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99-638: A prolific writer, Ward composed more than thirty plays and co-founded the Negro Playwrights Company with Langston Hughes , Paul Robeson and Richard Wright . His best known works are the drama Big White Fog (1938), produced by the Negro Unit of the Federal Theatre Project in Chicago as well the musical Our Lan' (1947) which premiered on Broadway at New York's Royale Theatre . Ward

198-479: A WASP category. He was attracted more to the African-American people and neighborhood of Harlem than to his studies, but he continued writing poetry. Harlem was a center of vibrant cultural life. Hughes worked at various odd jobs before serving a brief tenure as a crewman aboard the S.S. Malone in 1923, spending six months traveling to West Africa and Europe. In Europe, Hughes left the S.S. Malone for

297-567: A segregated America. Many of his lesser-known political writings have been collected in two volumes published by the University of Missouri Press and reflect his attraction to Communism. An example is the poem "A New Song". In 1932, Hughes became part of a group of black people who went to the Soviet Union to make a film depicting the plight of African Americans in the United States. Hughes

396-528: A slave trader of Clark County , who Hughes claimed to be Jewish . Hughes's maternal grandmother, Mary Patterson , was of African-American, French, English and Native American descent. One of the first women to attend Oberlin College , she married Lewis Sheridan Leary , also of mixed-race descent, before her studies. In 1859, Lewis Leary joined John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in West Virginia, where he

495-608: A brief farewell message entitled "el gran poeta de raza negra" ("the great poet of the black race"). Hughes was also involved in other Communist-led organizations such as the John Reed Clubs and the League of Struggle for Negro Rights . He was more of a sympathizer than an active participant. He signed a 1938 statement supporting Joseph Stalin 's purges and joined the American Peace Mobilization in 1940 working to keep

594-609: A busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel . Hughes's earlier work had been published in magazines and was about to be collected into his first book of poetry when he encountered poet Vachel Lindsay , with whom he shared some poems. Impressed, Lindsay publicized his discovery of a new black poet. The following year, Hughes enrolled in Lincoln University , a historically black university in Chester County, Pennsylvania . He joined

693-529: A degree program despite his lack of a high-school education, the young man declined, citing the unendurable isolation suffered by a black man in an all-white school. Following his departure from the University of Wisconsin in 1933, Ward relocated again, this time to Chicago's South Side, where he used some connections in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to become the recreation director for

792-593: A direct result of the scant commercial viability of his social realist style, largely serious tone, and left-leaning politics. In fact, Ward was among those "black-listed" during the Red Scare of the McCarthy era . As a result of this extended marginalization, Ward continually struggled to earn a living as a writer, and eventually fell out of the public eye. Nevertheless, Ward continued to live and work in Chicago, teaching drama classes for children there in 1963, helping to found

891-683: A general pessimism about race relations, as well as a sardonic realism. He also became an advisory board member to the (then) newly formed San Francisco Workers' School (later the California Labor School ). In 1935, Hughes received a Guggenheim Fellowship . The same year that Hughes established his theatre troupe in Los Angeles, he realized an ambition related to films by co-writing the screenplay for Way Down South , co-written with Clarence Muse , African-American Hollywood actor and musician. Hughes believed his failure to gain more work in

990-473: A hero and an example to be emulated within their own work. One of these young black writers ( Loften Mitchell ) observed of Hughes: Langston set a tone, a standard of brotherhood and friendship and cooperation, for all of us to follow. You never got from him, 'I am the Negro writer,' but only 'I am a Negro writer.' He never stopped thinking about the rest of us. Hughes was drawn to Communism as an alternative to

1089-697: A lecture on the suppression of African-American voting rights in the South at the John Reed Club , a semi-national, Marxist gathering for writers, artists, and intellectuals, named after the American journalist John Reed . After major revisions, Ward entered his one-act play called Sick 'n Tiahd (1937) in the Chicago Repertory Company's annual theatre contest, where it earned second prize, coming in close behind Pulitzer Prize -winner Paul Green's work, Hymn to

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1188-422: A poem titled Roar, China! which called for China's resistance to the full-scale invasion which Japan had launched less than two months earlier. Hughes used China as a metonym for the "global colour line." According to academic Gao Yunxiang, Hughes's poem was integral to the global circulation of Roar, China! as an artistic theme. In November 1937, Hughes departed Spain for which El Mono Azul published

