastily, but Sincerely,

Langston

TO ARNA BONTEMPS [TLS]

[On Langston Hughes, 20 East 127th Street, New York 35, N.Y. stationery]

January 31, 1957

Mr. Arna Bontemps,
919 - 18th Avenue, North,
Nashville 8, Tennessee.

Dear Arna:

The Book of Negro Folklore seems now in the bag. Mr. Dodd made a memo to start drawing up contracts while I was there.³² We had an hour’s conference with Mr. Bond and Allen Klots (Dodd’s Editorial Assistant) also present.

Mr. Bond (with whom we talked when you were here) is Vice President and seemingly head sales advisor, and he did most of the talking. I was interested in what he came up with. Although not stated in so many words, it amounted to a socially slanted book of folk lore—a sort of “people want to know what the Negro is thinking, and has thought in the past, about life in this country—not so many animal verses and things like that.” He liked the integration jokes, etc., and the urban stuff, house rent party cards and ads. And thinks the book should be—in his own words now, “One that an Englishman could pick up and find in it something of how the Negro lives, thinks, and reacts to life in the U. S. A.”

Mr. Dodd agreed to this, but added that, of course, the book should contain some examples of all the various categories of folklore we had outlined, and certainly the famous songs like JOHN HENRY, etc., and a representative group of spirituals, including the well known ones like SWING LOW that teachers and students might be looking up. But he approves the general social slant, too, and feels in this age of interest in race problems, <it> gives the book more vitality than merely a collection of folklore per se.

I found their viewpoint amenable—thinking to myself all the while that if I had proposed it, they would have thought me a leftist! I assured them there was certainly enough such material available to make an exciting book, mentioning the Fisk plantation material, the Jack Conroy industrial material, chain gang songs, boll weevil verses, etc., plus the current racially slanted jokes like the drunks and the bus. I read them your bit about mama never reaching California which they liked. And we all parted happy. Suggested length for the book—300-350 manuscript pages. Deadline November 15, which would give us the summer to assemble it, and probably you’d be North for a week or two when we could complete the details, section intros, etc., long about August. Meanwhile, we can be selecting, gathering, and typing up material. Is that date O. K. by you to put in the contract? If you’ve any contractual suggestions, better airmail them to me and/or Ivan |von Auw, Jr.|.

The only mention of the Centennial project was that they said they’d written Cresswell some time ago, but had no answer as yet.³³ And I said we were still preparing the outline, but would have it soon. So was glad to find your note when I came home saying it’s on the way.… Nice clipping from the Birmingham paper!.…. Oddly, Mrs. S. Barr was up to see Aunt Toy |Harper| today.³⁴ Rain kept Dorothy home.… It was Miss Waters. First rumor was another Ethel.³⁵ Seems she’s cut several hogs (verbally) lately. <Too bad!> Lang

TO JAN MEYEROWITZ [TLS]

April 2, 1957

Dear Jan, Thank you for your letter today, and your memo on my suggested improvements for our opera, ESTHER.³⁶ I note that you are just like a composer: you will accept no suggestions at all. No doubt the Lord made you that way, so I trust He will accept the responsibility.…. I still think the very end would be <im>proved, and less abrupt, with addition of a line like: “Handmaid of God, Esther, lovely Esther!” But if adding it means the death of you, don’t do it. Maybe someday you will explain to me why composers expect lyricists and librettists to make ALL the changes a composer wants, but maestros are seldom, if ever, willing to change a NOTE. Even those with less talent than yourself are equally adamant. May God help you all! (So, you see, you still have my prayers.)

As to my money for the trip, I sure would like to have it. But since all correspondence with the Fromm Foundation, and promises, were made through you, for that reason I asked you to call it to the attention of the Foundation, since I have heretofore not been in negotiations with them in any way personally, and you have up to now attended to all money matters relative to ESTHER—who fortunately had a rich uncle.

Let me know how much the tape will cost and I will send you (or the recording folks) my check.

I’m so glad EDEN went well, and wish very much I could have heard it.³⁷

With cordial regards ever, and thanks for “lovely ESTHER,” I remain comme toujours,

L.H.

P.S. Thanks for that FINE sermon!

TO STELLA HOLT [TL]

April 10, 1957

Miss Stella Holt,³⁸
325 West 87th Street,
New York City.

Dear Stella:

I’m enclosing a carbon of a note I just wrote Josh.³⁹ As you can see, I still have a very strong feeling that we are skating on quite thin ice in regard to the current Simple as cast last night—but I hope the ice holds up. Just in case it does not hold up, I think we ought to have a tough old professional swimmer on hand who can swim under water in case the young White Hope gets drowned.

