FREEDOM SOCIALIST - Voice of International Revolutionary Feminism - July-Sept. 2002

 

Langston Lives! 
Centennial celebrates the art of a 
Black, gay radical poet of the people

by Nellie Wong

    Good morning, Revolution:
    You're the very best friend
    I ever had.
    We gonna pal around together from now on.

Langston Hughes - the poet of Black people, the poet of all working people, a shining star of the Harlem Renaissance as a writer of poems, prose, journalism, and drama - penned these words during the Great Depression in 1934, the year I was born.

As another radical writer of color, I rejoice at the race and class consciousness Hughes showed throughout his life, particularly in his works of social protest from the 1930s to the 1950s. With the world celebrating Hughes's 100th birthday, it warms my heart to rediscover the often buried core of his life and work - the revolutionary man behind the image on the postage stamp.
 
 

Blacks creating America. Hughes grew up poor in the Midwest, shunted between his mother and grandmother and working after school, starting at the age of 12, at a variety of low-paying jobs.

But by the time he was 18, he had already decided to make his living with a typewriter. He cared about his people on the streets, and listened attentively to the music and stories of ordinary African Americans.

In remarks he made upon accepting the 45th Spingarn Medal of the NAACP on June 26, 1960, Langston beautifully captured the profound way in which the contributions of African American artists define U.S. culture, and even world culture:

"There is so much richness in Negro humor, so much beauty in black dreams, so much dignity in our struggle, and so much universality in our problems, in us - in each living human being of color - that I do not understand the tendency today that some American Negro artists have of seeking to run away from themselves, of running away from us, of being afraid to sing our own songs, paint our pictures, write about ourselves - when it is our music that has given America its greatest music, our humor that has enriched its entertainment media for the past 100 years, our rhythm that has guided its dancing feet...

Our spirituals are sung and loved in the great concert halls of the whole world.... Those of our writers who have most concerned themselves with our very special problems are translated and read around the world.... So I would say to young Negro writers, do not be afraid of yourselves. You are the world."

A door not opened.No one, however, no matter how talented or visionary, completely escapes the constraints of their times.

Throughout his life, to the time of his death in 1967, Hughes was extremely guarded about his sexuality. But what evidence there is makes it clear that he was gay, and queer writers of today passionately number him among their ranks.

Criticizing Langston's estate for refusing to allow his writings to be part of the gay film Looking for Langston, poet Essex Hemphill said: "The silence surrounding black gay and lesbian lives is being meticulously dismantled.... Every closet is coming down - none are sacred ... those closets are ancestral burial sites that we rightfully claim and exhume."
 
 

Seeing through an international lens.Hughes traveled widely, visiting the Soviet Union, China, Africa, and Cuba, and covering the Spanish Civil War for a Black newspaper. The warm reception he received abroad as a Black American writer opened his eyes more widely to the social causes of the suffering of his people in the U.S.

Langston was impressed with the USSR. He reported on the advances made there by Jews, national minorities, and women. While recognizing that the Soviet Union was "not a paradise on earth," he believed that "America can learn some good things" from Soviet progress in areas including race relations and democratic education.

In 1941 Langston published a poem, "Gangsters," still eerily relevant today, that illustrates his sharp sense of class divisions:

The gangsters of the world
Are riding high.
It's not the underworld
Of which I speak.
They leave that loot to smaller fry.
Why should they great Capone's
Fallen headpiece seek
When stolen crowns
Sit easier on the head-
Or Ethiopia's band of gold
For higher prices
On the market can be sold-
Or Iraq oil-
Than any vice or bootleg crown of old?
The gangsters of the world ride high-
But not small fry.

Langston's positive coverage of the USSR and criticism of oppression and exploitation inevitably drew the attention of Joseph McCarthy, who ordered him in 1953 to appear at hearings in Washington, D.C. Under constant pressure to safeguard his precarious economic livelihood, and already having retreated somewhat from his earlier radicalism, Hughes cooperated with McCarthy's committee - but not to the extent of naming names of Communist Party members.
 
 

"We have tomorrow bright before us."Today, whether their medium is jazz, rhythm and blues, rap, hip hop, or the written or spoken word, younger writers and musicians have Langston to thank for the multicultural art that is possible and still flowering in the U.S.

Langston Hughes is everybody's ancestor. He knew that America was big and rich enough to provide for every human being. Through his powerful body of work, through his times of silences and openness, and whether applauded or spurned, Langston lives.
 
 

Nellie Wong is the author of three volumes of poetry. Her fourth book, Broad Shoulders, is awaiting publication. This article first appeared in the Freedom Socialist newspaper. FSnews@mindspring.com

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