WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.100 Welcome to today's deep dive. I am so excited 00:00:03.100 --> 00:00:04.919 to jump into this one with you. Yeah, this is 00:00:04.919 --> 00:00:07.080 going to be a really great one. So picture this. 00:00:07.480 --> 00:00:13.640 It is March of 1953. And one of America's greatest 00:00:13.640 --> 00:00:16.140 living writers is sitting under the blinding 00:00:16.140 --> 00:00:18.460 lights of a Senate subcommittee. Right. He's 00:00:18.460 --> 00:00:20.719 facing down Senator Joseph McCarthy. Exactly. 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:23.359 Senator Joseph McCarthy. And this is a man who 00:00:23.359 --> 00:00:26.140 had spent his entire life. Writing about you 00:00:26.140 --> 00:00:28.920 know living without fear or shame and yet there 00:00:28.920 --> 00:00:32.460 he is in this incredibly tense room Right and 00:00:32.460 --> 00:00:35.320 to survive this this massive machinery of the 00:00:35.320 --> 00:00:37.979 state bearing down on him He has to make a calculated 00:00:37.979 --> 00:00:40.700 choice one that would essentially erase his own 00:00:40.700 --> 00:00:43.020 radical past. It's a really intense moment It 00:00:43.020 --> 00:00:45.460 is so today we are taking a deep dive into the 00:00:45.460 --> 00:00:48.719 sources specifically a really massive highly 00:00:48.719 --> 00:00:51.799 detailed Wikipedia article on Langston Hughes 00:00:51.799 --> 00:00:53.979 because there's so much more to him than just 00:00:53.979 --> 00:00:56.070 the poetry we re -read in school. Yeah, exactly. 00:00:56.250 --> 00:00:57.890 If you are listening to this and you're looking 00:00:57.890 --> 00:01:00.689 to get well -informed quickly without drowning 00:01:00.689 --> 00:01:03.310 in a sea of disconnected dates, you are in the 00:01:03.310 --> 00:01:06.349 right place. Our mission today is to really extract 00:01:06.349 --> 00:01:08.689 those aha moments. We want to transform Hughes 00:01:08.689 --> 00:01:14.069 from this rigid historical monument into a complex, 00:01:14.310 --> 00:01:16.969 relatable human being. A human being who was 00:01:16.969 --> 00:01:19.269 actively wrestling with some of the most insane 00:01:19.269 --> 00:01:21.709 pressures of the 20th century. Right. Because 00:01:21.709 --> 00:01:24.049 it requires looking past the beautifully polished 00:01:24.049 --> 00:01:27.109 poems. We have to examine the underlying mechanisms 00:01:27.109 --> 00:01:29.750 of his life. The messy stuff. Exactly. The messy 00:01:29.750 --> 00:01:32.810 stuff. We aren't just going to chronicle what 00:01:32.810 --> 00:01:36.129 Hughes wrote. We are going to explore why his 00:01:36.129 --> 00:01:39.010 work became the beating heart. of the Harlem 00:01:39.010 --> 00:01:41.129 Renaissance. And how he navigated this deeply 00:01:41.129 --> 00:01:43.810 divided America. Yeah, the racial, political, 00:01:44.069 --> 00:01:46.409 and economic ecosystems of his time. Okay, let's 00:01:46.409 --> 00:01:48.310 unpack this. We have to start with his childhood. 00:01:48.979 --> 00:01:51.959 Because his family tree is essentially, it's 00:01:51.959 --> 00:01:54.120 like a microcosm of the United States. It really 00:01:54.120 --> 00:01:56.459 is. It's the whole brutal, tangled reality of 00:01:56.459 --> 00:01:59.719 it. He is born into this massive, heavy historical 00:01:59.719 --> 00:02:02.340 legacy. And the complexity of his ancestry, I 00:02:02.340 --> 00:02:04.079 mean, it really cannot be overstated. Like a 00:02:04.079 --> 00:02:06.519 lot of African Americans, Hughes was of mixed 00:02:06.519 --> 00:02:09.300 heritage. But the specific details and the historical 00:02:09.300 --> 00:02:12.280 sources are just striking. On his father's side? 00:02:12.669 --> 00:02:15.069 Both of his great -grandmothers were enslaved 00:02:15.069 --> 00:02:17.889 Africans. Wow. And both of his great -grandfathers 00:02:17.889 --> 00:02:20.469 were white slave owners in Kentucky. Which is 00:02:20.469 --> 00:02:23.509 just a heavy reality to carry. Absolutely. And 00:02:23.509 --> 00:02:25.770 Hughes even specifically noted that one was a 00:02:25.770 --> 00:02:28.250 Scottish -American whiskey distiller named Sam 00:02:28.250 --> 00:02:30.590 Clay. OK. And the other was Silas Cushionberry, 00:02:31.270 --> 00:02:33.870 who Hughes claimed was a Jewish man. Right. So 00:02:33.870 --> 00:02:35.789 that's the paternal side. Then you look at his 00:02:35.789 --> 00:02:38.069 maternal side, which weaves together African 00:02:38.069 --> 00:02:41.050 -American, French, English, and Native American 00:02:41.050 --> 00:02:45.300 descent. But the figures who truly anchor his 00:02:45.300 --> 00:02:47.840 early reality, the ones who really shape him, 00:02:48.159 --> 00:02:50.379 are his grandmothers. Oh, absolutely. The grandmothers 00:02:50.379 --> 00:02:53.039 are crucial. I mean, his grandmother, Mary Patterson 00:02:53.039 --> 00:02:56.979 Leary, her first husband, literally died in 1859 00:02:56.979 --> 00:02:59.979 fighting alongside John Brown in the raid on 00:02:59.979 --> 00:03:02.520 Harper's Ferry. Which is wild to think. Yeah. 00:03:02.639 --> 