Incidentally, I went through the same sort of hassle with Michael Myerberg regarding Lawrence Tibbett in the Broadway production of the opera of mine, THE BARRIER ⁴⁰—pointing out as strongly as I could that (for about the same reasons as I oppose the choice of our current Simple) Tibbett was wrong. Subsequently, my judgment was proven quite correct—Mr. Tibbett proved a headache to all concerned, and to the critics who reviewed the production as well. It ran four days! So, for the record, DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU and Josh! (And in writing for your files.)

I’d greatly appreciate knowing your action regarding a professional understudy for SIMPLE as soon as you can conveniently give it to me.

Best regards ever,

Sincerely,

TO LÉOPOLD SÉDAR SENGHOR [TL]

August 1, 1957

Dear Leopold Senghor:⁴¹

Please forgive me for being so long in thanking you for your beautiful book of poems, ETHIOPIQUES, which arrived sometime ago. It is a stunning book to look at, and an exciting book to read. I am most grateful to you for sending it to me and for your kind inscription.

I have been for the past months deeply engaged in theatre. A musicale play of mine, SIMPLY HEAVENLY, which had a successful run in a little theatre|,| is now about to open on Broadway on August 20th. Nothing takes more time than a show and so my correspondence has suffered greatly. But I repeat that the arrival of your book gave me great pleasure and I am very happy indeed to have it.

With admiration and all good wishes, I remain

Sincerely yours,
Langston Hughes

TO RICHARD WRIGHT [TLS]

August 11, 1957

Dear Dick:

Sometime ago, Knopf forwarded to me your request to use the last four lines of LET AMERICA BE AMERICA AGAIN in your book of four lectures.⁴² I am happy to grant you permission to use these lines.

I must beg your forgiveness for not writing sooner but I was on the Coast when the letter came and when I returned, I found myself in the midst of rehearsals for my folk comedy, SIMPLY HEAVENLY. I am sure you know there is nothing like a theatre project to take up twenty-four hours of one’s day and I am still deeply involved as we are now rehearsing for the Broadway opening on August 20th.

Ever so often I have news of you from someone who has been in Europe, and I am hoping <sometime> to get to Paris again myself. In recent years I have been so tied up with one book contract after another and running so far behind on deadlines that I have not been able to go anywhere. This summer I haven’t even been to the beach although New York has had the hottest summer in years. Along with the show I have been reading proofs of my third Simple book, SIMPLE STAKES A CLAIM ⁴³—meaning a claim in Democracy. It will appear in September. Also I managed to complete this summer a translation from the Spanish of the beautiful poetry of the late Chilean poet, Gabriela Mistral.⁴⁴ This will be published in November by the Indiana University Press. I am nothing but a literary sharecropper!

I was delighted to read the fine reviews which your book about Spain received and only intense pre-occupation with things theatrical has kept me from reading it.⁴⁵ But I shall read it very soon.

All my good wishes to you, Ellen and the children.

Sincerely yours,
Langston Hughes

TO INA STEELE [TL]

September 26, 1957

Dear Ina: I’ve been trying to write you ever since I got back from the Coast ten days or so ago, but every day something comes up to take ALL one’s time, what with the show running and a new book just out: interviews, TV (Portraits), radio (Tex and Jinx), recording sessions, a new song to write for the show, etc. etc. (New York’s nothing but a workhouse)!.… Anyhow, they saved a piece of the cake for me that came while I was away—wrapped in tin foil, so still DE-licious. Merci beaucoup.… And Sam Allen ⁴⁶ sent me a pretty painting that I haven’t acknowledged yet. But will soon, I hope.… And today my namesake cousin (a teenager) came from Chicago for a long promised visit, so I’ve got to show him around. And this weekend there are two autographing parties for the new book. So I don’t have time to let the devil “find work for idle hands” etc., because the fast pace of modern life has got me in the go-long! Anyhow, I LOVED Simple’s Birthday card, and your letters I found on my return to Harlem. And if you like Simple, I know he must be half-way alright anyhow. And I’m lucky to have such a good actor playing him. And that is good news, too, that Youra |Qualls| is going to be at Maryland State along with you this year. Me, imagining her back in Dixie ’ere now! Tell her HAIL and not Farewell! And I hope you-all will come up and see the show again. And I’d love to get down there if the Lord ever lets me get anywhere not connected with work. That show I flew out to the Coast to see, A PART OF THE BLUES,⁴⁷ was so theatrically interesting I forgot it was derived from my work, or had anything to do with me, which was a relief after so much WORK on SIMPLY HEAVENLY. Its adaptor is another sort of Orson Welles, I’d say. Very talented.… Best ever

TO HERBERT WEINSTOCK [TL]

November 30, 1957

Mr. Herbert Weinstock,
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.,
501 Madison Avenue,
New York 22, New York.

