Langston Hughes 
Letters from Langston 
From the Harlem Renaissance to the Red Scare and Beyond

Langston Hughes, one of America’s greatest writers, was an innovator of jazz poetry and a leader of the Harlem Renaissance whose poems and plays resonate widely today. Accessible, personal, and inspirational, Hughes’s poems portray the African American community in struggle in the context of a turbulent modern United States and a rising black freedom movement. This indispensable volume of letters between Hughes and four leftist confidants sheds vivid light on his life and politics.


Letters from Langston begins in 1930 and ends shortly before his death in 1967, providing a window into a unique, self-created world where Hughes lived at ease. This distinctive volume collects the stories of Hughes and his friends in an era of uncertainty and reveals their visions of an idealized world—one without hunger, war, racism, and class oppression.

Table of Content

Foreword by Robin D. G. Kelley

Preface

Acknowledgments


Introduction: The Poet, the Crawfords, and the Pattersons


PART ONE: THE TUMULTUOUS 1930S


1 • Wither White Philanthropy—Thank You and God for “The Weary Blues”: October 1930–January 1932

2 • Moscow Bound in Black and White: March 1932–February 1933

3 • Horror in Scottsboro, Alabama, and War in Spain: May 1933–November 1937

4 • A People’s Theatre in Harlem and Black Anti-Fascism on the Rise: January 1938–December 1939


PART TWO: THE FAR-REACHING 1940S


5 • Early Political Repression: January 1940– November 1941

6 • World War II and Black Radical Organizing: June 1942–July 1944

7 • Ebb and Flow—To Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Back: July 1946– November 1949


PART THREE: THE FEARSOME 1950S AND THE PROMISING 1960S


8 • Mc Carthyism at Home, Independence Movements Abroad: July 1950–December 1959

9 • Civil Rights, Black Arts, and the People’s Poet: February 1961–August 1966


Glossary Personae

Index

About the author

Evelyn Louise Crawford,  a retired arts administrator and consultant, and Mary Louise Patterson,  a pediatrician in clinical practice, are the daughters of Langston Hughes’s cherished friends Evelyn Graves Crawford, Matt N. Crawford, Louise Thompson Patterson, and William L. Patterson. Hughes was a frequent guest in the homes of the two families and was like an uncle to to Evelyn Louise and Mary Louise.