1287-516: A racial chauvinist. He found some new writers, among them James Baldwin , lacking in such pride, over-intellectual in their work, and occasionally vulgar. Hughes wanted young black writers to be objective about their race, but not to scorn it or flee it. He understood the main points of the Black Power movement of the 1960s, but believed that some of the younger black writers who supported it were too angry in their work. Hughes's work Panther and

1386-573: A role model, collaborator, and dear friend to Bontemps. In 1926 Bontemps married Alberta Johnson , with whom he had six children. From oldest to youngest they are: Joan, Paul, Poppy, Camille, Connie and Alex. In 1931, he left New York and his teaching position at the Harlem Academy as the Great Depression deepened. He and his family moved to Huntsville , Alabama , where he had a teaching position at Oakwood Junior College for three years. In

1485-472: A sequence about Hughes in the radio series Destination Freedom . In 1943, Hughes began publishing stories about a character he called Jesse B. Semple, often referred to and spelled "Simple", the everyday black man in Harlem who offered musings on topical issues of the day. Although Hughes seldom responded to requests to teach at colleges, in 1947 he taught at Atlanta University . In 1949, he spent three months at

1584-464: A series of Midwestern small towns. His father left the family soon after the boy was born and later divorced Carrie. The senior Hughes traveled to Cuba and then Mexico, seeking to escape the enduring racism in the United States . After the separation, Hughes's mother traveled, seeking employment. Langston was raised mainly in Lawrence, Kansas , by his maternal grandmother, Mary Patterson Langston. Through

1683-559: A temporary stay in Paris. There he met and had a romance with Anne Marie Coussey, a British-educated African from a well-to-do Gold Coast family; they subsequently corresponded, but she eventually married Hugh Wooding , a promising Trinidadian lawyer. Wooding later served as chancellor of the University of the West Indies . During his time in England in the early 1920s, Hughes became part of

1782-592: A toning down of Soviet propaganda on racial segregation in America. Hughes and his fellow Blacks were not informed of the reasons for the cancellation, but he and Koestler worked it out for themselves. Hughes also managed to travel to China, Japan, and Korea before returning to the States. Hughes's poetry was frequently published in the CPUSA newspaper and he was involved in initiatives supported by Communist organizations, such as

1881-551: A year. While at Columbia in 1921, Hughes managed to maintain a B+ grade average. He published poetry in the Columbia Daily Spectator under a pen name. He left in 1922 because of racial prejudice among students and teachers. He was denied a room on campus because he was black. Eventually he settled in Hartley Hall , but he still suffered from racism among his classmates, who seemed hostile to anyone who did not fit into

1980-454: Is considered by some as his best work, Black Thunder . This novel explores a slave rebellion that took place in 1800 near Richmond, Virginia , led by Gabriel Prosser , an uneducated, enslaved field worker and coachman. It describes Prosser's attempt to conduct a slave army to raid an armory in Richmond, in order to defend themselves against any assailants. A fellow slave betrayed Prosser, causing

2079-449: Is pride in the African-American identity and its diverse culture. "My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind", Hughes is quoted as saying. He confronted racial stereotypes, protested social conditions, and expanded African America's image of itself; a "people's poet" who sought to reeducate both audience and artist by lifting

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2178-648: The Cavalcade of the American Negro and other works. They created part of what became a massive collection of writings on the "Negro in Illinois". In 1938, following the publication of children's book Sad-Faced Boy (1937), Bontemps was granted a Rosenwald fellowship to work on his novel, Drums at Dusk (1939). This was based on Toussaint L’Ouverture 's slave rebellion in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (which became

2277-524: The Abraham Lincoln Centre . Though his first position involved teaching speech and dramatic writing to area youth, Ward eventually gained a position with the Negro Unit of Chicago's branch of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP). A New Deal program to fund theatre and other live artistic performances in the United States during the Great Depression , the FTP was one of five Federal One projects sponsored by

2376-806: The Harlem Academy (present-day Northeastern Academy) in New York City. While teaching, Bontemps continued to write and publish poetry. In both 1926 and 1927, he received the Alexander Pushkin Prize of Opportunity , an academic journal published by the National Urban League . In 1926 he won the Crisis Poetry Prize. In New York, Bontemps met other writers who became lifelong friends, including Countee Cullen , Langston Hughes , W. E. B. Du Bois , Zora Neale Hurston , James Weldon Johnson , Claude McKay and Jean Toomer . Hughes became