Dear Herbert:

I am delighted, of course, that Alfred A. Knopf intends to publish THE SELECTED POEMS OF LANGSTON HUGHES, according to the information received from Ivan von Auw, Jr., recently. If you would send me your suggestions for any omissions or additional inclusions, I would be happy to consider them.

And, since Carl Van Vechten did the Preface for my first book of poems, THE WEARY BLUES, I think it would be quite appropriate if he would consent to write a foreword for this one. I would like it very much.⁴⁸

With cordial regards,

TO NNAMDI AZIKIWE [TL]

February 28, 1958

The Hon. Nnamdi Azikiwe,
Premier
Eastern Nigeria
Lagos, Nigeria

Dear Zik:

Many years have passed since our paths crossed at Lincoln |University|, and eventful years indeed for Africa. I write to you at this time in connection with a project on which I have been working a few years now—an anthology of indigenous African writers. It was originally conceived as a collection of fiction, but the publisher has recently indicated to me his wish to extend the anthology to include poetry and articles of current interest. Naturally, I could not think of such a book that did not include a contribution from you. I know that you are a very busy man with many demands on your time and so I do not expect to receive a very long piece from you. Perhaps a statement of two or three typewritten pages in which you touched on the future of Nigeria as an independent nation would be most apropos. At any rate I leave this to your judgment.⁴⁹

As you are aware, present-day interest in Africa is tremendous and though the book shelves here are stacked with books covering practically every aspect of Africa and its peoples, few are being published which have been written by Africans themselves.

I visited our alma mater a few weeks ago to lecture there during Negro History Week. There have been many, many wonderful changes and it was good to see a few of the old faces again.

Know that I send to you and to your Nigeria all of my very best wishes for a bright future.

Yours very sincerely,
Langston Hughes

TO ARNA BONTEMPS [TLS]

[On Langston Hughes, 20 East 127th Street, New York 35, N.Y. stationery]

August 30, 1958

Mr. Arna Bontemps,
919 - 18th Avenue North,
Nashville 8, Tennessee.

Dear Arna: The New York Omegas, who last year awarded me their Manhattan MAN OF THE YEAR plaque, now wish to nominate me for the National Award at the coming conclave. In getting together information for them (as you can see from the enclosed carbon) I recalled that last year you were kind enough to suggest nominating me for the Spingarn Award, and I asked you to hold off until my SELECTED POEMS were published.⁵⁰ Now that they will be coming out in January, and I think it is in late January or February that the NAACP Awards Committee begin their deliberations (as I recall from once being a member of the Committee myself) if you |would| like to make the nomination within the next few months, I’d say go to it. And (if you want to work at it that hard) get a few other folks around the country to also send in nominations: maybe Ivan Johnson in California, Truman Gibson (who’s a great Simple fan) in Chicago,⁵¹ and C. V. V. |Carl Van Vechten| in New York, or others if you think of them.

I suppose the categories of achievement to consider would be, among others:

• POETRY: 9 books, and almost 40 years of magazine publication,

• beginning with THE CRISIS in 1921.

• PROSE: 15 books of my own, not counting collaborations, such as our

• POETRY or FOLK LORE.

• TRANSLATIONS by myself of other writers: 3 books—GABRIELA

• MISTRAL, JACQUES ROUMAIN, and NICOLÁS GUILLÉN and

• numerous poems and stories from the Spanish and French.

• LECTURES: This season will be my 8th Cross Country tour, not

• counting hundreds of other engagements covering practically all the

• major American colleges, and a great many high, grammar, and even

• kindergarten schools, reform schools, penitentiaries, and hospitals.

• Most Negro U.S.O. Clubs during the war and many Army Camps.

• PLAYS, MUSICALS, AND OPERAS: 12 from the Karamu Theatre to

• Broadway—MULATTO, STREET SCENE, TROUBLED ISLAND, THE BARRIER, SIMPLY HEAVENLY. MULATTO has been performed in Italy, the Argentine, Brazil, and currently in Japan. THE BARRIER is being given a major production on the Rome radio in November for which Meyerowitz is flying over.

TEACHER OF CREATIVE WRITING: The Laboratory School of the University of Chicago; Atlanta University.

BOOKS PUBLISHED ABROAD: in every major language, including Japanese, Chines<e>, Bengali, and Hindi.