00:03:04.599 Like, that isn't just history. That is American 00:03:04.599 --> 00:03:06.879 mythology sitting right there at your family 00:03:06.879 --> 00:03:09.819 dinner table. And that historical weight was 00:03:09.819 --> 00:03:13.000 passed directly down to him. She later married 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:15.580 into the politically elite Langston family, becoming 00:03:15.580 --> 00:03:17.919 Mary Patterson Langston. Right. And because Hughes' 00:03:18.139 --> 00:03:20.939 parents had separated, and his mother was often 00:03:20.939 --> 00:03:23.699 traveling around just trying to find work, he 00:03:23.699 --> 00:03:26.259 was raised primarily by this grandmother in Lawrence, 00:03:26.259 --> 00:03:28.759 Kansas. Which, from the sources, sounds like 00:03:28.759 --> 00:03:31.219 it was a really lonely childhood. It was incredibly 00:03:31.219 --> 00:03:34.159 lonely. Yeah. But she filled that isolation with 00:03:34.159 --> 00:03:38.520 these epic oral histories of black resistance. 00:03:38.800 --> 00:03:41.300 dignity and perseverance. So she's instilling 00:03:41.300 --> 00:03:44.599 this profound sense of racial pride in him from 00:03:44.599 --> 00:03:47.620 like the moment he could understand words. Exactly. 00:03:47.719 --> 00:03:49.979 She was building his foundation. Which sets up 00:03:49.979 --> 00:03:53.180 this profound, almost absurd irony later on. 00:03:53.240 --> 00:03:55.360 Oh, with the grammar school story. Yes. So he 00:03:55.360 --> 00:03:58.039 is steeped in this towering heritage of abolitionists 00:03:58.039 --> 00:04:00.259 and martyrs. But when his writing journey actually 00:04:00.259 --> 00:04:02.099 begins in grammar school in Lincoln, Illinois, 00:04:02.240 --> 00:04:04.599 he's elected class poet. Right. But not because 00:04:04.599 --> 00:04:07.139 his teachers recognize a burgeoning literary 00:04:07.139 --> 00:04:10.340 genius. No, not at all. It was just lazy, systemic 00:04:10.340 --> 00:04:14.039 prejudice. Exactly. The sources show Hughes later 00:04:14.039 --> 00:04:16.600 wrote about this exact moment with a really sharp 00:04:16.600 --> 00:04:19.040 sense of irony. Yeah, he and the only other black 00:04:19.040 --> 00:04:21.560 kid in the class were just victims of a cultural 00:04:21.560 --> 00:04:24.420 stereotype. The English teacher had been stressing 00:04:24.420 --> 00:04:27.360 the importance of rhythm in poetry. Oh, man. 00:04:27.560 --> 00:04:30.000 I know where this is going. Yeah, the class operating 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:32.420 on this completely racist assumption that, quote, 00:04:32.720 --> 00:04:35.680 All Negroes Have Rhythm simply handed the title 00:04:35.680 --> 00:04:38.540 of class poet to Hughes. Which is just how does 00:04:38.540 --> 00:04:41.259 a kid even process that kind of whiplash? He's 00:04:41.259 --> 00:04:44.139 jarring. Right. You inherit this profound heavy 00:04:44.139 --> 00:04:46.500 family heirloom of resistance from your grandmother 00:04:46.500 --> 00:04:49.319 and then your classroom slaps this cheap novelty 00:04:49.319 --> 00:04:51.639 sticker right on the front of it. That tension 00:04:51.639 --> 00:04:54.180 though, that is the crucible for him. It forced 00:04:54.180 --> 00:04:57.019 a really critical realization very early in his 00:04:57.019 --> 00:04:59.899 life. How so? Well, he saw the mechanics of stereotyping 00:04:59.899 --> 00:05:02.660 firsthand, and he understood that if he didn't 00:05:02.660 --> 00:05:05.339 actively define his own narrative and his own 00:05:05.339 --> 00:05:08.120 rhythm, the dominant white society was going 00:05:08.120 --> 00:05:10.839 to inaccurately and lazily define it for him. 00:05:11.139 --> 00:05:13.100 So taking control of the pen was an act of taking 00:05:13.100 --> 00:05:17.300 control of his identity. that desire to control 00:05:17.300 --> 00:05:19.879 his own narrative, it wasn't just a rebellion 00:05:19.879 --> 00:05:21.959 against white society, it was actually a rebellion 00:05:21.959 --> 00:05:24.180 against his own family too. Yeah, specifically 00:05:24.180 --> 00:05:26.439 his father. Right, James Hughes, because James 00:05:26.439 --> 00:05:28.939 fled the racism of the United States to live 00:05:28.939 --> 00:05:31.879 in Mexico, which sounds like this great act of 00:05:31.879 --> 00:05:34.680 defiance. On the surface, sure. But the tragedy, 00:05:35.100 --> 00:05:37.680 according to Hughes, is that his father didn't 00:05:37.680 --> 00:05:40.779 just hate American racism, he internalized it. 00:05:40.889 --> 00:05:43.410 and he ended up despising his own race. Yeah, 00:05:43.550 --> 00:05:45.850 his father adopted this incredibly pragmatic, 00:05:46.310 --> 00:05:49.129 almost cynical worldview. He wanted Hughes to 00:05:49.129 --> 00:05:52.509 become an engineer abroad. To assimilate. Exactly, 00:05:52.670 --> 00:05:55.089 to assimilate into a profession that would offer 00:05:55.089 --> 00:05:57.500 economic safety. And he was entirely willing 00:05:57.500 --> 00:05:59.560 to pay for his son's education to do that. But 00:05:59.560 --> 00:06:02.220 he absolutely refused to financially support 00:06:02.220 --> 00:06:04.420 Hughes' desire to be a writer. Right. To his 00:06:04.420 --> 00:06:06.759 father, writing was frivolous. And more than 00:06:06.759 --> 00:06:09.000 that, it was dangerous for a black man. So they 00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:12.120 strike this uneasy compromise. Hughes agrees 00:06:12.120 --> 00:06:14.759 to study engineering, but only if he can do it 00:06:14.759 --> 00:06:17.060 at Columbia University in New York. Which puts 00:06:17.060 --> 00:06:19.459 him right where he wants to be. Right. He arrives 00:06:19.459 --> 00:06:22.839 in 1921, and the records show he's doing well 00:06:22.839 --> 00:06:25.910 academically. He maintains a B plus grade average. 