2475-520: The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, alongside those of his contemporaries: Zora Neale Hurston , Wallace Thurman , Claude McKay , Countee Cullen , Richard Bruce Nugent , and Aaron Douglas . Except for McKay, they worked together also to create the short-lived magazine Fire!! Devoted to Younger Negro Artists . Hughes and his contemporaries had different goals and aspirations than the black middle class . Hughes and his fellows tried to depict

2574-637: The James Weldon Johnson Collection. During this time, Bontemps published numerous novels varying in genre. Slappy Hooper (1946), and Sam Patch (1951) were two children's books that he co wrote with Jack Conroy . Individually he published Lonesome Boy (1955) and Mr. Kelso’s Lion (1970), two other children's books. Simultaneously he was writing pieces targeted for teenagers, including biographies on George Washington Carver , Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington . His other pieces of this time were Golden Slippers (1941), Story of

2673-559: The Omega Psi Phi fraternity. After Hughes earned a B.A. degree from Lincoln University in 1929, he returned to New York. Except for travels to the Soviet Union and parts of the Caribbean , he lived in Harlem as his primary home for the remainder of his life. During the 1930s, he became a resident of Westfield, New Jersey for a time, sponsored by his patron Charlotte Osgood Mason . Some academics and biographers believe that Hughes

2772-636: The Reconstruction Era of the United States South. The script earned him a prestigious Theatre Guild Award in 1945 and managed to generate enough interest for the work to premiere at the Henry Street Settlement Playhouse in 1947 and, after a successful showing, transferred to Broadway's Royale Theatre for 42 performances. Although Our Lan' had a relatively short run, the play's premiere on Broadway distinguished Ward as one of

2871-745: The Scottsboro boys , nine African Americans, were charged with rape of two white women and being prosecuted in a case that became renowned for racial injustice. During this time, Bontemps had many friends visit and stay with him while they came to Alabama to protest this trial. The school administration was worried about his many out-of-state visitors. In later years, Bontemps said that the administration at Oakwood Junior College had demanded he burn many of his private books to demonstrate that he had given up radical politics. Bontemps refused to do so. He resigned from his teaching position and returned with his family to California in 1934. In 1936 Bontemps published what

2970-782: The South Side Center for the Performing Arts in 1967, and serving as playwright-in-residence for the Free Southern Theater based in New Orleans during the 1970s. In 1975 he was recognized as an Outstanding Pioneer of Black Theatre, and, in 1982, was given the DuSable Museum Writers Seminar and Poetry Festival Award for Excellence in Drama. Ward died of a heart attack in Chicago on May 8, 1983. Since Ward's heyday in

3069-459: The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools as a visiting lecturer. Between 1942 and 1949, Hughes was a frequent writer and served on the editorial board of Common Ground , a literary magazine focused on cultural pluralism in the United States published by the Common Council for American Unity (CCAU). He wrote novels, short stories, plays, poetry, operas, essays, and works for children. With

Theodore Ward - Misplaced Pages Continue

3168-554: The University of Utah in 1930. While there, his professor, Louis Zucker, encouraged Ward to apply for the prestigious Zona Gale Fellowship in creative writing at the University of Wisconsin . Ward's essay won the prize, and he departed for the one-year program in Madison, where he studied literature and dramatic arts in addition to working as a script writer and voice actor for WIBA-Radio Madison . Although Zona Gale personally extended Ward's fellowship and arranged for him to stay and enter

3267-483: The "New York Suitcase Theater" with playwright Paul Peters, artist Jacob Burck , and writer (soon-to-be underground spy) Whittaker Chambers , an acquaintance from Columbia. In 1932, he was part of a board to produce a Soviet film on "Negro Life" with Malcolm Cowley , Floyd Dell , and Chambers. In 1931, Prentiss Taylor and Langston Hughes created the Golden Stair Press , issuing broadsides and books featuring

3366-702: The "low-life" in their art, that is, the real lives of blacks in the lower social-economic strata. They criticized the divisions and prejudices within the black community based on skin color . Hughes wrote what would be considered their manifesto, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain", published in The Nation in 1926: The younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly, too. The tom-tom cries, and

