COHN: And it is your frank testimony to the committee that you certainly would not think those early works of yours should be included in a program to fight communism today?

HUGHES: No, I would not. I have made no attempt to get them back into circulation. Some of them have been out of print for at least 12 or 15 years.

COHN: Very frankly, you are not particularly proud of them at this stage?

HUGHES: They do not represent my current thinking, nor my thinking for the last, say, 6 Or 8 years, at any rate.

COHN: And those are not the selections from your writings that you would want included in our information program?

HUGHES: No, I would not. I have more recent books which I would much prefer, if any books of mine are kept on the shelves.

COHN: Written after you came to the realization you described to us today, that the answer to the problems which disturb you is to be found in this country and under our form of government?

HUGHES: That is right; published afterward, certainly.

THE CHAIRMAN: Senator McClellan?

MCCLELLAN: I am very much interested in this particular line of questioning, and testimony. Do I understand that since you came to the conclusion that you were wrong about communism, and subsequent to the time you wrote these books that are now found in these libraries, you have written other works, other books, that repudiate the philosophy that you expressed in these writings that we now find in the libraries?

(TESTIMONY CONTINUED ON MIMEGRAPHED TRANSCRIPT)

LANGSTON HUGHES

II

13. Books by Langston Hughes, in which religious subjects are treated sympathetically, tending to disprove the charge of theistic communism.

a. NOT WITHOUT LAUGHTER, novel, Knopf, 1930, especially chapter 16, "Nothing but Love," pp. 188-195.

b. THE DREAM KEEPER, poems, Knopf, 1932, especially the section "Feet O' Jesus," pp. 51-63.

14. Song, AT THE FEET OF JESUS, by Langston Hughes, Carl Fischer, Inc., New York City, 1947.

15. Pro-democratic radio poem by Langston Hughes, FREEDOM'S PLOW, Musette Publishers, New York City, 1945, as broadcast for the National Urban League over national hookup by Paul Muni. Often used by high schools throughout America for choral speech programs, graduation ceremonies, etc.

16. Patriotic song, THIS IS MY LAND, Musette Publishers, New York City, 1946.

681
(James Haggerty)

C---O---P---Y

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONGRESS OF UNITED STATES

To...James.Langston.Hughes
120 East 127th Street
New York, New York

GREETING:

PURSUANT to lawful authority, YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED to
appeare before the SENATE PERMANENT SUB Committe on INVESTIGATIONS
of the Senate of the United States, on Monday, March 23............1953,
at TWO o'clock P.M., at their committee room 357 OF THE SENATE OFFICE
BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C............then and there to testify what you
may know relative to the subject matters under consideration by said
Committee.

HEREOF FAIL NOT, as you will answer your default under the pains
and penalties in such cases made and provided.

To......U.S. MARSHAL, N.Y.C.
to serve and return.

Given under my hand, by order of the
Committee, this 21 day of March....
in the year of our Lord one thousand
nine hundred and 53.....

JOSEPH R. MCCARTHY

Chairman, Sub Committee on INVESTIGATIONS

STATEMENT TO THE SENATE PERMANENT SUB-COMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS

by
Langston Hughes

Poets who write mostly about love, roses and moonlight, sunsets and snow,
must lead a very quiet life. Seldom, I imagine, does their poetry get
them into difficulties. Beauty and lyricism are really related to another
world, to ivory towers, to your head in the clouds, feet floating off the
earth.

Unfortunately, having been born poor—and also colored—in Missouri, I
was stuck in the mud from the beginning. Try as I might to float off into
the clouds, poverty and Jim Crow would grab me by the heels, and right
back on earth I would land. A third-floor furnished room is the nearest
thing I have ever had to an ivory tower.

Some of my earliest poems were social poems in that they were about people's
problems—whole groups of people's problems—rather than my own personal
difficulties, but when one writes poems of social content there is always
the danger of being misunderstood. As Mr. Archibald Macleish, Pulitzer
prize winner, formerly Librarian of Congress, said before the senators,
"One of the occupational hazards of writing poetry is running the risk of
being misunderstood."

I have written many poems characterizing many different kinds of people and
expressing many varied ideas, some seriously, some satirically, some ironically.
For instance, in my book of poems, SHAKESPEARE IN HARLEM, there is a poem
called KU KLUX in which a Klansman speaks. But I am not a Klansman. In
THE WEARY BLUES there is a poem called MOTHER TO SON in which an aged mother
speaks. But I am not an aged mother. In SHAKESPEARE IN HARLEM there is a
poem called WIDOW WOMAN in which a woman laments the loss of her husband.

