Jurado,

Aimee Jurado

Dr. Hollis

ENG 466

MW 10-11:15am

12/5/18

Langston Hughes: Conversations between Society and Literature

When looking at Langston Hughes’s poetry from the 1930s through the 1940s, a major

shift is seen in the content of Hughes’s writing – mainly a transition from writing heavily on the

black experience to radical and propagandistic poetry. Analysis of his poetry alone in this time

period suggests that the height of his radical poetry coincided with a hope that the revolution

would improve the lives of African-Americans. A decline of his radical poetry is seen when this

hope becomes lost in the war and in the midst of Jim Crow laws. The acknowledgment of this

change in Hughes’s writing is important for a multitude of reasons; these reasons include

studying the culture of wartime America and its influence on groups of people worldwide. This

essay looks specifically at the ways in which Hughes’s work in this time period demonstrates the

importance of literature – proving that society influences literature and likewise, literature

influences society. This is seen in the way Hughes’s writing influenced the black community,

how his writing was intended to persuade (and was also persuaded by) masses of people, and the

way in which literature is often seen and used as concrete evidence.

Hughes’s poetry encapsulates the struggles, victories, and subtleties of everyday life.

Known as an iconic writer during the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes’s writing is best remembered

as an expression of the hardships and emotions associated with being an African-American in the

time of Jim Crow laws. Hughes’s poetry provides a new perspective for historians studying
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wartime culture in America by offering the perspective of an often forgotten demographic. While

his poetry impacted and was received by a variety of communities, his influence on the black

community directly shaped the education and views African-Americans had towards the United

States during World War II. Janet Neigh of the Johns Hopkins University Press elaborates on this

impact in her article, “The Transnational Frequency of Radio Connectivity in Langston Hughes’s

1940s Poetics,” suggesting that Hughes’s poetry in the 1940s persuaded the education and

opinions of African-Americans during World War II due to a lack of access to other news

sources. Neigh explains in her article the inability for many African-Americans to attend the

academy, making the black press a vital source of outside information and education. In this

way, the radical poetry of Hughes that was published in the black press – which promoted social

connection among blacks and transnational solidarity between Harlem and the West Indies –

serves as a major influencer in the way blacks viewed the United States and their beliefs as a

community. This information is then in conversation with the development of the black

community as a whole during the Harlem Renaissance and World War II. Historians then can

study and better understand the wartime culture of the black community as well as the causes and

origins of certain perspectives that developed in black society – perspectives linked directly to

literature released into the black community.

Studying the poetry of Hughes from the 1930s to the 1940s, it can be understood that

Hughes supported the revolution with the hopes that it would work against societal views and

laws made to suppress African-Americans. This idea is supported through poems like Good

Morning Revolution, Revolution, and One More “S” in the U.S.A., which champion the

revolution and makes references to its connection with the black community. In Good Morning

Revolution for example, Hughes speaks about the revolution saying:

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“The boss knows you’re my friend.

He sees us hangin’ out together.

He knows we’re hungry, and ragged, and ain’t got a damn thing in this world –

And are gonna do something about it.”

(Rampersad, 162).

Hughes creates familiarity between African-Americans and those seeking change in the way he

describes the revolution as his friend who suffers in the same way he does. Hughes calls for

action from the black community when he says that he and the revolution “are gonna do

something about it,” suggesting that African-Americans can end their suffering by supporting the

revolution. Harris Feinsod in his dissertation, “Fluent Mundo: Inter-American Poetry, 1939-

1973,” for Stanford University supports this idea and reasons that Hughes found sympathy for

the Axis due to their anti-Jim Crow appeals to the Afro-Antilles.

It is problematic however to analyze the intention of Hughes’s propagandistic poetry

without considering other outside factors that were influencing his writing. Feinsod also

mentions in his dissertation the funding Hughes received from the United States government to

write propagandistic poetry and how his writing was part of an effort for U.S departments of

State, Agriculture, Treasury, and Commerce to solidify hemispheric commercial, political, and

cultural alliances (Feinsod, 2011). Catherine Vrtis of Tufts University contributes to this

discussion in her dissertation, “Black or Red?: The Creation of Identity in the Radical Plays of

Langston Hughes,” and offers through her research other factors that influenced Hughes’s

writing – of which include a need for him to demonstrate variety in his work and economic

desperation. While the overarching belief among scholars is to regard Hughes’s poetry with

sincerity, these outside factors demonstrate ways in which writers like Hughes persuaded and
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manipulated literature in the hopes of seeing some sort of result in society. This also implies that

writers like Hughes are aware of the power literature has over communities and exercise this

power as to move society in a certain direction. From this, historians can develop a better

understanding as to how history moves and its relationship to the movement in literature.