3465-691: The 1940s his play have been revived infrequently. Shortly before his death, there was a staged reading of Big White Fog in New York City and, in 1995, the Penumbra Theatre Company's artistic director Lou Bellamy directed a production of the play for The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota . A decade later, Big White Fog received its international debut when it was performed at the Almeida Theatre in London in 2007. Shortly after Ward's death,

3564-654: The Darker Races"), in The Crisis , official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He depicted hope as an "empty bark" drifting meaninglessly with no purpose, referring to his confusion about his career. Bontemps, along with many other West Coast intellectuals, traveled to New York during the Harlem Renaissance . After graduation, he moved to New York in 1924 to teach at

3663-760: The Hungarian author Arthur Koestler , then a Communist who was given permission to travel there. As later noted in Koestler's autobiography, Hughes, together with some forty other Black Americans, had originally been invited to the Soviet Union to produce a Soviet film on "Negro Life", but the Soviets dropped the film idea because of their 1933 success in getting the US to recognize the Soviet Union and establish an embassy in Moscow. This entailed

3762-542: The Langston Hughes Renaissance Collection. Bontemps was initiated as a member of the Zeta Rho chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia fraternity at Fisk in 1954. He served at Fisk until 1964 and would continue to return occasionally. After retiring from Fisk University in 1966, Bontemps worked at the University of Illinois (Chicago Circle) . He later moved to Yale University , where he served as curator of

3861-568: The Lash , posthumously published in 1967, was intended to show solidarity with these writers, but with more skill and devoid of the most virulent anger and racial chauvinism some showed toward whites. Hughes continued to have admirers among the larger younger generation of black writers. He often helped writers by offering advice and introducing them to other influential persons in the literature and publishing communities. This latter group, including Alice Walker , whom Hughes discovered, looked upon Hughes as

3960-655: The National War Labor Board during World War II . Like her husband, Mary Sangigian Ward dedicated much time and energy to social justice reforms and was a major contributor to the Scottsboro Defense , the labor movement, and the fight for Social Security legislation. The couple had two children together, Elise Virginia and Laura Louise. Following their marriage, Ward and his new wife returned to Chicago where he began work on his next major play, Our Lan' in 1941. The outbreak of World War II , however, delayed

4059-522: The Negro (1948), Chariot in the Sky (1951) and Famous Negro Athletes (1964). Critics highly praised his Story of the Negro , which received the Jane Addams Children's Book Award and was a Newbery Honor Book. Bontemps worked with Langston Hughes on pieces geared toward adults. They co-edited The Poetry of the Negro (1949) – described by The New York Times as "a stimulating cross-section of

Theodore Ward - Misplaced Pages Continue

4158-615: The Rising Sun (1936). The short play impressed Ward's fellow writer and John Reed member Richard Wright , who insisted that Ward keep composing for the theatre, even introducing him to the South Side Writers Club , an artistic cooperative of aspiring black writers that included Wright, Arna Bontemps , Frank Marshall Davis , Owen Dodson , George Norford , and Margaret Walker . With their influence and encouragement, Ward completed his first full-length work, Big White Fog , which

4257-465: The Theater Center at Columbia College Chicago recognized Ward's legacy in the professional theatre by sponsoring The Theodore Ward Prize for African-American Playwrights. Since 1985, the competition has offered a generous cash prize and a professional production for the best work of emerging playwrights of African-American descent who choose to write about the black experience in America. In 2015, Ward

4356-564: The U.S. from participating in World War II . Hughes initially did not favor black American involvement in the war because of the persistence of discriminatory U.S. Jim Crow laws and racial segregation and disfranchisement throughout the South. He came to support the war effort and black American participation after deciding that war service would aid their struggle for civil rights at home. The scholar Anthony Pinn has noted that Hughes, together with Lorraine Hansberry and Richard Wright ,

4455-495: The WPA that shared a primary goal of creating new jobs for out-of-work artists, writers, and directors; however, these government subsidized programs also served several secondary aims, namely entertaining poor families and creating socially relevant artworks for a changing America. Ward participated first as an actor with the FTP, but eventually began working on a short theatre piece that he had been inspired to write in 1934 after attending

