3

NEW MASSES

EDITORS

EGMONT ARENS
JOSEPH FREEMAN
HUGO GELLERT
MICHAEL GOLD
WILLIAM GROPPER

EXECUTIVE
BOARD

EGMONT ARENS
JACOB BAKER
HELEN BLACK
JOHN DOS PASSOS
ROBERT DUNN
MAX EASTMAN
JOSEPH FREEMAN
HUGO GELLERT
MICHAEL GOLD
WILLIAM GROPPER
PAXTON HIBBEN
FREDA KIRCHWEY
ROBERT L. LESLIE
LOUIS LOZOWICK
REX STOUT
RUTH STOUT

CONTRIBUTING
EDITORS

HARBOR ALLEN
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
CORNELIA BARNS
CARLETON BEALS
IVAN BEEDE
VAN WYCK BROOKS
HOWARD BRUBAKER
STUART CHASE
GLENN COLEMAN
MIGUEL COVARRUBIAS
STUART DAVIS
ADOLPH DEHN
FLOYD DELL
WALDO FRANK
WANDA GAG
ARTURO GIOVANNITTI
I. KLEIN
JOHN HOWARD LAWSON
CLAUDE MCKAY
LEWIS MUMFORD
SCOTT NEARING
EUGENE O'NEIL
SAMUEL ORNITZ
LOLA RIDGE
BOARDMAN ROBINSON
WILLIAM SIEGEL
UPTON SINCLAIR
OTTO SOGLOW
GENEVIEVE TAGGARD
LOUIS UNTERMEYER
MARY HEATON VORSE
ERIC WALROND
EDMUND WILSON, JR.
ROBERT WOLF
CHARLES W. WOOD
ART YOUNG

48

39 UNION SQUARE
NEW YORK CITY
ALGONQUIN 4445

CABLE ADDRESS:
NEWMASS. N. Y.

June 23, 1927

Dear Langston Hughes:

Won't you send us some new poems? It occurs
to me also that, since you are sojourning
in the great state of Tennessee, you might
have material for a good article for the
NEW MASSES. Think it over and let me know.

We are using "Coney Island" in our next number.

Langston Hughes
Beale St.
Memphis, Tenn.

NEW MASSES

31 East 27th Street - New York City

October 5, 1936

Langston Hughes
2256 East 86 Street
New York City

Dear Langston,

I was very disappointed to hear today that you find it difficult to come to New York for the Ford-Browder banquet on October 28. We would all deeply appreciate it if you would reconsider your decision. I wish you could have seen the meeting at Town Hall last night under the auspices of the Committee of Professional Groups for Browder and Ford. Not only was the hall jammed but over a thousand people were turned away. The speeches of Waldo Frank, Robert Minor, and William Jones of the Afro-American were inspiring and the audience attained a pitch of enthusiasm which everyone will long remember.

This campaign is so important and the role which writers are playing in it is so rare in American history that one can only think of the fight of the Abolitionists and the persistent passion with which Emerson, Henry Ward Beecher, Thoreau, Whittier, Frederick Douglass, and others brought to the campaign for liberation. I am sure if you knew how anxiously the professional groups of New York look forward to your appearance on October 28, you would make every effort to join us that evening. Jimmie Ford's broadcasts have made a very deep impression on middle class and intellectual groups throughout the country, and your own contribution would make an equally profound impression.

We realize, of course, what it means for a writer to leave his work for any time and therefore we have decided to make it possible for you to come to New York with the least possible loss of time. We are ready to pay your expenses to and from Cleveland by airplane so that you may not lose more than one day. Please wire us at once, collect, that we may expect you. We are holding out all advertising of the meeting until we hear from you and we are sure that under the circumstances your answer will be in the affirmative.

bg

357

New York FEB 1 2 1937 193

This is to acknowledge the receipt of your manuscript, which will be given
our careful consideration. Thanks for sending it in.

Sincerely,

THE NEW MASSES

Editorial Department

P.S.—Mss. unaccompanied by postage will not be returned.