00:06:26.230 --> 00:06:28.250 But the environment at Columbia is highly toxic. 00:06:28.389 --> 00:06:30.750 Oh, incredibly toxic. He's explicitly denied 00:06:30.750 --> 00:06:33.050 a room in the dormitories because he's black. 00:06:33.689 --> 00:06:37.230 He faces intense waspy hostility from classmates 00:06:37.230 --> 00:06:40.610 and instructors alike. So in 1922, he just drops 00:06:40.610 --> 00:06:43.420 out. Yeah. He drops out to take working class 00:06:43.420 --> 00:06:47.560 jobs. He works as a bus boy. He serves as a crewman 00:06:47.560 --> 00:06:50.879 on a ship, the SS Malone, traveling to West Africa 00:06:50.879 --> 00:06:53.420 and Europe. It's a huge shift. It is. And to 00:06:53.420 --> 00:06:55.459 be honest, dropping out of an Ivy League school 00:06:55.459 --> 00:06:57.839 when you are pulling a B -plus average doesn't 00:06:57.839 --> 00:07:01.120 sound like strategic pivot. It sounds like reckless 00:07:01.120 --> 00:07:03.019 self -sabotage. I can see why you'd think that. 00:07:03.120 --> 00:07:04.560 Like was he just running away when things got 00:07:04.560 --> 00:07:06.860 uncomfortable? What's fascinating here is the 00:07:06.860 --> 00:07:09.579 underlying mechanism of that choice. Dropping 00:07:09.579 --> 00:07:12.180 out wasn't a retreat at all. It was a deliberate 00:07:12.180 --> 00:07:14.899 rejection of what we call respectability politics. 00:07:15.399 --> 00:07:18.259 Explain that for us. So in the 1920s, a large 00:07:18.259 --> 00:07:20.740 portion of the black middle class, the talented 00:07:20.740 --> 00:07:23.439 tenth, as they were called, believed that the 00:07:23.439 --> 00:07:26.519 way to achieve equality was to prove to white 00:07:26.519 --> 00:07:30.399 America how refined, educated, and well -mannered 00:07:30.399 --> 00:07:32.939 black people could be. Ah, I see. They wanted 00:07:32.939 --> 00:07:36.439 art that mimicked European classical styles to 00:07:36.439 --> 00:07:39.180 demonstrate their intellectual worth. So Columbia 00:07:39.180 --> 00:07:41.339 University was essentially the training ground 00:07:41.339 --> 00:07:44.139 for that kind of assimilation. And he realized 00:07:44.139 --> 00:07:46.160 he was being molded into something he despised. 00:07:46.540 --> 00:07:48.540 Exactly. Yeah. Hughes wanted no part of that 00:07:48.540 --> 00:07:50.480 structural assimilation. He was drawn to Harlem 00:07:50.480 --> 00:07:53.420 because he wanted to depict what the black elite 00:07:53.420 --> 00:07:56.399 basically dismissed as the low life. The everyday 00:07:56.399 --> 00:07:58.459 people. Right. He wanted to write about the working 00:07:58.459 --> 00:08:00.740 class struggles, the busboys, the jazz musicians, 00:08:00.800 --> 00:08:03.040 the sex workers, the people living in a lower 00:08:03.040 --> 00:08:05.860 socioeconomic strata. Because he recognized their 00:08:05.860 --> 00:08:08.379 inherent value. Yes, he recognized that their 00:08:08.379 --> 00:08:11.639 lives possessed a distinct vibrant culture that 00:08:11.639 --> 00:08:13.959 was inherently believable without needing to 00:08:13.959 --> 00:08:16.639 be polished for a white audience. And that brings 00:08:16.639 --> 00:08:20.420 us to his landmark 1926 manifesto published in 00:08:20.420 --> 00:08:23.240 The Nation, which was titled The Negro Artist 00:08:23.240 --> 00:08:25.519 and the Racial Mountain. Such an important piece 00:08:25.519 --> 00:08:27.980 of writing. It really is. When you understand 00:08:27.980 --> 00:08:30.699 the pressure from his father and the respectability 00:08:30.699 --> 00:08:33.879 politics of the era, you realize why this essay 00:08:33.879 --> 00:08:37.500 is so explosive. Oh, it's a bombshell. He declares 00:08:37.500 --> 00:08:39.799 that younger Negro artists intend to express 00:08:39.799 --> 00:08:42.240 their individual dark skinned selves without 00:08:42.240 --> 00:08:46.990 fear or shame. If white people are If they aren't, 00:08:46.990 --> 00:08:49.009 it doesn't matter. And he added this crucial 00:08:49.009 --> 00:08:52.750 part. If black people are pleased, great. And 00:08:52.750 --> 00:08:55.029 if they aren't, it doesn't matter either. Wow. 00:08:55.429 --> 00:08:58.049 Total artistic independence. Yes. He was dismantling 00:08:58.049 --> 00:09:00.309 the racial mountain, which he defined as the 00:09:00.309 --> 00:09:02.990 urge within the black community to be as little 00:09:02.990 --> 00:09:05.710 Negro and