4554-494: The abolitionist John Brown that was later produced in Chicago at the Skyloft Theatre in 1951. In all, Ward wrote more than 30 theatrical productions, numerous essays, several volumes of poetry and two incomplete folk operas. Despite the volume of his work, however, he remains little appreciated by contemporary audiences and scholars, due in part to the lack of popular support for the African-American theatre movement, but also as

4653-676: The artwork of Prentiss Taylor and the texts of Langston Hughes. In 1932 they issued The Scottsboro Limited based on the trial of the Scottsboro Boys . In 1932, Hughes and Ellen Winter wrote a pageant to Caroline Decker in an attempt to celebrate her work with the striking coal miners of the Harlan County War , but it was never performed. It was judged to be a "long, artificial propaganda vehicle too complicated and too cumbersome to be performed." Maxim Lieber became his literary agent, 1933–1945 and 1949–1950. (Chambers and Lieber worked in

4752-494: The basis of his poetry of racial pride. In 1930, his first novel, Not Without Laughter , won the Harmon Gold Medal for literature. At a time before widespread arts grants, Hughes gained the support of private patrons and he was supported for two years prior to publishing this novel. The protagonist of the story is a boy named Sandy, whose family must deal with a variety of struggles due to their race and class, in addition to relating to one another. In 1931, Hughes helped form

4851-434: The black American oral tradition and drawing from the activist experiences of her generation, Mary Langston instilled in her grandson a lasting sense of racial pride. Imbued by his grandmother with a duty to help his race, Hughes identified with neglected and downtrodden black people all his life, and glorified them in his work. He lived most of his childhood in Lawrence. In his 1940 autobiography The Big Sea , he wrote: "I

4950-407: The black expatriate community . In November 1924, he returned to the U.S. to live with his mother in Washington, D.C. After assorted odd jobs, he gained white-collar employment in 1925 as a personal assistant to historian Carter G. Woodson at the Association for the Study of African American Life and History . As the work demands limited his time for writing, Hughes quit the position to work as

5049-549: The book, Madrid 37 , signed in pencil and annotated as II [Roman numeral two] has appeared on the rare book market. In Chicago, Hughes founded The Skyloft Players in 1941, which sought to nurture black playwrights and offer theatre "from the black perspective." Soon thereafter, he was hired to write a column for the Chicago Defender , in which he presented some of his "most powerful and relevant work", giving voice to black people. The column ran for twenty years. Hughes also mentored writer Richard Durham who would later produce

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5148-613: The boy's early manuscripts calling it, "the work of the devil." When Ward was 12 years old, his mother died unexpectedly during childbirth and, in the ensuing chaos, the young man left home to travel around the United States by freight train. He headed north, supporting himself with occasional work as a boot-black, hotel bellboy, and barber-shop porter, but eventually ended up in jail for bootlegging in Salt Lake City, Utah . Ward rediscovered his love for writing, and eventually amassed an impressive corpus of poetry, short stories, and essays that helped him to gain entry into an extension program at

5247-489: The creative community in Harlem. His first poetry collection, The Weary Blues , was published in 1926. Hughes eventually graduated from Lincoln University . In addition to poetry, Hughes wrote plays and published short story collections, novels, and several nonfiction works. From 1942 to 1962, as the civil rights movement gained traction, Hughes wrote an in-depth weekly opinion column in a leading black newspaper, The Chicago Defender . Like many African-Americans, Hughes

5346-527: The drive to free the Scottsboro Boys . Partly as a show of support for the Republican faction during the Spanish Civil War , in 1937 Hughes traveled to Spain as a correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American and other various African-American newspapers. In August 1937, he broadcast live from Madrid alongside Harry Haywood and Walter Benjamin Garland . When Hughes was in Spain a Spanish Republican cultural magazine, El Mono Azul , featured Spanish translations of his poems. On 29 August 1937, Hughes wrote

5445-426: The early 1930s, Bontemps began to publish fiction, in addition to more poetry. He received a considerable amount of attention for his first novel, God Sends Sunday (1931). This novel explored the story of an African-American jockey named Little Augie who easily earns money and carelessly squanders it. Little Augie ends up wandering through the black sporting world when his luck as a jockey eventually runs out. Bontemps

