The American Academy of Arts and Letters

633 WEST 155 STREET
NEW YORK 32, NEW YORK

April 25, 1963

To the Members of the Institute:

The Directors of the Academy cordially invite the members
of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and their wives (or husbands)
to attend a luncheon preceding the Ceremonial on Wednesday, May 22nd.

Cocktails will be served at 12:30 in the Library, luncheon
at 1:00 o'clock in the Museum.

The annual Ceremonial of the Academy and the Institute will
be held at 3:00 o'clock in the Auditorium. Members are also invited
to attend the opening of exhibitions in the Art Gallery and Museum at
5:00 o'clock.

Please signif on the enclosed slip whether or not you will
attend the various functions.

April 26, 1963

Miss Phyllis McGinley, Chr.,
Committee on Grants for Literature,
National Institute of Arts and Letters,
New York 32, New York.

Dear Phyllis McGintley:

In reply to your communication of March 18, I would suggest
as worthy of consideration for:

**MARJORIE PEABODY WAITE AWARD:** Mr. Arna Bontemps, Librarian of Fisk University, Nashville 8, Tennessee, distinguished historian (THE STORY OF THE NEGRO, Knopf), novelist (GOD SENDS SUNDAY, BLACK THUNDER) and writer for children (LONESOME BOY, CHARIOT IN THE SKY) and a half dozen more titles, including the recent Dodd, Mead volume, 100 YEARS OF NEGRO FREEDOM.

**RICHARD AND HINDA ROSENTHAL FOUNDATION AWARD:** John Oliver Killens, AND THEN WE HEARD THE THUNDER, Knopf.

**LOINES AWARD FOR POETRY:** Robert Hayden, A BALLAD OF REMEMBRANCE, Paul Breman, London, April, 1962. American poet now in the Department of English, Fisk University, Nashville 8, Tennessee.

**ACADEMY'S AWARD OF MERIT MEDAL** and cash prize: Russell F. Davis, ANYTHING FOR A FRIEND and I LOVE YOU, MARY FATT, Crown.

**TRAVELLING FELLOWSHIP:** Hertha Pauli, HER NAME WAS SOJOURNER TRUTH, Appleton Century Grofts, 1962.

Or: Johanna Johnston, RUNAWAY TO HEAVEN, Doubleday, 1963.

Thank you for the opportunity of offering these suggestions.

April 28, 1963

Dear Glenway:

In answer to your letter of April 26 regarding vacancies in the Department of Literature, I would like to suggest the consideration of Mr. Arna Bontemps whose lists of books cover the novel GOD SENDS SUNDAY, BLACK THUNDER; history, THE STORY OF THE NEGRO, Knopf, and 100 YEARS OF NEGRO FREEDOM, Dodd, Mead; books for children and young people, CHARIOT IN THE SKY, LONESOME BOY, and others. His poems, not yet in a single volume, have been in various anthologies; and he has had essays in THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR, SATURDAY REVIEW, and other high calibre publications. He has been writing and publishing now for more than a quarter of a century, is a distinguished lecturer on literary subjects, an amiable conversationalist, and a scholiarly man, currently librarian of Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee.

With cordial regards to you,

Mr. Langston Hughes

20 East 127 Street

New York 35, New York

LANGSTON HUGHES

20 EAST 127TH STREET
NEW YORK 35, N. Y.

September 28, 1963

Mr. Glenway Wescott,
National Institute of Arts and Letters,
New York City.

Dear Glenway:

Thank you very much for your kind note. And I am certainly sorry I cannot attend the meeting.

My feeling is that recognition from the Institute should come from having done over the years a rather solid body of creative work, rather than from simply one novel or a couple of seasons of popular success. That is why I sought to nominate Mr. Arna Bontemps who has written some fifteen books, all published by major publishers (Knopf, Macmillan, Dodd, Mead, also Harcourt, Brace and Houghton Mifflin) and has collaborated or edited others, and was co-author of a Broadway musical based on a novel of his, the novel GOD SENDS SUNDAY, the play ST. LOUIS WOMAN. His STORY OF THE NEGRO for young people received the Newberry Award. His essays have appeared in the *American Scholar*, the *Saturday Review*, and numerous other publications.