as much American as possible. But even 00:09:05.710 --> 00:09:07.809 a visionary planting his flag in New York had 00:09:07.809 --> 00:09:10.269 massive blind spots. He certainly did. Because 00:09:10.269 --> 00:09:12.350 while Hughes was championing the northern urban 00:09:12.350 --> 00:09:15.129 working class, he held some deeply prejudiced 00:09:15.129 --> 00:09:17.230 views about the American South. Yeah, the sources 00:09:17.230 --> 00:09:20.690 are clear on this. In 1922, he published a poem 00:09:20.690 --> 00:09:23.750 in the crisis literally titled The South, where 00:09:23.750 --> 00:09:26.669 he leaned entirely into the stereotypes at the 00:09:26.669 --> 00:09:29.090 time. He basically painted southern black folks 00:09:29.090 --> 00:09:32.490 as essentially passive lazy and ignorant. He 00:09:32.490 --> 00:09:35.629 had completely absorbed the northern urban biases. 00:09:36.049 --> 00:09:38.110 He was writing about a region and a people he 00:09:38.110 --> 00:09:40.169 had never actually tried to understand on their 00:09:40.169 --> 00:09:43.309 own terms. Right. But then we hit 1927 and everything 00:09:43.309 --> 00:09:46.149 flips. The road trip. The road trip. He takes 00:09:46.149 --> 00:09:48.370 a trip to the south that completely demolishes 00:09:48.370 --> 00:09:51.389 his worldview. It was funded by a wealthy patron, 00:09:51.850 --> 00:09:55.289 Charlotte Osgood Mason, to document local folk. 00:09:55.399 --> 00:09:57.779 culture. And the way this trip begins is almost 00:09:57.779 --> 00:10:01.720 cinematic. It really is. In July 1927 at a passenger 00:10:01.720 --> 00:10:04.220 terminal in Mobile, Alabama, he just happens 00:10:04.220 --> 00:10:06.799 to cross paths with Zora Neale Hurston. What 00:10:06.799 --> 00:10:09.559 a meeting. And since Hurston owned a car, they 00:10:09.559 --> 00:10:11.899 just decided to travel together. Like the ultimate 00:10:11.899 --> 00:10:15.600 literary road trip. Exactly. The sources detail 00:10:15.600 --> 00:10:17.879 a journey that fundamentally altered his artistic 00:10:17.879 --> 00:10:19.659 trajectory, because they aren't just passing 00:10:19.659 --> 00:10:21.480 through, they're really embedding themselves 00:10:21.480 --> 00:10:23.639 in the culture. They met the legendary blues 00:10:23.639 --> 00:10:25.840 singer Bessie Smith in Macon, Georgia, right? 00:10:26.200 --> 00:10:30.820 Yes. And from her, he absorbed the raw, unfiltered 00:10:30.820 --> 00:10:33.240 emotional reality of the blues, which he would 00:10:33.240 --> 00:10:35.639 later weave directly into his poetic meter. And 00:10:35.639 --> 00:10:38.059 they visited the Tuskegee Institute, too. Right, 00:10:38.080 --> 00:10:40.120 where they met the writer, Jesse Fawcett, and 00:10:40.120 --> 00:10:42.860 actually posed for a photo at Booker T. Washington's 00:10:42.860 --> 00:10:45.259 grave. But the encounter that really stands out 00:10:45.259 --> 00:10:47.960 to me is when they crossed paths with a man named 00:10:47.960 --> 00:10:50.960 Ed Pinkney. Oh, the escaped prisoner. Yeah, Ed 00:10:50.960 --> 00:10:54.019 Pinkney was an escaped chain gang prisoner. Hughes 00:10:54.019 --> 00:10:56.080 later recounted this meeting in a piece called 00:10:56.080 --> 00:10:59.259 Forward From Life. Why does meeting a fugitive 00:10:59.259 --> 00:11:01.620 matter so much to the evolution of his poetry? 00:11:01.940 --> 00:11:05.940 Because Pinkney represented the brutal, visceral 00:11:05.940 --> 00:11:08.440 reality of the Southern carceral state. He wasn't 00:11:08.440 --> 00:11:11.200 abstract anymore. Exactly. Hughes was no longer 00:11:11.200 --> 00:11:13.600 observing the South as an abstract concept from 00:11:13.600 --> 00:11:16.019 a safe Harlem apartment. He was looking the terror 00:11:16.019 --> 00:11:18.840 of Jim Crow directly in the eye, and he was listening 00:11:18.840 --> 00:11:21.080 to the stories of a man who had physically survived 00:11:21.080 --> 00:11:24.149 it. That is powerful. This trip matured Hughes. 00:11:24.379 --> 00:11:27.500 He witnessed the horrific systemic racism, yes, 00:11:27.659 --> 00:11:30.820 but more importantly he witnessed the rich, enduring 00:11:30.820 --> 00:11:33.580 folklore and the profound dignity of the people 00:11:33.580 --> 00:11:35.940 who were living through it. It cured him of his 00:11:35.940 --> 00:11:38.659 northern elitism. It really did. The cadence 00:11:38.659 --> 00:11:41.080 of survival he heard from people like Bessie 00:11:41.080 --> 00:11:43.759 Smith and Ed Pinkney became the fuel for his 00:11:43.759 --> 00:11:46.720 later masterpieces. Works like his first novel, 00:11:46.879 --> 00:11:49.600 Not Without Laughter, and his brilliant poetic 00:11:49.600 --> 00:11:52.659 work, Montage of a Dream Deferred. He found the 00:11:52.659 --> 00:11:54.519 authentic voice he didn't even realize he had 00:11:54.519 --> 00:11:56.769 been missing. Okay, here is where we run into 00:11:56.769 --> 00:11:59.769 a fascinating but also really painful contradiction 00:11:59.769 --> 00:12:02.669 sitting right at the center of his life. The 00:12:02.669 --> 00:12:05.169 man who famously wrote a manifesto declaring 00:12:05.169 --> 00:12:07.529 he would live his life without fear or shame 00:12:07.529 --> 00:12:10.190 likely had to hide a massive part of his own 00:12:10.190 --> 00:12:12.690 identity. Yes, this is a major subject of analysis. 