5544-403: The encouragement of his best friend and writer, Arna Bontemps , and patron and friend, Carl Van Vechten , he wrote two volumes of autobiography, The Big Sea and I Wonder as I Wander , as well as translating several works of literature into English. With Bontemps, Hughes co-edited the 1949 anthology The Poetry of the Negro , described by The New York Times as "a stimulating cross-section of

5643-404: The fastest train, the Cannon Ball. Bontemps returned to graduate school and earned a master's degree in library science from the University of Chicago in 1943. He was appointed as head librarian at Fisk University , a historically black college in Nashville , Tennessee . During his time there, he developed important collections and archives of African-American literature and culture, namely

5742-422: The few black writers that was able to get work produced on Broadway following the end of the Harlem Renaissance . Building on a string of honors that included an award as "Negro of the Year" (1947) and a Rockefeller Foundation National Theatre Conference Fellowship (1948), Ward also became the first Black dramatist to be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1949, which enabled him to write an eponymous play about

5841-469: The general public disapproved of its heavy-handed leftist rhetoric and, as a result, Big White Fog closed after only sixty-four performances, taking the still fledgling Negro Playwrights Company down in its wake. Ward's time in New York was not completely without success, however. Following a brief courtship, on June 15, 1940, Ward married Mary Sangigian, an Armenian-American artist and social activist from Bridgeport, Connecticut who would go on to work for

5940-432: The globe to encourage pride in their diverse black folk culture and black aesthetic . Hughes was one of the few prominent black writers to champion racial consciousness as a source of inspiration for black artists. His African-American race consciousness and cultural nationalism would influence many foreign black writers, including Jacques Roumain , Nicolás Guillén , Léopold Sédar Senghor , and Aimé Césaire . Along with

6039-616: The imaginative writing of the Negro" that demonstrates "talent to the point where one questions the necessity (other than for its social evidence) of the specialization of 'Negro' in the title" – and The Book of Negro Folklore (1958). Bontemps collaborated with Conroy and wrote a history of the migration of African-Americans in the United States called They Seek a City (1945). They later revised and published it as Anyplace But Here (1966). Bontemps also wrote 100 Years of Negro Freedom (1961) and edited Great Slave Narratives (1969) and The Harlem Renaissance Remembered (1972). In addition he

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6138-534: The imaginative writing of the Negro" that demonstrates "talent to the point where one questions the necessity (other than for its social evidence) of the specialization of 'Negro' in the title". From the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, Hughes's popularity among the younger generation of black writers varied even as his reputation increased worldwide. With the gradual advance toward racial integration , many black writers considered his writings of black pride and its corresponding subject matter out of date. They considered him

6237-432: The inaugural production of Ward's new collaborative project, the Negro Playwrights Company, a theatrical organization born out of the burgeoning culture of the Harlem Renaissance and featuring such up-and-comers as Wright, Paul Robeson , Langston Hughes , Powell Lindsay , and Edna Thomas among others. Although both critics and Ward's contemporaries celebrated the work for its somber realism and politically relevant tone,

6336-453: The increasingly incendiary productions of the Federal Theatre Project, and Ward promptly found himself out of a job. Determined to continue his theatrical experiments and bolstered by Wright's socialist agenda, Ward began searching for private funding and a New York venue to revive the Big White Fog . After a series of fundraisers and new alliances with New York artists, the play reopened Off-Broadway in 1940 at Harlem's Lincoln Theatre as

6435-466: The independent republic of Haiti ). This book received wider recognition than his other novels. Some critics viewed the plot as overdramatic, while others commended its characterizations. Bontemps struggled to make enough from his books to support his family. He was dismayed to gain little professional acknowledgement for his work despite being a prolific writer. He became discouraged as an African-American writer of this time. He started to believe that it

6534-446: The lives of siblings Popo and Fifina, in an easy to understand introduction to Haitian life for children. Bontemps continued writing children's novels and published You Can't Pet a Possum (1934), which followed a story of a boy and his pet dog living in a rural part of Alabama. During the early 1930s, African-American writers and intellectuals were discriminated against in Northern Alabama. Thirty miles from Huntsville in Decatur ,