In the same way Hughes used his poetry to convince his audience to be in favor of certain

beliefs, he also used his poetry to convince his audience out of certain beliefs. Hughes’s

propagandistic poetry at the tail end of the 1930s and beginning of the 1940s began to show a

decline in support of the war. This is made evident in poems like Ballad of Roosevelt, Comment

on War, Some Day, and This Puzzles Me, which express frustration towards the war. In This

Puzzles Me, Hughes writes:

“They think we’re simple children,

Grown up never be –

But other simple children

Seem simpler than we.

Other simple children

Play with bombs for toys,

Kill and slaughter every day”

(Rampersad, 238).

From this quotation, it can be inferred that Hughes is frustrated with the way whites infantilize

African-Americans and argues that the participation of white people in the war is childish itself.

He also uses words like “kill” and “slaughter” to create connotations of savagery and to associate

these connotations with white Americans who were justifying the killings in the war. This poem

demonstrates Hughes’s developing opposition to the war and his rejection of communism. By
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mentioning the continuous mistreatment of African-Americans, it is probable that Hughes was

not seeing the positive change he believed the revolution would bring for the black community,

causing him to move away from his radical poetry and shift more towards poems on the black

experience and other poetry. Vrtis however suggests other reasons for Hughes to withdraw from

his radical poetry – mosty to avoid suspicion from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and

Congressional anti-Communists and to avoid alienation from publishers who felt his poetry was

too political (Vrtis, 2017).

Hughes’s radical works attracted heavy attention from the FBI and Congressional anti-

Communists who used his poetry and other writings as means of evidence against him. Hughes’s

association with the Communist Party grew even more complicated when he was enlisted as a

member in 1932, deepening suspicion towards him despite his lack of participation in the group

(Vrtis, 2017). Vrtis argues that it is because of this suspicion along with his growing

unpopularity among his readers that Hughes worked to downplay his radical works and even

disowned some. While there are numerous reasons as to why he may have wanted to move away

from his radical poetry, Hughes nonetheless wanted to divorce himself from communism and

used his poetry to publicly prove this separation. Other famous writers like Oscar Wilde faced

similar trouble with the public and like Hughes, Wilde’s writing was used against him in court.

Literature then is used by the public and represented as evidence, suggesting an underlying truth

and validity in writing.

The poetry of Langston Hughes from the 1930s to the 1940s demonstrates a major shift

in Hughes’s writing – a shift from writing about the black experience to an emergence of “Red

Hughes.” Hughes begins this period by supporting the revolution in his poetry in the hopes that

the success of the revolution would lead to better conditions for African-Americans. Support for
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the revolution then starts to diminish as Hughes’s poetry begins to show opposition towards war

and slowly withdraws from radicalism altogether. Acknowledging this important shift in

Hughes’s writing means acknowledging the importance of literature as a whole. Through his

poems, Hughes influenced the education and culture of an entire community of people.

Regardless of the intention of his writing, Hughes demonstrates a power held by writers to

coerce masses of people and a consciousness to write in a way that benefits the writers’ needs

and desires. Hughes practices this by promoting the revolution in his poetry and then using his

poetry to also prove a separation between himself and communism. In this way, literature is

influenced by society and likewise, society is influenced by literature. This also exemplifies a

validity in literature that allows it to be seen as truth. In this way, studying literature offers a

better understanding of history and the way in which society moves – making the importance of

literature all the more relevant.

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Works Cited

Feinsod, Harris. Fluent Mundo: Inter-American Poetry, 1939–1973. Order

No. 3486028 Stanford University, 2011 Ann ArborProQuest. 6 Dec. 2018 .

Hughes, Langston, and Arnold Rampersad. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. Vintage

Books, 1995.

Neigh, Janet. "The Transnational Frequency of Radio Connectivity in Langston

Hughes's 1940s Poetics." Modernism/modernity, vol. 20 no. 2, 2013, pp. 265-285.

Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/mod.2013.0046

Vrtis, Catherine Ann Peckinpaugh. Black Or Red?: The Creation of Identity in

the Radical Plays of Langston Hughes. Order No. 10277072 Tufts University, 2017 Ann

ArborProQuest. 6 Dec. 2018 .