Langston Hughes
From Philosopedia
Hughes, Langston (1 Feb 1902 - 22 May 1967)
A major figure in the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes was the son of a white father and a black mother, a mix of French, Indian, and African blood. He was discovered as a poet by Vachel Lindsay in 1925.
During his career, which Arnold Rampersad has thoroughly detailed in a two-volume biography, The Life of Langston Hughes (Vol. 1, 1986; Vol. 2, 1988), Hughes traveled from one problem to the next, always with insufficient money, always finding that being an African American brought him problems, always being confronted with criticism for what he said and wrote, even being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. His third floor apartment at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, New York, was where friends arrived unannounced and stayed until early morning, making it difficult for Hughes to find needed time to write, his proteg� [Gilbert Price] lamented.
Hughes wrote thirty-five books, found in the multi-volume Collected Works of Langston Hughes. Included are plays which, according to James V. Hatch who with Errol G. Hill wrote The History of African-American Theater from its Beginnings to 2000,
- should increase Hughes's recognition as a playwright. Some of the unknown plays are of historical value. People have not been aware of how political many of his plays were or of his humanistic approach to labor, lynching, racism and his attempts to erase stereotypes.
On Humanism
Asked by Warren Allen Smith to go on record concerning humanism or secularism, Hughes informed his protegé, Gilbert Price, that he hesitated to respond (just as both avoided answering if they had enjoyed sharing a single bed while the two were on tour in Puerto Rico - they had, confided Price, to avoid having to pay for a double room, money always being a problem). Price, who had starred in his Jericho-Jim Crow, was a baritone who enjoyed singing "At The Feet of Jesus,"'sith lyrics by Hughes. The song had been inspired, Hughes explained, by his childhood background. Price, himself a Catholic, was unconvinced that Hughes was a fellow trinitarian. So he asked Hughes to go on record for a friend, his personal agent whom Hughes knew, Warren Allen Smith, who was writing about the subject.
- Hughes, standing, with Russian writers
But Senator McCarthy in 1950 had been looking for atheistic communists in the State Department, Price was told, and one had to be careful about going on record. Hughes had written favorably about his travels to the USSR in the 1930s. He was attacked for a poem such as "Goodbye Christ," which includes
- Christ Jesus Lord God Jehova
- Beat it on away from here now
- Make way for a new guy with no religion at all,
- A real guy named
- Marx Communist Lenin Peasant Stalin Worker ME,
- I said, ME!
Years later, he felt he should apologize, saying the work was an error of immaturity. Also, Hughes did not have the resources, the support, or even the inclination that would be needed to fight the McCarthy Un-American Activities Committee. Because of Price's request, Hughes in 1951 with understandable caution agreed only to write the following for Smith - privately, he told Price, he was not a believer but was happy with Price's being one.
- Since I never was much of a student of philosophy (perhaps one should say in the academic sense), I am not quite sure what the difference is between the various humanisms you mention. My only suggestion would be that perhaps you might be able to garner something from my autobiography, The Big Sea (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.), in which I tell how I write and how I feel about many things. Or see my poems.
In that 1940 book, Hughes has a story, "Salvation,"� which starts, "I was saved from sin when I was going on thirteen. But not really saved."� He then describes how at a big religious revival at his Auntie Reed's church it came time "to bring the young lambs to the fold."� He had been forewarned that when you are saved you see a light and something happens to you inside and Jesus comes into your life. He and his friend Wesley endured the experience of waiting and finally Wesley whispered, "God damn! I'm tired o' sitting here. Let's get up and be saved." So he got up and was saved. Langston, however, just sat because he saw no light and he could not see Jesus. Finally, he succumbed, and joyous singing filled the room while the new young lambs were blessed in the name of God. The twelve-year-old cried that night, not because the Holy Ghost had come into his life, as his family was saying, "he cried because he had lied, that he had not seen Jesus, that he didn't believe there was a Jesus any more since he didn't come to help. Hughes wrote of illegitimacy, pimps, number-runners, alcohol, marijuana, and white folks.
- Pull at the rope!
- O, pull it high!
- Let the white folks live
- And the black boy die.
- Pull it, boys,
- With a bloody cry.
- Let the black boy spin
- While the white folks die.
- The white folks die?
- What do you mean,
- The white folks die?
- That black boy's
- Still body Says
- NOT I.
. . . and the Red Cross, which in 1943, had segregated blood donations . . .
- The Angel of Mercy's
- Got her wings in the mud,
- And all because of
- Negro blood.
. . . and hypocrisy . . .
- Detectives from the vice squad
- with weary sadistic eyes
- spotting fairies.
- Degenerates
- some folks say.
- But God, Nature,
- or somebody
- made them that way.
- Police lady or Lesbian
- over there?
- Where?
. . . and racism. . .
- My old mule,
- He's got a grin on his face.
- He's been a mule so long
- He's forgot about his race.
- I'm like that old mule,
- Black, and don't give a damn!
- You got to take me
- Like I am .
Death and Will
Hughes died in Polyclinic Hospital in New York of complications after surgery. As for a will, Hughes decided that "one might as well have a little fun at one's own finalization,"� so the poet who believed in no afterlife, that after death one is nowhere, wrote a legal document asking that there be no public display of his body, that there be a swift cremation, and that the memorial service must consist "entirely of music,"� with no speaking whatsoever. Songs he suggested were "Precious Lord, Take My Hand"� by Thomas Dorsey; "Nothing But a Plain Black Boy,"� by Oscar Brown Jr.; "St. Louis Blues,"� by W. C. Handy (to be played by a jazz group but without a singer); "Caravan"� by Duke Ellington or "Blue Sands"� by Buddy Collette; and finally "�Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me"� by Duke Ellington. His ashes were to go to the James Weldon Johnson Collection at Yale University.
Ironically, at the Benta Funeral Home, 630 St. Nicholas Avenue at 141st Street in Harlem, the body was on display the same day the American Academy met in New York City. Langston's arms were folded, "you know, laughing at us, I'm sure, cracking up,"� musician Randy Weston remembers. Lena Horne, Ralph Bunche, and many other notables were present. Gilbert Price, performing in Canada, sent his friend the humanist as his emissary. Arna Bontemps spoke a few solemn words and read a few of Hughes's poems about death. Weston's trio ended with "Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me."�
Generally unknown is that Hughes was a subscriber to a British Humanist Association newsletter, one that was popular with rationalists, philosophic freethinkers, and humanists.
The never-married Hughes in a will left some money for his stepbrother's family. To the surprise of most, except those who knew Hughes had lived a lifetime of being sexually closeted (he once resisted the advances of Alain Locke and Countee Cullen, who tried to bring him out), he also willed money to Sunday Osuya, a young Nigerian black policeman he had met on a trip to Lagos.
The Langston Hughes Atrium at New York City's Schomburg Library in Harlem
- Hughes's Cremains Are Buried
- Underneath the Fish Symbol]]
- Teenage Sophomore, Ligardy Termonfils of Brooklyn,
- Stands Atop Langston Hughes
Hughes's ashes are buried under a floor at the Schomburg Library in Harlem. Many pass through the atrium, stepping over the symbol of the fish in the center of the large circular artwork, not realizing whose cremains are beneath.
Correspondence
(See a blog with photos of Hughes when young, when old, and with numbers of friends.)
{AAH; CE; Helen Vendler, “The Unweary Blues,” The New Republic, 6 March 1995; TYD; Jo Thomas, The New York Times, 31 July 2001; WAS, 21 February 1951, and conversations with Gilbert Price.}