Another possible candidate might be J. Saunders Redding, novelist, historian and critic, with numerous books.

Or Gwendolyn Brooks who has received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, written a charming novel, and whose SELECTED POEMS Harper and Row is publishing this fall.

There is also novelist Ann Petry who has been writing and publishing for a number of years.

The novel you mention in your letter I personally thought was a "holy horror" and as full of unnecessary vulgarity as THE CARPETBAGGERS.

Cordial regards to you ever,

November 8, 1963

The American Academy of Arts and Letters cordially invites the members of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and their wives (or husbands) for luncheon on Friday, December 6, 1963, at the Academy building, 633 West 155th Street, New York City. Cocktails will be served at 1:00 P. M. in the Hassam Room, luncheon at 1:15 P. M. in the library.

Luncheon guests will also be welcome at the reading of commemorative tributes in honor of:

Van Wyck Brooks by Lewis Mumford
Robert Frost by Mark Van Doren
Edith Hamilton by Joseph Wood Krutch
Lee Lawrie by Barry Faulkner
Henry R. Shepley by Gilmore Clarke
Chauncey Brewster Tinker by Thornton Wilder
William Carlos Williams by Robert Penn Warren

If you intend to be present at the reading of the tributes, please be here by 11:30 A. M. as no one will be seated after the readings have begun.

The exhibition in the Art Gallery of pictures eligible for Childe Hassam Fund purchase will still be open in case you have not yet had an opportunity to see them.

Please make every effort to attend and respond on the enclosed slip.

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS

633 WEST 155 STREET · NEW YORK 32 · NEW YORK

Just a reminder that you have promised to attend the
dinner meeting

on Wednesday, November 13th, at 6:30 o'clock

at the Knickerbocker Club, 2 East 62 Street, New York

Please telephone AUdubon 6-1480 or telegraph collect to the address above if
you find you cannot be present.

Felicia Geffen, Assistant Secretary

THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS

THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS

633 WEST 155 STREET • NEW YORK 32 • NEW YORK

November 18, 1963

To the Members of the Academy and the Institute:

The Blashfield address is one of the most important features
of the May Ceremonial. In order to assist them in choosing a speaker,
the Board of Directors of the Academy and the Council of the Institute
would like to receive suggestions from the membership.

The person chosen should be a man or woman of great
distinction, a good speaker who may be depended upon to give a thought-
ful and original speech.

If you have any name to propose, kindly send it to me as
promptly as possible.

MEMORANDUM

We have received some interesting comments on Mr. Rosenthal's
offer to endow a prize for a young dramatist whose work has not
yet received due recognition. Elmer Rice has had some experience
in the field, and his letter, enclosed with the others, seems to
offer a practical method of procedure if we should decide to award
the prize. The question that remains is whether, from the dozen
members of the Institute with special experience in the theatre,
we could recruit a jury of three members, one of whom would be
changed each year--more or less like the jury of architects that
gives the Brunner Award.

Everyone seems to agree that the prize should be
limited to the drama and should not include motion pictures or
television plays. We should be grateful for further comments
that could be submitted to the Council, which is charged with
making a final ruling.

MALCOLM COWLEY

ELMER RICE

815 LONG RIDGE ROAD

STAMFORD, CONN.

November 21, 1963.

Dear Malcolm:

I'm very much in favor of Mr. Rosenthal's proposed award to young dramatists. All young writers have a tough time of it, but whereas a poet, novelist or short story writer has a good chance of being published somewhere if his work has merit, the odds are all against a beginning playwright, in the present economic state of the theatre, having his plays produced - particularly, if they are experimental or "difficult".

About twenty years ago, I was on an Institute committee that recommended grants for young writers. I had heard about a newcomer, named Tennessee Williams, whose play *Battle of Angels* had been produced by the Theatre Guild in Boston, but had never been brought to New York. I did not see the production, but I got hold of a script, the reading of which left no doubt in my mind about the talent of the author. Accordingly, the Institute, on my recommendation, made a grant to Williams - (for $1500., I think,) He was hard up at the time, and the grant was a great boon to him, and so, of course, was the recognition, which as you know does a hell of a lot for a writer's morale. (Incidentally, the play was revised and produced many years later as *Orpheus Descending*.