UTILIZATION OF NEGRO FOLK MATERIAL: In poetry, prose (SIMPLE) and song. Our BOOK OF NEGRO FOLK LORE.

Enough!.…. Gracias!.…. Sincerely yours, Lang Litt.D. (Um-huh!)
SPECIAL AWARD: P.S. Have lived longer than any other known Negro solely on writing—from 1925 to now without a regular job!!!!! (Besides fighting the Race Problem)

!
!
!
!

TO CARL VAN VECHTEN [TLS]

September 18, 1958

Carlo, mon cher:

Amigo mio:

Man: I got 30 letters today, which took me all day to read, answer, and get ready for Yale—which is why it is hard to go back 30 years and read mail—when I can’t hardly keep ahead 30 minutes with contemporary correspondence! But I see in the papers where Mrs. Roosevelt answers 100 letters a day—so I am taking heart from that! You and she are human dynamos or something, I reckon—and not cullud. Anyhow, your letters will really go to Yale SUBITO if you say so. (I gather SUBITO means with “all deliberate speed”.) But what I had actually rather do some day next week is have a drink with you one afternoon, rather than spend it looking for your letters still not unearthed in the basement! Or maybe I can do both.

What is PLACE WITHOUT TWILIGHT? And is it as good as PRANCING NIGGER was?⁵² Which I still love.

We’ll probably NEVER get ahold of Sidney Poitier now.⁵³ But he told me he was going to do RAISIN IN THE SUN this winter in New York, so maybe then. Perhaps I’ll see him on the Coast in October, as I head that way on lecture tour in a couple of weeks, and since Mr. Goldwyn invites me to dinner, I’ll probably visit the PORGY AND-YOU-IS-MY-WOMAN-NOW set.⁵⁴

Is Bruce Kellner the guy whose coat I wore off by mistake?⁵⁵ And did you ever see or hear Bertice Reading?⁵⁶ I didn’t so far as I know, but she certainly stole the London show. It is now about to be done in Prague. Maybe it will have better luck there—in a state supported theatre. And the BARRIER is to |be| done on the Rome radio in November, with Meyerowitz flying over to assist in rehearsals. And MULATTO is now on the boards in Tokyo. And I’m still in Harlem un-caught-up with my mail.

Anyhow, Lincoln 4¢ stamps to you! Langston

<“TAMBOURINES TO GLORY” has a real lively black-yellow-red jacket (proofs)!>

TO LAWRENCE LANGNER [TL]

August 12, 1959

Mr. Lawrence Langner,⁵⁷
The Theatre Guild,
27 West 53rd Street,
New York 19, N. Y.

Dear Lawrence:

The revisions on TAMBOURINES TO GLORY are coming along fine.⁵⁸ All of your suggestions have been taken into account, and the play is greatly strengthened thereby. I have reworked the entire script, added two new scenes, and inserted into others some new and, I think, highly dramatic material that should play well. Laura’s character has been further built up and made both more humorous and more sympathetic in places, placing her over Essie as the show’s lead. The Buddy-C. J. fight scene is exciting, and the Essie-Laura conversation that follows, closing the scene, should be very moving. As is the jail house scene. And for the finale of the show, I’ve devised a surprise twist on Laura’s part which makes it appear that Essie and Deacon Crow-For-Day are about to be married until at the very curtain, Marrietta and C. J. are revealed as the bridal couple. Laura, of course, has been taken back into the fold—with a front page picture of her in the DAILY NEWS—for, through her killing of Buddy the whole underworld racket in Harlem has been exposed, and she is currently the heroine of the District Attorney’s office. Says Essie, “God works in mysterious way, His wonders to perform.” Song: “Tambourines! Tambourines! Tambourines to glory!” The new script is about ready to deliver to Anne Myerson for typing on Monday.…. Incidentally, at the White Barn Theatre near you on August 29-30 they<’re> doing an adaptation of my poems, SHAKESPEARE <IN H>ARLEM⁵⁹.… … Sincerely,

TO ARNA BONTEMPS [TLS]

[On Langston Hughes, 20 East 127th Street, New York 35, N.Y. stationery]

October 11, 1959

Mon cher ami:

My least idea of pleasure is—as you put it—“browsing” in a basement full of 20 years junk! And what bugs me is Yale never did tell me one could make income tax deductions on stuff given. (I only learned it from the Library of Congress.) Now they come saying they thought I knew it all the time. Arthur Spingarn says he deducts from 50¢ to $5.00 a letter, especially when they’re handwritten and from famous folks; also the cost price of all books. And I’ve given Yale hundreds of letters, and God knows how many books, my own and others inscribed to me! Records, music, and all kinds of things that would have helped a bit on income taxes for 10 years or more!