00:12:13.090 --> 00:12:15.950 The sources reveal a deep ongoing historical 00:12:15.950 --> 00:12:18.629 debate regarding his sexuality. It's heavily 00:12:18.629 --> 00:12:22.049 discussed among biographers. Many academics argue 00:12:22.049 --> 00:12:25.080 that Hughes was homosexual and that he utilized 00:12:25.080 --> 00:12:28.259 specific queer codes within his poems, drawing 00:12:28.259 --> 00:12:30.879 a lot of heavy influence from Walt Whitman. Right. 00:12:31.059 --> 00:12:33.639 The sources point to specific works to support 00:12:33.639 --> 00:12:36.940 this. There's his short story, Blessed Assurance, 00:12:37.399 --> 00:12:40.379 which deals intimately with a father's intense 00:12:40.379 --> 00:12:44.639 anger over his son's effeminacy and, quote, queerness. 00:12:45.120 --> 00:12:49.210 And there is also his poem, Café, 3 a .m. Yeah. 00:12:49.769 --> 00:12:52.470 Which scholars read as a sharp, deliberate criticism 00:12:52.470 --> 00:12:54.929 of anti -queer sentiment and police harassment 00:12:54.929 --> 00:12:57.769 in underground clubs. Scholars like Sandra L. 00:12:57.789 --> 00:13:00.289 West also point to reports of unpublished poems 00:13:00.289 --> 00:13:02.750 addressed to a black male lover. But not everyone 00:13:02.750 --> 00:13:05.669 agrees. Right. Right. Conversely, his primary 00:13:05.669 --> 00:13:08.169 biographer, Arnold Rampersad, takes a slightly 00:13:08.169 --> 00:13:10.929 different view. Rampershead concludes that Hughes 00:13:10.929 --> 00:13:13.909 might have been largely asexual or perhaps passive 00:13:13.909 --> 00:13:16.809 in his personal relationships. Okay. Though he 00:13:16.809 --> 00:13:19.389 meticulously notes that Hughes exhibited a clear 00:13:19.389 --> 00:13:21.529 preference for African -American men in his work 00:13:21.529 --> 00:13:23.730 and his life, finding them sexually fascinating. 00:13:23.879 --> 00:13:25.799 Here's where it gets really interesting to me. 00:13:25.879 --> 00:13:28.960 If Hughes was the fearless pioneer of radical 00:13:28.960 --> 00:13:31.580 self -expression, the guy who rejected the Ivy 00:13:31.580 --> 00:13:34.039 League and bourgeois respectability, why stay 00:13:34.039 --> 00:13:35.980 closeted? That's a great question. Was he just 00:13:35.980 --> 00:13:38.039 a product of an oppressive era, or was there 00:13:38.039 --> 00:13:40.320 a larger mechanism at play here? We can really 00:13:40.320 --> 00:13:42.399 only understand this through the structure of 00:13:42.399 --> 00:13:46.039 his survival. Think of Hughes' career as a massive 00:13:46.039 --> 00:13:48.580 skyscraper. Okay, I'm with you. To keep that 00:13:48.580 --> 00:13:51.279 structure standing, he needed two primary pillars. 00:13:52.059 --> 00:13:55.559 The first was financial. Before the era of widespread 00:13:55.559 --> 00:13:58.179 institutional arts grants, he relied entirely 00:13:58.179 --> 00:14:00.320 on the back end of wealthy patrons. Right, like 00:14:00.320 --> 00:14:03.940 Charlotte Osgood Mason. Exactly. The second pillar 00:14:03.940 --> 00:14:06.799 was social and moral. He relied heavily on the 00:14:06.799 --> 00:14:08.980 platform and support of black churches and civil 00:14:08.980 --> 00:14:11.419 rights organizations to distribute his work to 00:14:11.419 --> 00:14:15.000 the masses. Ah. So if he openly revealed his 00:14:15.000 --> 00:14:18.000 sexuality in the 1920s or 30s, society would 00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:19.759 have violently pulled those pillars out from 00:14:19.759 --> 00:14:22.789 under him? Precisely. Biographer Robert Aldrich 00:14:22.789 --> 00:14:25.549 argues that remaining closeted was a strict calculated 00:14:25.549 --> 00:14:28.710 necessity. If that skyscraper collapsed, his 00:14:28.710 --> 00:14:30.950 broader message of racial pride and civil rights 00:14:30.950 --> 00:14:33.669 would be completely silenced. Wow. He essentially 00:14:33.669 --> 00:14:36.169 compartmentalized his personal truth to ensure 00:14:36.169 --> 00:14:38.370 his cultural truth could survive and actually 00:14:38.370 --> 00:14:40.929 reach the people who needed it most. He sacrificed 00:14:40.929 --> 00:14:43.509 his private authenticity for public impact. He 00:14:43.509 --> 00:14:46.269 did. That is just a heavy isolating burden to 00:14:46.269 --> 00:14:50.000 carry. And speaking of public impact, while his 00:14:50.000 --> 00:14:52.419 personal life was kept hidden, his political 00:14:52.419 --> 00:14:56.259 life in the 1930s was incredibly overt. Very 00:14:56.259 --> 00:14:58.759 overt. And it placed him right in the crosshairs 00:14:58.759 --> 00:15:01.419 of the federal government. Now, to really understand 00:15:01.419 --> 00:15:03.879 Hughes here, we have to look objectively at the 00:15:03.879 --> 00:15:06.860 history of the 1930s. Yeah, and just to pause 00:15:06.860 --> 00:15:09.600 for a second and be super clear to you listening... 