Mrs. Lawrence A. Nixon - 2029 Myrtle - El Paso, Texas

July 16, 1944

Mr. Langston Hughes,
634 St. Nicholas Street,
New York, 30 N. Y.

Dear Mr. Hughes:

First let me thank you for FREEDOM'S PLOW.
I am very proud of it. I heard it on the radio. I am
having it bound, although it is well worn from reading
by the family, friends and neighbors. I belong to the
Public Affairs Committee in El Paso, composed of supposedly
the city's brainy white women, and one colored, one Mexican
and one Jewish woman (by invitation), and I will have to let
it go the rounds with them as I do my PM, South Today, and
that delightfully charming little informal Arizona Magazine,--
The Letter.

I am expecially interested in poetry, because I
love words beautifully put together. Poetry is so much more
strong and vivid than prose. And I contended that a really
good prose writer is first a poet. Most of my degreed friends
believe me a little weak in my tastes and on a lower stratum
intellectually because I have a great love for poetry, while
their book-cases are crammed with tomes on economics and various
ologies. And if they knew that my most enjoyable and secret
recreation is writing--and some poetry of all things, I would
be definitely pitied.

A sample of what I do with my spare time(which is not
much) in this rather (od-for-saken country is enclosed herewith.
What is bad or good about it? Of course, I know some would

object to the Kremlin and French Revoluntion lines--but was
it or wasn't it a mob? I have a few less gory, some lovely
Hekkus, I suppose unpopular because they are the favorite
Japanese form; and best of all, I have written a book--
biography, titled MAGNIFICENT SAVAGE. It would be a natural
in the movies for Paul Robeson, and wonder of wonders, I do
not see how, if it were made, it could offend the sensibilities
of the South." Some day I shall have the nerve to submit it
to a publisher.

A letter from my daughter, who is studying at yale,
has just this minute come; and she says that she has just
heard from Corp. Hutchins, whom you mentioned in your letter,
and he is back at Ft. Huachuca, Arizona.

The USO is already looking forward to your coming
in the fall. I had hoped that you could come later--after the
middle of October, for selfish reasons. My husband and two
children hope to go East about the middle of August and stay for
two months. We will be at Idlewild, Mich., and then through
northern Ohio to visit all the family connections and ancestral
farms, then to Pittsburgh to visit our son, then East to Philadelphia,
New York and probably on up to New Haven to see Dorothy.
She has a month's vacation in August and September but hopes to
spend it in New York.

I have given your name and address to Mrs. Aquilla
Thompson, program secretary, USO, 2130 Texas Street, El Paso,
to keep in touch with you about the time that you will be here.
She will write you soon and complete arrangements.

Thanking you for your interest, I am

Mr Langston Huges
# 634 St Nicholas Ave.
New York, City.
Apt .1.D.

S/S Mobilight
c/o Socony- Acuum Oil Co Inc.
# 26 Broadway--New York, City.
May 21st, 1946

Dear Mr Huges,

Letter received on arrival to Beaumont Texas.
Very glad to learn that she had taken her trip as she had
planned. I Sincerely hope that she will enjoy herself very
much. Thanks for sending the letter to her. I do not know
when I will be over your way, as we are on the Boston &
New England route for the past few trips. I am expecting that
we will be over the Old New York soon, the weather up this way
is a little cool.: as usual. How is Mr Harper? Kindly give him
my best regards when You see him.