Well, anyhow! Did I tell you the State Department’s asked me if I want to lecture abroad? Ah regrets. Trinidad in November and Midwest in February (all booked up already) is about all I can do this season without giving the rest of my advances back.…. I’ve really done a little work on the Harlem book. But none on the promised teenage novel yet.⁶⁰ TAMBOURINES TO GLORY has been taking up lots of time lately—but the Guild suggestions are all so sound that it is now a much better play than originally—and fuller than the novel. (After all, the novel was written in a week—from Sunday to Sunday—and the play which was done first, didn’t take much longer. What you call “tour de forces” I reckon. But fun, since I had no deadlines on either, or contracts, and really should have |been| doing my Hollywood script.)⁶¹

Well, anyhow! I am really disillusioned with quiz shows! Seems like no cullud involved.

I hear a mighty whooping and hollering out the back window (1 AM) but can’t make out if it is a fight or a frolic. Got to see. Lang

TO CARL VAN VECHTEN [TLS]

October 12,1959

Columbus Night

Dear Carlo: Unbearded Patriarch—

I haven’t gotten such a long letter from you since the days of the Cullud Rennaissance! And I would answer you in kind were it not that I have a toothache and have to get up early and go have it pulled out.

Of course, I understand how you feel about the JWJ Collection. I feel that way, too.⁶² But, in my long life, I have noticed no general excitement among large numbers of the colored race about ANY collection—from the Schomburg to the Metropolitan, JWJ to the Library of Congress, Cluny to the Cloisters. They are just not collection minded. And (as I have heard you say about other things many times)—“that’s the way it is.” So, those of us who do know and do care will just have to redouble our efforts, I reckon, and include in those efforts (as did Nora) the bestirring of others.⁶³

Concerning Sidney |Poitier| and the photos, he has never said he wouldn’t be photographed. I’ve spoken to him both here, on the Coast, and in Chicago about it, and each time he’s said, “Soon as my next picture is over,” or “Soon as the play settles down,” or something like that. He is certainly a very busy (and very tense) young man and also very hard to get a hold of, or talk with quietly. And probably can’t quite cope with all the things that go into career making with the success, say, of Miss Eartha Kitt.⁶⁴ And he has no Essie to his Robeson, or Lennie to the Horne.⁶⁵ Or so, it seems to me “that’s the way it is.” About which I do not know what to do. He does not seem as yet to have managed to surround himself with efficient and helpful people—as Harry Belafonte ⁶⁶ and some of the other younger Negro stars seem to have achieved—which might leave him a little more time to be courteous and photographable.

Anyhow, have you photographed the colored beatnik poet of the Village, LeRoi Jones? He seems to me to be talented. I’ve never met him. But when I first read his poems, I asked someone to find out for me if he was colored, and in some fashion the inquiry reached him. So he called me up to tell me he was. I wasn’t home, but he left the message. (I thought he was colored anyway, named LeRoi.) He edits a magazine called YUNGEN and, I believe, has his own print shop.⁶⁷ <(And he doesn’t like my work—which I don’t mind. I like his.)>

Which is all my observations for the moment as I have to put a clove in my tooth and go to bed. But, so you can lament better the faults of the *race

Sackcloth dipped in eau de vie and just a soupçon of ashes in champagne—that wonderful big-bottle kind like you had at the party the other night (which was a wonderful party)—

Langston

*We both should use a capital R—Race!

TO REVEREND DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. [TL]

December 12, 1959

Salute to A. Philip Randolph Committee
Rev. Martin Luther King ⁶⁸
165 West 131st Street
New York 27, New York

Dear Rev. King:

I am happy to write a poem in salute to A. Philip Randolph and I am enclosing a copy which you may print in the souvenir program, have read at the testimonial, and use in any other way feasible. My regret is that immediately after the holidays I am going to California and unless some urgent commitment brings me east again, sooner than I expect, it is unlikely that I will be in New York on the night of January 24th. But perhaps, if you wish, Fred O’Neal⁶⁹ or some other skilled performer might be invited to read my poem, if accepted for use on the program.

Thank you very much indeed for you|r| kind words about my poetry and certainly I am most pleased that you have used it in your speeches and sermons so effectively. As I have attempted to express to you before, and through my column in the CHICAGO DEFENDER, I have the greatest admiration for you and your work.

With kindest regards,

Cordially yours
Langston Hughes

LH/gb
Encl: POEM FOR A MAN
By Langston Hughes