00:15:09.610 --> 00:15:12.690 As analysts, we aren't here to judge or endorse 00:15:12.690 --> 00:15:15.029 the politics of the era. Right. Absolutely not. 00:15:15.129 --> 00:15:16.830 Whether it's the communist groups he aligned 00:15:16.830 --> 00:15:19.070 with or the right -wing McCarthy committees that 00:15:19.070 --> 00:15:22.149 hunted him down later, we take no sides. We just 00:15:22.149 --> 00:15:24.590 want to impartially report on the sources and 00:15:24.590 --> 00:15:27.269 look at how these massive ideological collisions 00:15:27.269 --> 00:15:30.629 forced Hughes to adapt his art. Exactly. So during 00:15:30.629 --> 00:15:32.570 the Great Depression, many intellectuals felt 00:15:32.570 --> 00:15:35.230 capitalism had utterly failed and they looked 00:15:35.230 --> 00:15:37.509 toward left -wing alternatives. And Hughes didn't 00:15:37.509 --> 00:15:40.009 just casually observe this shit. he jumped into 00:15:40.009 --> 00:15:42.509 the deep end. He really did. His poem, A New 00:15:42.509 --> 00:15:45.429 Song, dealt heavily with themes of class struggle 00:15:45.429 --> 00:15:48.629 and solidarity. He actively supported initiatives 00:15:48.629 --> 00:15:51.269 organized by communist groups, such as the drive 00:15:51.269 --> 00:15:53.830 to free the Scottsboro Boys. Those were nine 00:15:53.830 --> 00:15:56.470 black teenagers falsely accused of a horrific 00:15:56.470 --> 00:15:59.309 crime in Alabama. And his global travels also 00:15:59.309 --> 00:16:03.179 reflected this ideological exploration. In 1932, 00:16:03.460 --> 00:16:05.799 he traveled to the Soviet Union as part of a 00:16:05.799 --> 00:16:08.259 group invited to make a film depicting the conditions 00:16:08.259 --> 00:16:10.620 of Black lives in the United States. But the 00:16:10.620 --> 00:16:12.980 film fell through, right? The film project collapsed, 00:16:13.019 --> 00:16:15.879 yeah. But Hughes utilized the opportunity to 00:16:15.879 --> 00:16:17.840 travel extensively through Soviet -controlled 00:16:17.840 --> 00:16:19.960 regions. Making the most of it. Right. He went 00:16:19.960 --> 00:16:22.559 to Turkmenistan, where he actually met the Hungarian 00:16:22.559 --> 00:16:25.519 author Arthur Kussler. He continued on to China. 00:16:25.769 --> 00:16:29.669 Japan and Korea. Wow. And by 1937, he was broadcasting 00:16:29.669 --> 00:16:32.149 live from Madrid as a correspondent covering 00:16:32.149 --> 00:16:34.850 the Spanish Civil War for African -American newspapers. 00:16:35.210 --> 00:16:38.289 So he is functioning as this global witness to 00:16:38.289 --> 00:16:40.669 the class and racial struggles of the 20th century. 00:16:41.070 --> 00:16:43.190 Yes. During World War II, he supported the Double 00:16:43.190 --> 00:16:46.070 V campaign demanding victory over fascism abroad 00:16:46.070 --> 00:16:48.889 and victory over Jim Crow at home. But then the 00:16:48.889 --> 00:16:51.669 geopolitical weather changes entirely. Drastically. 00:16:51.789 --> 00:16:55.129 We enter the 1950s. The Cold War freezes over. 00:16:55.549 --> 00:16:57.809 And the political climate in America becomes 00:16:57.809 --> 00:17:00.950 deeply paranoid. He is accused by the political 00:17:00.950 --> 00:17:03.450 right of being a communist. And this brings us 00:17:03.450 --> 00:17:06.789 right back to that tense room in 1953 where he 00:17:06.789 --> 00:17:09.710 is dragged before Senator Joseph McCarthy's permanent 00:17:09.710 --> 00:17:12.690 subcommittee on investigations. Right. And the 00:17:12.690 --> 00:17:15.329 transcript of that hearing is a master class 00:17:15.329 --> 00:17:18.349 in high stakes navigation. How so? Well, when 00:17:18.349 --> 00:17:20.589 asked why he never formally joined the Communist 00:17:20.589 --> 00:17:23.150 Party, Hughes carefully threaded the needle. 00:17:23.670 --> 00:17:26.720 He explained that he was a writer. and the party's 00:17:26.720 --> 00:17:29.359 strict discipline and rigid directives were mechanisms 00:17:29.359 --> 00:17:31.700 he simply could not accept. He's downplaying 00:17:31.700 --> 00:17:33.640 the radicalism. Yeah, he framed his interest 00:17:33.640 --> 00:17:36.440 in politics as non -theoretical and emotional, 00:17:37.019 --> 00:17:39.299 born purely out of his own need to navigate the 00:17:39.299 --> 00:17:42.160 systemic poverty and racism of his life. He basically 00:17:42.160 --> 00:17:44.119 told them, like, I wasn't trying to overthrow 00:17:44.119 --> 00:17:45.960 the government, I was just trying to survive 00:17:45.960 --> 00:17:48.519 the reality of being black in America. Following 00:17:48.519 --> 00:17:51.579 that testimony, he significantly distanced himself 00:17:51.579 --> 00:17:54.069 from his radical past. When he published his 00:17:54.069 --> 00:17:57.690 selected poems in 1959, he completely excluded 00:17:57.690 --> 00:18:00.369 all of his socialist verse from the 1930s. Which 00:18:00.369 --> 00:18:02.670 was a controversial move. Yeah, some people in 00:18:02.670 --> 00:18:05.130 the radical left who had supported him for decades 00:18:05.130 --> 00:18:08.049 publicly rebuked him for this. So my question 00:18:08.049 --> 00:18:11.230 is, did Hughes simply sell out his radical ideals 00:18:11.230 --> 00:18:14.130 to save his own skin, or is that a misreading 00:18:14.130 --> 00:18:16.690 of the situation? It is a harsh misreading if 00:18:16.690 --> 00:18:18.769 you don't look at the mechanics of what was actually 00:18:18.769 --> 00:18:20.630 happening behind closed doors. Okay, tell me 00:18:20.630 --> 00:18:23.279 more. Those critics on the left were largely 00:18:23.279 --> 00:18:28.279 unaware that Hughes faced a grueling secret interrogation 00:18:28.279 --> 00:18:31.740 days before the televised hearing. A secret interrogation? 