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But I am not myself a widow-woman, although I used the pronoun "I" to characterize the woman, and it is my poem.

Perhaps the most misunderstood of my poems was GOODBYE, CHRIST. Since it is an ironic poem (and irony is apparently a quality not readily understood in poetry by unliterary minds) it has been widely misinterpreted as an anti-religious poem. This I did not mean it to be, but rather a poem against racketeering, profiteering, racial segregation, and showmanship in religion which, at the time, I felt was undermining the foundations of the great and decent ideals for which Christ himself stood. And behind the poem is a pity and a sorrow that this should be taken by some as meaning to them that Christianity and religion in general has no value. Because of the publication of this poem—which more than fifteen years ago I withdrew from publication and which has since been used entirely without my permission by groups interested in fomenting racial and social discord, I have been termed on occasion, a Communist or an atheist.

I am not now an atheist, and have never been an atheist. On page 55 of my book, THE DREAM KEEPER, I write:

## MA LORD

Ma Lord aint no stuck-up man.
Ma Lord, He ain't proud.
When He goes a'walkin'
He gives me His hand.
"You ma friend," He 'lowed

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Ma Lord knowed what it was to work.
He knowed how to pray.
Ma Lord's life was trouble, too,
Trouble ever' day.

Ma Lord ain't no stuck-up man.
He's a friend o' mine.
When He went to heaben,
His soul on fire,
He tole me I was gwine.
He said, "Sho you'll come wid Me
An be ma friend through eternity."

I have personally the greatest respect for sincere religionists, but none whatsoever for professional racketeers in religion, nor for those who use religion as an anti-Negro, anti-democratic weapon for thwarting the progress of the common man.

I am not a member of the Communist Party now and have never been a member of the Communist Party. I have, in the past, belonged to the "John Reed Club," the "American League Against War and Fascism," and the "League of American Writers", none of which are now in existence. But many other American writers have belonged to one or all of those organizations, including such distinguished persons as Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Vincent Sheean, and the late Heywood Broun. They appear to me to belong to that true American stream of criticism and of libertarianism which has enriched American life since its very beginning. I do not believe in a

-4-

static America. I believe in an America that changes as Americans want it to change. I do not believe that the desire for change, and working toward it, is necessarily un-American. In our country great changes have been achieved through the democratic process, and I believe they will so continue to be achieved. I have frequently over the years affirmed my beliefs in democracy, as in the radio poem written for the National Urban League, FREEDOM'S PLOW, or my short story, ONE FRIDAY MORNING, in LAUGHING TO KEEP FROM CRYING, and in many speeches and poems. Also through my various Writers War Board scripts.

I concede the right to anyone to read me or not, as he may choose, to publish me or not, to invite me to speak or not, as desired. I also feel (and especially since one of the Four Freedoms is Freedom of Speech) that I have the right to oppose in speech or writing those who would make of democracy, or religion, a reactionary, evil, and harmful mask for anti-Negro, and anti-American activities.

I would like to see an America where people of any race, color, or creed may live on a plane of cultural and material well-being, cooperating together unhindered by sectarian, racial, or factional prejudices and harmful intolerances that do nobody any good, an America proud of its tradition, capable of facing the future without the necessary pitting of people against people and without the disease of personal distrust and suspicion of one's neighbor.

In my opera based on the life of Dessalines and the Haitian struggle for freedom, as produced at the New York City Center, there is an aria so placed as to express opposition to violence and killing as a solution to

- 5 -

men's problems. This aria expresses also my own personal feeling in
regard to social and political relations:

I DREAM A WORLD

I dream a world where man
No other man will scorn,
Where love will bless the earth
And peace its paths adorn.
I dream a world where all
Will know sweet freedom's way,
Where greed no longer saps the soul
Nor avarice blights our day.
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
And every man is free,
Where wretchedness will hang its head,
And joy, like a pearl,
Attends the needs of all mankind.
Of such I dream—
Our World!

LANGSTON HUGHES

March 23, 1953

During a period in my life coinciding roughly with
the beginning of the Scottsboro Case and the depression of
the 1930's and running through to the Nazi-Soviet Pact, I
wrote a number of poems which reflected my then deep
sympathies with certain of the aims and objectives of leftist
philosophies and the interests of the Soviet Union in the
problems of poverty, minorities, colonial peoples, and
particularly of Negroes and Jim Crow. Most of these poems
appeared only in booklet form and have long been out of
print. I was amazed to learn that some of these out-dated
examples of my work are today being circulated in our State
Department's overseas libraries. Written, some of them,
partially in leftist terminology with the red flag as a
symbol of freedom, they could hardly serve to present a
contemporary picture of American ideals or of my personal
ones.