357

NEW MASSES

Editors

BARBARA GILES A. B. MAGIL RUTH MCKENNEY BRUCE MINTON
JOSEPH NORTH JOSEPH STAROBIN JOHN STUART

CARL A. BRISTEL President & Treasurer

461 Fourth Avenue New York City CAledonia 5-3076

245

(Copy of letter sent to
California address)

September 1, 1942

My dear Langston Hughes:

NEW MASSES is planning a special issue on the Negro's role in the war, with main emphasis on the urgent need of ending all discriminatory practices and guaranteeing full citizenship rights to the Negro people in order to win the war and the peace.

I wonder whether you have any unpublished poems, or any other material that would be suitable for this issue? It has been a long time since your work appeared in our pages and I am sure that anything of yours we would publish would be much appreciated by our readers.

Incidentally, we are planning to give this issue wide circulation both among Negroes and whites. The deadline for material is September 16th.

Best wishes,

NEW MASSES

EDITOR: JOSEPH NORTH ASSOCIATE EDITORS: FREDERICK Y. FIELD,
BARBARA GILES, HERBERT GOLDFRANK, A. B. MAGIL, RUTH MCKENNEY,
JOHN STUART WASHINGTON EDITOR: BRUCE MINTON. EDITORIAL
ASSISTANT- MARJORIE DeARMAND.

104 East 9th Street New York City Gramercy 3-5146

Nov. 10, 1943

Dear Langston:

I am so excited this morning about Ben's election that I find it hard to write about anything else.

But there is business to be done.

New Masses is inaugurating a bi-monthly literary number beginning in January. We are of course very eager to have you appear in the first number to help get this new feature off to a good start.

Can you send me some of your new work? I do hope so. Our deadline is Dec. 8, but I should appreciate hearing from you before then if that is convenient.

We are all grateful for your continued cooperation with the magazine.

369

MADISON STREET

Mr. Langston Hughes
634 St. Nicholas Avenue
New York, N.Y.

STATION D

Mr. Langston Hughes
Yadde Springs, N. Y.

STATION D

MASON SQUARE
STATION

Langston Hughes
634 St. Nicholas Ave.
New York City

NEW MASSES

JOSEPH NORTH, Editor

104 EAST NINTH STREET, NEW YORK 3, NEW YORK

TELEPHONE GRAMERCY 3-5146

For several weeks we have watched New Masses' plea for financial support.

If you will run your eye over the list of signatures below you will quickly see that some of us are Marxists, some of us are not. But we are all united in the deep belief that New Masses has a right to live. We believe in a free press; and we know that an organ like New Masses could be suppressed by its creditors as effectively as it could by its most rabid enemies. And in saying that we do not necessarily imply full support of all New Masses stands for. But we do believe in its constitutional right to publish its views. For whatever any of us may think of its policies - agree or disagree with them - we are of the conviction that if New Masses goes under there will be cheering and stomping in the back rooms of every reactionary political clique in the country. We cannot forget the great service New Masses did in exposing Hitler's emissaries in this country at a time when the word anti-fascist was hardly fashionable. Nor can we forget that it was New Masses that provided a fresh, spring breeze in American cultural life - in art, in letters, in all the many things which are now accepted as a matter of course but which had their origins in the pages of this magazine. We cannot forget the great names associated with it: John Reed, Theodore Dreisgr, Lincoln Steffens, Art Young, William Gropper, Gabriel Peri, Louis Aragon, Pablo Neruda, R. Palme Dutt, J. B. S. Haldane - a list as long as your good right arm.

For these reasons and more we ask you to help New Masses. We ask you to dig deep and hard and to ask your friends to do the same. New Masses is and has been a national institution, a bright star. We must remove the question of its future existence for we are certain that its future and yours, as democratic Americans, are tied together closely.

328

NEW MASSES

JOSEPH NORTH, Editor

TELEPHONE GRAMERCY 3-5146

April 4, 1947

Mr. Langston Hughes
634 St. Nicholas Avenue
New York, New York

Dear Langston:

New Masses has lived and fought for thirty-six years but never has it faced a severer crisis than it does now. While the political attack is grave - Thomas, Rankin, Schwellenbach, et al - our readers and progressives generally are standing firm and fighting back. The recent PCA Garden meeting where Wallace spoke was a powerful counter-attack, and there's no indication that American progressives are fleeing into the crevices. The memory of Hitler Germany is much too fresh.