00:18:31.779 --> 00:18:33.980 Yeah. This wasn't a philosophical debate in a 00:18:33.980 --> 00:18:36.480 coffee shop. This was the threat of federal imprisonment 00:18:36.480 --> 00:18:38.119 and the total destruction of his livelihood. 00:18:38.440 --> 00:18:41.160 So the distancing wasn't a betrayal. It was the 00:18:41.160 --> 00:18:43.920 skyscraper analogy all over again. Exactly. A 00:18:43.920 --> 00:18:46.200 pragmatic pivot to keep the structure standing. 00:18:46.519 --> 00:18:48.940 If we connect this to the bigger picture, By 00:18:48.940 --> 00:18:51.299 navigating that hearing without being completely 00:18:51.299 --> 00:18:55.079 destroyed, he survived to continue his broader 00:18:55.079 --> 00:18:57.940 civil rights work. He played the long game. He 00:18:57.940 --> 00:19:00.240 preserved his ability to be a prominent voice 00:19:00.240 --> 00:19:03.619 for Black America, rather than becoming a silenced, 00:19:03.859 --> 00:19:06.680 unemployable martyr to a specific political faction. 00:19:06.880 --> 00:19:09.680 He lived to fight another day. Right. But having 00:19:09.680 --> 00:19:12.490 survived the Red Scare, Hughes faced a completely 00:19:12.490 --> 00:19:14.670 different kind of challenge as he moved into 00:19:14.670 --> 00:19:17.869 his later years. The cultural tide began to turn 00:19:17.869 --> 00:19:20.930 again. The 1960s. Yeah, as we enter the late 00:19:20.930 --> 00:19:24.190 1950s and the 1960s, the civil rights movement 00:19:24.190 --> 00:19:26.650 accelerates, giving way to the black arts movement 00:19:26.650 --> 00:19:29.910 and black power. And suddenly, Hughes finds himself 00:19:29.910 --> 00:19:32.109 clashing with the younger generation of writers. 00:19:32.329 --> 00:19:34.829 It's the inevitable dynamic of cultural evolution. 00:19:35.099 --> 00:19:37.200 Hughes felt that some of the younger Black writers 00:19:37.200 --> 00:19:39.519 associated with the Black Power movement, like 00:19:39.519 --> 00:19:42.400 Amiri Baraka, were too intensely angry in their 00:19:42.400 --> 00:19:44.460 work. He thought they were taking it too far. 00:19:44.839 --> 00:19:46.680 Hughes wanted them to be objective about their 00:19:46.680 --> 00:19:49.450 race and to take genuine pride in it. But he 00:19:49.450 --> 00:19:52.089 felt their aesthetics were becoming overly militant 00:19:52.089 --> 00:19:54.690 or displaying a racial chauvinism toward whites 00:19:54.690 --> 00:19:57.470 that contradicted his own integrationist -leaning 00:19:57.470 --> 00:19:59.569 philosophies. And the younger generation pushed 00:19:59.569 --> 00:20:01.849 right back. Oh, absolutely. They viewed Hughes' 00:20:02.230 --> 00:20:05.490 style, his specific brand of 1920s working -class 00:20:05.490 --> 00:20:08.710 folk culture, and his survivalist compromises 00:20:08.710 --> 00:20:12.339 as outdated. To them, the guy who had once written 00:20:12.339 --> 00:20:14.960 the ultimate manifesto of artistic rebellion 00:20:14.960 --> 00:20:17.619 was now the conservative establishment. Which 00:20:17.619 --> 00:20:20.559 is quite the turnaround. Yet despite this severe 00:20:20.559 --> 00:20:23.559 aesthetic friction, Hughes never stopped utilizing 00:20:23.559 --> 00:20:26.220 his resources to support the community. He still 00:20:26.220 --> 00:20:29.440 helped them out. Always. He fiercely mentored 00:20:29.440 --> 00:20:31.740 young radical talents even when they disagreed 00:20:31.740 --> 00:20:34.259 with him. He famously discovered Alice Walker 00:20:34.259 --> 00:20:36.599 and helped guide her early career. That's amazing. 00:20:36.809 --> 00:20:38.789 The playwright Laufen Mitchell made a highly 00:20:38.789 --> 00:20:41.069 illuminating observation about Hughes's mindset 00:20:41.069 --> 00:20:43.789 during this era. He said, you never got from 00:20:43.789 --> 00:20:46.950 him. I am the Negro writer, but only I am a Negro 00:20:46.950 --> 00:20:49.490 writer. He never stopped thinking about the rest 00:20:49.490 --> 00:20:53.210 of us. So what does this all mean? Did the movement 00:20:53.210 --> 00:20:56.150 simply outgrow him, leaving him behind as a relic 00:20:56.150 --> 00:20:58.390 of the Harlem Renaissance? I would synthesize 00:20:58.390 --> 00:21:00.809 it by looking at the architecture of the movement 00:21:00.809 --> 00:21:04.339 itself. Hughes laid the foundational floorboards 00:21:04.339 --> 00:21:06.400 that the next generation stomped their feet on. 00:21:06.680 --> 00:21:09.259 I love that image. The writers of the 1960s might 00:21:09.259 --> 00:21:11.700 have been angrier and they might have explicitly 00:21:11.700 --> 00:21:14.720 rejected his specific poetic meter, but their 00:21:14.720 --> 00:21:17.759 ability to demand power and express their unvarnished 00:21:17.759 --> 00:21:20.240 truth was only structurally possible because 00:21:20.240 --> 00:21:22.099 they were standing on the cultural nationalism 00:21:22.099 --> 00:21:25.039 that Hughes had spent 40 years building and defending. 