I am not now and have never been a member of the
Communist Party, and have so stated over the years in my
speeches and writings. But there is in my family a long
history of participation in social struggle — from my
grandfather who went to prison for helping slaves to freedom
and another relative who died with John Brown at Harper's
Ferry to my great uncle, John M. Langston, only Negro
representative in Congress from Virginia following the
Reconstruction, and who had supported Abraham Lincoln in
his recruiting Negro troops, and spoken for freedom on the
same platform with Garrison and Phillips. In my own youth,
faced with the problems of both poverty and color, and
penniless at that the beginning of the depression, I was
strongly attracted by some of the promises of Communism,
but always with the reservations among others, of a creative
writer wishing to preserve my own freedom of action and
expression— and as an American Negro desiring full integration
into our body politic. These two reservations, particularly
(since I could never accept the totalitarian regimentation of
the _rtist nor the communist theory of a Negro state for the
Black Belt) — were among other reasons why I never contemplated
joining the Communist Party although various aspects of Communist
interests were for some years reflected in the emotional content
of my writing. But I was shocked at the Nazi-Soviet Pact, just
as I am scho

RESUME OF THE INFORMATIONS OFFERED THE SENATE
PERMANENT SUB-COMMITTEE ON INVESTIGATIONS BY
LANGSTON HUGHES, WASHINGTON, D. C., MARCH 24-26, 1953:

During a period in my life coinciding roughly with the beginning of
the Scottsboro Case and the depression of the 1930's and running through
to the Nazi-Soviet Pact, I wrote a number of poems which reflected my then
deep sympathies with certain of the aims and objectives of the leftist
philosophies and the interests of the Soviet Union in the problems of
poverty, minorities, colonial peoples, and particularly of Negros and Jim
Crow. Most of these poems appeared only in booklet form and have long been
out of print. I was amazed to learn that some of these out-dated examples
of my work are today being circulated in our State Department's overseas
libraries. Written, some of them, partially in leftist terminology with the
red flag as a symbol of freedom, they could hardly serve to present a
contemporary picture of American ideals or of my personal ones.

I am not now and have never been a member of the Communist Party, and
have so stated over the years in my speeches and writings. But there is in
my family a long history of participation in social struggle -- from my
grandfather who went to prison for helping slaves to freedom and another
relative who died with John Brown at Harper's Ferry to my great uncle, John
M. Langston, only Negro representative in Congress from Virginia following
the Reconstruction, and who had supported Abraham Lincoln in his recruiting
Negro Troops, and spoken for freedom on the same platform with Garrison and
Phillips. In my own youth, faced with the problems of both poverty and color,
and penniless at the beginning of the depression, I was strongly attracted
by some of the promises of Communism, but always with the reservations among
others, of a creative writer wishing to preserve my own freedom of action
and expression -- and as an American Negro desiring full integration into
our body politic. These two reservations, particularly (since I could never
accept the totalitarian regimentation of the artist nor the communist theory
of a Negro state for the Balck Belt) -- were among other reasons why I never
contemplated joining the Communist Party although various aspects of Communist
interests were for some years reflected in the emotional content of my writing.
But I was shocked at the Nazi-Soviet Pact, just as I am shocked now by the
reported persecution of the Jewish People. And I was distrubed by the
complete lack of freedom of press and publication I observed in the USSR.
In our own country I have been greatly heartened in recent years by the
progress being made in race-relations, by the recent Supreme Court decisions
relative to Negro education, restrictive covenants, the ballot, and travel.
My work of the war years, and my latest books have reflected this change of
emphasis and development in my own thinking and orientation. This is, I think,
clearly and simply shown in the last paragraph of my latest book:

"Our country has many problems still to solve, but America is young,
big, strong, and beautiful. And we are trying very hard to be, as
the flag says, "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice
for all." Here people are free to vote and work out their problems.
In some countries people are governed by rulers, and ordinary folks
can't do a thing about it. But here all of us are a part of democracy.
By taking an interest in our government, and by treating our neighbors
as we would like to be treated, each one of us can help make our
country the most wonderful country in the world."

Langston Hughes
March 26,
1953