That's got us worried is the inflationary spiral which is skyrocketing costs and shrinking the pocketbooks of our friends. We've simply got to have a public emergency meeting to present the picture to the people in progressive circles and get them to see us through this crisis. Experience shows that our readers will rally when they know the situation.

We've taken Webster Hall for the 28th of April for a "Save New Masses" meeting. As we see it, the meeting will consist of brief speeches by outstanding representatives of the arts, sciences and professions, interspersed by suitable entertainment. The speeches might deal with the present problems of the respective fields of endeavor and the role of NM in meeting those problems.

Would you be willing to speak for this occasion? It would mean much toward putting the meeting over in a big way and at this time we can't afford anything less than that.

In view of the shortness of time, would you let me or A.B. Magil know as soon as possible (preferably by phone) if we can count on you. We can go into the more practical details by phone or mail immediately thereafter.

JN:jh
cio-ang

NEW MASSES

JOSEPH NORTH, Editor

TELEPHONE GRAMERCY 3-5146

September 10, 1947

Dear Mr. Hughes:

As I promised you over the phone the other day, here are the
details of the meeting. It will take place on Thursday evening, October
16th, at 8 p.m., at Manhattan Center, 34th Street, west of Eighth Avenue.
It will be a protest against the sentence of Howard Fast for contempt of
Congress, and we hope there will be the broadest possible representation
of writers, artists, musicians, and professional people generally. We've
invited such people as Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair, Carl Sandburg,
Katherine Hepburn, and a host of others.

The general theme will center around the "burning of the books,"
and in conjunction with this, we are expecting to show a newsreel shot of
the book-burning in Germany. What I meant in my telephone discussion with
you was that it would be truly wonderful if you'd write a short piece
which could be read in a dramatic setting as the picture is unfolded.
The title of the meeting actually is "The Books Are Burning," in case
you can make use of it. We will be deeply grateful for any help you can
give us. I'm sure I don't have to explain to you the importance of this
protest, or the implications in the sentencing of this great writer, whose
every word has been dedicated to the cause of freedom.

Also, we would be very happy if you would allow us to use your
name as one of the sponsors of the meeting--with your knowledge, of course,
to avoid a repetition of the experience you related to me the other day.

Since we're working against time, could you please let me know
as soon as possible whether or not we can count on you? I am working
under tremendous difficulties--a serious lack of office help, plus the
obvious conditions which I know I don't have to go into here.

Thank you for anything you may be able to do for us--for Howard--
and for the cause of American literature and for the future of democracy
in this country. I'll look forward to hearing from you very soon.

ang-cio

285

"I speak of only one source of shame to decent Americans who want their country to be admired by the world. I mean the group of bigots known as the Dies Committee—then the Rankin Committee, and now the Thomas Committee—THREE NAMES FOR FASCISTS the world over to roll on their tongues with pride."

—HENRY A. WALLACE

WHEN eleven Board members of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee were given prison sentences of from three to six months, there were varying reactions in this America of ours. Progressives seemed to have been stunned into silence; reactionaries gloated, and through their press—which means most of America’s press—told the nation what they chose to tell.

Apart from myself, these eleven include Edward K. Barsky, internationally known surgeon, head of all volunteer hospitals in Spain during the Anti-Franco War; Louis Miller and Jacob Auslander, both physicians; Richard Lyman Bradley, professor of Teutonic languages and department head at New York University; Charlotte Stern, and James Lustig, labor leaders; Ruth Leider and Harry Justiz, lawyers; Manuel Maganna, business man; and Midge Chodorov, housewife.

The incident was unprecedented. Never before had eleven such well-known people—men and women whose work and record is known to thousands—been framed on so slim and shoddy a basis. These eleven people were sentenced to jail because they are anti-fascists; for that reason, and for no other reason.