Also, I have been for many years, the drama advisor of the John May Whitney Foundation, which gives grants in the arts and in the academic field to non-Aryans. I read four or five plays each year and have several times recommended grants that have been useful to struggling young writers of ability.

I mention these things to make the point that the award procedure presents no great difficulty. An experienced playwright can base a pretty sound judgment on the reading of a play script. And there are enough qualified members of the Institute from whom a committee of three (rotating perhaps) could be drawn. Reading a few scripts each year would not be too onerous a task.

Scripts could be recommended (and supplied) by the New Dramatists Committee (which has graduated such writers as Robert Anderson, William Inge, and, I believe, Paddy Chayewsky) and by the more responsible dramatic agents: Harold Freedman, Leah Salisbury, Audrey Wood, Miriam Howell. So I think we should do it.

I'd like to add, however, that I am strongly opposed to including motion picture or television scripts in the works to be considered. Almost no creative writing is done in these fields, and I think it is important for the high artistic standards of the Institute to be maintained.

I'll be glad to discuss the whole subject further with you if it would be helpful.

Best regards.

Yours,

The National Institute of Arts and Letters

633 WEST 155 STREET
NEW YORK, N. Y. 10032

January 15, 1964

Dear Mr. Hughes:

I am writing as chairman of the departmental committee for literature of the Institute, about one of our little responsibilities: the screening of the foreign writers proposed by our fellow members for honorary membership. There are two vacancies, and the Board of the Academy and the Council of the Institute will want four recommendations by us; and customarily they observe our order of preference.

It has seemed to me (and to Miss Geffen) laborious and unnecessary to summon you to a meeting, with no other business than this.

Last month, after a meeting of the General Nominating Committee, I discussed the matter with Elmer Rice and Miss Bogan, departmental committee members like yourself, but of course we were not a quorum; indeed we scarcely amounted to a caucus, we were too tentative. Mr. Rice only wanted Herbert Read, Miss Bogan enthusiastically favored Borjes, I wanted Tanizaki and Simenon.

I enclose the entire list for your consideration, in the form of a ballot, with the names of the proposers (leaving out the names of seconders, in order not to clutter the page). Will you please mark it in the order of your preference? I will submit the top four as voted on by the committee to the Board and the Council, which in turn will ask for the approval of the membership at large.

GW:lk

Mr. Langston Hughes
20 East 127 Street
New York 35, N. Y.

Off-Broadway JERICO-JIM CROW with no breathing space from morn to midnight. And lecturing again this season---to recoup show biz loses---I've had no time to go anywhere. I was sorry to miss some of the Institute's meetings.

February 3, 1964

Langston Hughes

Dear Felicia:

Tomorrow I am taking off for a poetry reading tour to Virginia, then the Middle West and, unfortunately for the request you make of me on behalf of our President, I will be in and out of New York most of February---it being Negro History Week and Brotherhood Week month when most Negro speakers are continuously engaged. So it would not be feasible for me to promise to write or deliver a tribute to Dr. DuBois on the occasion of his Memorial.

However, my first published poem in a national magazine, THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS, was printed in 1921 in _The Crisis_ under the editorship of Dr. DuBois, and in my first book, THE WEARY BLUES (Knopf, 1926) this poem was dedicated to him. Were I to appear on the Memorial program, the poem alone I think would be my tribute to him. I am enclosing a copy for Malcolm.

This seems to have been about the busiest winter of my life (all on account of show business) going right from all the problems of the late TAMBOURINES TO GLORY right into the Off-Broadway JERICO-JIM CROW with no breathing space from morn to midnight. And lecturing again this season---to recoup show biz loses---I've had no time to go anywhere. I was sorry to miss some of the Institute's meetings.

With cordial regards to you,

April 17, 1964

The Directors of the Academy cordially invite the members
of the National Institute of Arts and Letters and their wives (or husbands)
to attend a luncheon preceding the Ceremonial on Wednesday, May 20th.