00:21:25.210 --> 00:21:28.009 He absorbed the blows of the 20s, 30s and 50s 00:21:28.009 --> 00:21:30.289 so they could swing freely in the 60s. Exactly. 00:21:30.430 --> 00:21:32.430 That is a powerful way to look at his legacy. 00:21:32.789 --> 00:21:35.849 He passed away in May 1967 at the age of 66. 00:21:36.210 --> 00:21:38.470 And his legacy is quite literally etched into 00:21:38.470 --> 00:21:40.769 the physical foundation of Harlem. He is. His 00:21:40.769 --> 00:21:42.829 ashes are interred beneath the floor medallion 00:21:42.829 --> 00:21:44.529 at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black 00:21:44.529 --> 00:21:47.609 Culture. The design is an African cosmogram titled 00:21:47.609 --> 00:21:50.349 Rivers and inscribed right in the center is the 00:21:50.349 --> 00:21:53.410 immortal line from his 1920 poem. My soul has 00:21:53.410 --> 00:21:56.089 grown deep like the river. It is a perfectly 00:21:56.089 --> 00:21:58.970 fitting resting place for a man whose influence 00:21:58.970 --> 00:22:01.650 flowed relentlessly across the entire globe, 00:22:02.450 --> 00:22:04.390 shaping the currents of modern literature. It 00:22:04.390 --> 00:22:07.089 really is. So let's recap the journey we've taken 00:22:07.089 --> 00:22:08.869 through the sources today. We've covered a lot 00:22:08.869 --> 00:22:11.490 of ground. We started with a lonely boy in the 00:22:11.490 --> 00:22:14.789 Midwest burdened by an epic abolitionist legacy 00:22:14.789 --> 00:22:18.369 and forced to confront lazy classroom stereotypes. 00:22:19.049 --> 00:22:21.829 We watched him reject the respectability politics 00:22:21.829 --> 00:22:24.890 of the Ivy League to find the true pulse of the 00:22:24.890 --> 00:22:27.990 working class. We followed him on a transformative 00:22:27.990 --> 00:22:30.190 road trip through the Jim Crow South that gave 00:22:30.190 --> 00:22:33.190 him the cadence of survival. We saw him navigate 00:22:33.190 --> 00:22:35.730 the hidden precarious realities of his personal 00:22:35.730 --> 00:22:38.430 life, outmaneuver the brutal political theater 00:22:38.430 --> 00:22:41.019 of the McCr - McCarthy era and eventually become 00:22:41.019 --> 00:22:43.599 the elder statesman of a movement that both challenged 00:22:43.599 --> 00:22:47.700 and revered him. It is a sweeping, brilliantly 00:22:47.700 --> 00:22:50.700 complex life. And before we go, there is one 00:22:50.700 --> 00:22:53.319 final fascinating detail from the source material 00:22:53.319 --> 00:22:55.900 that I want to leave you, the listener, to mull 00:22:55.900 --> 00:22:59.140 over. Let's hear it. In September 2016, following 00:22:59.140 --> 00:23:01.920 the racial riots and intense civil unrest in 00:23:01.920 --> 00:23:04.019 Charlotte, North Carolina, the New York Times 00:23:04.019 --> 00:23:06.559 dedicated a full page to printing a single poem. 00:23:06.779 --> 00:23:10.579 It was Langston Hughes's poem, I Too. Wow. A 00:23:10.579 --> 00:23:13.799 poem he wrote way back in 1925. Exactly. This 00:23:13.799 --> 00:23:15.779 raises an important question for you to ponder. 00:23:16.599 --> 00:23:19.880 How does a poem written in 1925 by a 20 -something 00:23:19.880 --> 00:23:23.740 busboy in Harlem remain the exact urgent voice 00:23:23.740 --> 00:23:26.539 a nation needs to hear nearly a century later. 00:23:26.619 --> 00:23:28.519 That's that's a big question. What does that 00:23:28.519 --> 00:23:31.599 say about the sheer undeniable timelessness of 00:23:31.599 --> 00:23:35.119 Langston Hughes's art? And perhaps more soberingly, 00:23:35.440 --> 00:23:37.920 what does it say about the incredibly slow pace 00:23:37.920 --> 00:23:40.480 of structural progress in America? That is a 00:23:40.480 --> 00:23:42.259 profound question, and it brings us right back 00:23:42.259 --> 00:23:44.799 to where we started. Langston Hughes isn't safely 00:23:44.799 --> 00:23:46.799 locked away in the past. Not at all. When you 00:23:46.799 --> 00:23:48.519 look at the mechanics of his life, you realize 00:23:48.519 --> 00:23:50.779 his voice is still speaking to us, still challenging 00:23:50.779 --> 00:23:53.640 our assumptions and still pulsing with the complex, 00:23:53.940 --> 00:23:55.839 undeniable rhythm of the American experience 00:23:55.839 --> 00:23:58.240 today. Well said. Thank you so much for joining 00:23:58.240 --> 00:24:00.140 us on this deep dive into the sources. We hope 00:24:00.140 --> 00:24:02.500 it sparked some aha moments and gave you a new 00:24:02.500 --> 00:24:05.759 lens to view history. Keep asking questions, 00:24:05.920 --> 00:24:07.779 keep looking for the mechanisms behind the facts, 00:24:08.119 --> 00:24:10.339 and definitely go seek out the original poems 00:24:10.339 --> 00:24:11.900 for yourself. Until next time.