As one of them, I would like to tell our story. It is not a complicated story, and it will not

## Three Names for Fascists

take much telling. But it is a very important story—one of the most important stories of these times for all Americans who believe in freedom and democracy.

The people I listed above are the Board of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee. For five years we have been engaged in raising and dispensing funds for relief of Spanish Republicans, those first fighters against fascism, who have suffered so long and so grievously. It has been estimated that during this time we have saved thousands of lives; we are very proud of that.

During the war years, we were a licensed relief agency, under the supervision of the President’s War Relief Board. Our books were examined by the Treasury Department, who extend to us a tax-exempt status.

Most of our funds are dispensed by the Unitingarian Service Committee, who supervise our hospitals in Southern France. We have built hospitals and established orphanages; no Spaniard who came to us was turned away. Ours was, and is, a work of mercy, to shelter the homeless, to feed the hungry, and to make the sick whole.

But because we helped those who fought Franco, the Un-American Committee, the infamous Wood-Rankin Committee of the House of Representatives (now the Thomas-Rankin Committee), decided to smash us. They adopted a very simple method: they asked us to produce all our books, records, and lists of names.

We have two lists in our office. We have a list of our contributors, more than twenty thou-

## .... Three Names for Fascists ....

sand in number, and we have a list of Spaniards we have helped, some in France, some in Portugal, some in the Spanish Underground.

It is not difficult to guess what would have happened if we had turned over these lists to that shameful and unspeakable body, the House Un-American Committee. The twenty thousand contributors would have become their prey for future persecution. And, more importantly, we had good reason to believe that, if the Wood-Rankin Un-American Committee obtained the names of the Spaniards we had aided, those names might not remain unknown to the Franco Government.

It is plain, then, that they asked us an impossible thing. One cannot turn hangman and informer at the behest of a miserable group, of whom Henry A. Wallace said:

> "I speak of only one source of shame to decent Americans who want their country to be admired by the world. I mean the group of bigots known as the Dies Committee—then the Rankin Committee, and now the Thomas Committee—three names for fascists the world over to roll on their tongues with pride."

We are not heroes, not by any means. We simply did what any decent, self-respecting Americans would have done. We told the custodian of our records, Helen Reed Bryan, our executive secretary, to take all measures to protect our books within the limits of the law. Then we went to Washington in answer to the subpoenas served upon us by the Un-American Committee.

For a whole day, behind locked doors, we were grilled, threatened, insulted and vilified. We answered all questions. But we were firm on one matter—we would not be bludgeoned

and threatened into surrendering our lists. Any fair-minded body of American citizens could come to our offices and see what they wished; we made that offer and we make it today. But not the Un-American Committee.

It surprised neither us nor anyone else that we were cited for contempt of Congress. A citation for contempt by the Un-American Committee has become a badge of honor for those who believe in America and American principles.

But we were not brought to trial at that time, a year and a half ago, when we were cited. We were brought to trial only when the anti-progressive witch-hunt reached its climax. A charge of criminal conspiracy was trumped up against us, but was dropped when no evidence could be presented. When we were found guilty of contempt, unprecedented prison sentences were handed out to us.

When the sentences were given, eight column heads splashed across every Washington, D.C., newspaper. Without exception, the headlines read:

### 11 ANTI-FASCISTS JAILED

So it was that in July of 1947, we tasted the special rewards our government reserves for those who are guilty of hating fascism, of hat-ing injustice and wrong.

It is important for you to understand that we are neither heroes nor martyrs. We are eleven Americans who believe in the basic principles upon which America was built. Because we believe in these principles, we are going to jail.

It is not the first time that men and women who hate injustice and wrong are imprisoned. In Germany and Italy and Japan, this same

Three Names for Fascists . . . .

thing happened to thousands and tens of thou-
sands. But now it is happening here—in these
United States of America.

Long ago, at a time when Americans had
not yet forgotten 1776, a man called Henry
Thoreau was sent to Concord Jail because he
would not pay taxes to a government that en-
gaged in an unjust war against Mexico. He
was standing at the prison window, when
Ralph Waldo Emerson came down the street.

"Henry, what are you doing in there?"
Emerson asked.