The annual Ceremonial of the Academy and the Institute will
be held at 3:00 o'clock in the auditorium. We have made arrangements
to provide more comfortable chairs on the stage, on risers that will
permit better vision. The public address system will be improved
and we are limiting the time of the program to an hour and a half.
Members are also invited to attend the opening of exhibitions in the
Art Gallery and Museum at 5:00 o'clock.

Please signify on the enclosed slip whether or not you will
attend the various functions.

Amer. Acad. of Arts and Letters

Mr. Langston Hughes

20 East 127 Street

New York, N. Y. 10035

<table><tr><td>CLASS OF SERVICE</td></tr><tr><td>This is a fast message unless its deferred character is indicated by the proper symbol.</td></tr></table>

WESTERN UNION
TELEGRAM

W. P. MARSHALL, PRESIDENT

<table><tr><td colspan="2">SYMBOLS</td></tr><tr><td>DL</td><td>= Day Letter</td></tr><tr><td>NL</td><td>= Night Letter</td></tr><tr><td>LT</td><td>= International Letter Telegram</td></tr></table>

1201 (4-60)

The filing time shown in the date line on domestic telegrams is LOCAL TIME at point of origin. Time of receipt is LOCAL TIME at point of destination

(25) =

GPA 150 BE468 = XN GPA 124

(NB259) DL PD 4 EXTRA AR NEW YORK NY 21 256P EST =

LANGSTON HUGHES =

1964 DEC 21 PM 5 37

20 EAST 127 ST (HB) NYK =

HAVE YOU HEARD THAT CARL VAN VECHTEN DIED THIS MORNING IN =HIS SLEEP. WE HOPE YOU WILL WRITE THE COMMEMORATIVE TRIBUTE, =ABOUT TWO PRINTED PAGES IN LENGTH, FOR OUR PROCEEDINGS WHICH =GO TO PRESS DECEMBER 30TH =

FELICIA GEFFEN NATIONAL INSTITUTE =OF ARTS AND LETTERS 633 WEST 155 ST =

YES I WILL WRITE THE VAN VECHTEN TRIBUTE FOR YOU

LANGSTON HUGHES

THE COMPANY WILL APPRECIATE SUGGESTIONS FROM ITS PATRONS CONCERNING ITS SERVICE

June 24, 1965

Dear Langston:

Mr. William Maxwell, Chairman of the Departmental Committee for Literature of the Institute, would like to call a meeting of the Committee in September to go over the nominations that have been made for regular membership and also to screen the nominations for honorary membership.

Please check on the enclosed card which days are convenient for you, marking more than one, if possible, so that we may secure a quorum. The dates suggested are: Thursday, September 23; Thursday, September 30; Tuesday, September 21; or Tuesday, September 28. The 23rd is the most convenient date for the Chairman, but if this is not agreeable to everyone he will change his schedule to any of the other dates. If suitable for all it could be a luncheon meeting starting at one o'clock, but if you prefer an afternoon meeting please let me know.

FG:1k

March 16, 1966

Dear Mr. Kennan:

As a creative artist in an accredited
college who might benefit from assistance
such as that proposed by the National
Council of Arts, I suggest Mr. Arna Bontemps,
currently librarian of Fisk University,
Nashville, Tennessee, and I enclose infor-
mation concerning him.

I also suggest an artist and sculptor
of considerable talent:

Mr. Bruce Breland,
Department of Art,
Southern Illinois University,
Carbondale, Illinois, 62903.

WIRE---DELIVER AFTER 9 A. M.

WILLIAM MELVIN KELLEY,
455 West 148th Street,
New York City.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO GAZE UPON
WILLIMA FAULKNER IN THE FLESH
AND HEAR ALDOUS HUXLEY SPEAK
AND SEE PAULE MARSHALL GET AN
AWARD AT THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
CEREMONIES TODAY PHONE ME
BETWEEN ELEVEN THIRTY AND NOON
AS I HAVE RESERVED TICKET FOR
THE ANNUAL GOINGS ON THEREAT

if you would like to attend this afternoon
LANGSTON at three