P. O. Box No. 1582,
Carmel, California,
November 24, 1934.

The Consul,
Haitian Consulate,
96 Broad Street,
New York, N. Y.

Dear Sir,

I wish to register through your office my personal protest to
the Haitian government concerning the recent sentence to prison
of Jacques Romain at Port-au-Prince. Haiti has so few writers
of merit and so few literate people that it seems to me strange-
ly indecent to treat in so outrageous a fashion one of the finest
poets in the West Indies.

P. O. Box No. 1582,
Carmel, California,
November 25, 1954.

Minister of Haiti,
Haitian Legation,
Washington, D. C.

Dear Sir:

As a poet and novelist, I wish to express to the Haitian government, through your Legation, my protest at the unmerited sentence and imprisonment of Jacques Romain, one of the leading Haitian writers and a man of great worth and intelligence. That so fine a poet should be sent to jail for two years on so trivial a charge seems to me a highly uncivilized procedure more worthy of Hitler's Germany than of the Republic of Haiti. Are the former methods of the United States Marines being used against Haitians themselves against their own men of intelligence and valor? Or can it be that the present Haitian government has no concern for letters, poetry, or freedom?

Yours most sincerely,

Langston Hughes