"What are you doing out there?" Thoreau
demanded.

Today, we can ask: "Why are you silent—
you out there?"

It is later than you think. Already, you live
in a country where anti-fascism is a crime.
Must we go through hell again, see the last
vestige of liberty outlawed, freedom exiled?
Or will you turn this case of the eleven into
the worst boomerang our native fascists ever
loosed?

In this land of ours, there is nothing stronger
than the voice of a free American. Use that
voice while you still remain free. Washington,
D.C., is not as far off as Berlin or Madrid. If
you speak up, loud and clear, you will be
heard.

If you remain silent, God help us all.

† † †

The following is the statement of Howard Fast,
which Judge Richmond Keech would not per-
mit to be read in open court before imposing
sentence:

"MY WORK with the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee has been, I think, the best kind of work men may aspire to, the highest kind—to

alleviate suffering, to lessen distress, to make
the sick well and the starving whole, and to
save life. And the very fact that this work was
directed toward those earliest of gallant fight-
ers against fascism, the Spanish Republicans,
should make it all the more precious in the
sight of good men. If I have erred, it was in
giving too little, not too much.

"I cannot conceive of this as a crime. I can-
not find anything about our Committee that
would make it un-American, that brings it into
the scope of the Wood-Rankin Committee's
investigation. Quite to the contrary, it seems
to me that such work as we do expresses the
best, the most generous and humanitarian
qualities of the American people.

"I was asked by the Wood-Rankin Commit-
tee to present to them books and lists of names.
Among those names were thousands of our
contributors, people who had unselfishly given
to our cause."

"Among those names were those of Spanish
Republican fighters whom we had helped,
some of them back in Spain now, some of them
with families in Spain. I did not have custody
of these records and lists, but, even if I had,
how could I turn them over to a group with
such a record for persecution and infamy?

"I am a writer. All my work, from the time
I first set pen to paper, stands as a record of
service and love for this country of mine. I am
incapable—and I hope I may be incapable to
the day I die—of taking any action against the
United States of America which would harm
her in the slightest way.

"I have been found guilty of contempt of
Congress. But, in my conscience, I have vio-
lated no law of the United States. Rather have
I acted in the only fashion that an American
might have acted in such a situation. If the

Three Names for Fascists . . . .
court feels that I have defied a Committee of
our Congress, I can only repeat what the
Washington Post said, editorially, of that Com-
mittee, that: 'Its antics have tended to weaken
respect for the investigatory functions of the
Congress and even the Congress itself. Indeed,
it has invited and provoked, if it has not justi-
fied, contempt as an expression of traditional
American independence and self-respect.'"

This pamphlet has been published by
CITIZENS TO DEFEND THE JOINT ANTI-FASCIST
REFUGEE COMMITTEE. Vincent Sheean is the
chairman of this organization, which was cre-
ated to fight for the freedom of the Board
members. None of the funds collected for
Spanish Refugees have been diverted for this
fight, nor have any such funds been used for
the publication of this pamphlet.

These eleven anti-fascists need your help.
Their cause is your cause and America's cause.
Checks for their defense should be made pay-
able to—

Vincent Sheean, chairman
and should be sent to—

192 Lexington Avenue
New York 16, N. Y.

412

new masses

JOSEPH NORTH, Editor

104 EAST NINTH STREET, NEW YORK 3, N. Y.

TELEPHONE GRAMERCY 3-5146

December 4th, 1947

Dear Langston Hughes:

New Masses is planning an anthology to be published in the fall of 1948 by Alan Swallow, affiliated with William Morrow and Company. The material to be included will comprise poems, short stories, reportage, literary criticism, etc., published since its inception as a weekly magazine in 1934.

We should like to include in the anthology the following contribution(s) of yours:

Title of Contribution Date of Publication
"Ballad of the Spanish
Civil War" - (trans.) May 1st, 1938
"Goodmorning, Stalingrad!" March 16th, 1943

We'd appreciate having your permission to reprint at your earliest convenience. Please fill out the form below and return in the enclosed self-addressed envelope.

Granted—12/6/47

L. H.

ABM:ML
ang-cio