6633-482: The lucrative movie trade was due to racial discrimination within the industry. In 1937 Hughes wrote the long poem, Madrid , his reaction to an assignment to write about black Americans volunteering in the Spanish Civil War . His poem, accompanied by 9 etchings evoking the pathos of the Spanish Civil War by Canadian artist Dalla Husband , was published in 1939 as a hardcover book Madrid 1937 , printed by Gonzalo Moré, Paris, intended to be an edition of 50. One example of

6732-411: The novel to support his family in Chicago , where he had moved with them shortly before publishing the book. He briefly taught in Chicago at the Shiloh Academy but did not stay at the school long, leaving for a job with the Illinois Writers' Project (IWP), under the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA hired writers to produce histories of states and major cities. The Illinois Project

6831-433: The official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" became Hughes's signature poem and was collected in his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues (1926). Hughes's first and last published poems appeared in The Crisis ; more of his poems were published in The Crisis than in any other journal. Hughes's life and work were enormously influential during

6930-536: The period that "the Negro was in vogue", which was later paraphrased as "when Harlem was in vogue." Growing up in a series of Midwestern towns, Hughes became a prolific writer at an early age. He moved to New York City as a young man, where he made his career. He graduated from high school in Cleveland , Ohio, and soon began studies at Columbia University in New York City. Although he dropped out, he gained notice from New York publishers, first in The Crisis magazine and then from book publishers, and became known in

7029-421: The play's first production and, in the interim, Ward was forced to take on odd jobs to support his new family. After brief stints as a factory laborer, a bootblack, and a writer for the Office of War Information, Ward eventually returned to teaching and helped to create several adult writing seminars that he led in Chicago and New Orleans. After the war's end, Ward was finally able to begin publicizing his play about

7128-565: The rebellion to be shut down. Prosser was captured by whites and lynched . In Bontemps' version, whites were compelled to admit that slaves were humans who had possibilities of a promising life. Black Thunder received many extraordinary reviews by both African-American and mainstream journals, for example, the Saturday Review of Literature . Despite these rave reviews, in the midst of the Depression, Bontemps did not earn enough from sales of

7227-538: The respect and support of black churches and organizations and avoid exacerbating his precarious financial situation, Hughes remained closeted . However, Arnold Rampersad , Hughes' primary biographer, concludes that the author was probably asexual and passive in his sexual relationships rather than homosexual, despite noting that he exhibited a preference for African-American men in his work and life, finding them "sexually fascinating". from "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (1920)  ... My soul has grown deep like

7326-678: The rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln — went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy — bosom turn all golden in the sunset. ... —in The Weary Blues (1926) First published in 1921 in The Crisis ,

7425-494: The theory of the black aesthetic into reality. The night is beautiful, So the faces of my people. The stars are beautiful, So the eyes of my people Beautiful, also, is the sun. Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people. —"My People" in The Crisis (October 1923) Hughes stressed a racial consciousness and cultural nationalism devoid of self-hate. His thought united people of African descent and Africa across

7524-408: The tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain free within ourselves. His poetry and fiction portrayed the lives of the working-class blacks in America, lives he portrayed as full of struggle, joy, laughter, and music. Permeating his work

7623-432: The underground together around 1934–1935.) Hughes's first collection of short stories was published in 1934 with The Ways of White Folks . He finished the book at "Ennesfree" a Carmel-by-the-Sea, California , cottage provided for a year by Noel Sullivan, another patron since 1933. These stories are a series of vignettes revealing the humorous and tragic interactions between whites and blacks. Overall, they are marked by

7722-721: The works of Senghor, Césaire, and other French-speaking writers of Africa and of African descent from the Caribbean, such as René Maran from Martinique and Léon Damas from French Guiana in South America, the works of Hughes helped to inspire the Négritude movement in France. A radical black self-examination was emphasized in the face of European colonialism . In addition to his example in social attitudes, Hughes had an important technical influence by his emphasis on folk and jazz rhythms as

7821-467: Was a Negro, and I liked Negroes very much." His father had hoped Hughes would choose to study at a university abroad and train for a career in engineering. He was willing to provide financial assistance to his son on these grounds, but did not support his desire to be a writer. Eventually, Hughes and his father came to a compromise: Hughes would study engineering, so long as he could attend Columbia. His tuition provided, Hughes left his father after more than

7920-700: Was a humanist "critical of belief in God. They provided a foundation for nontheistic participation in social struggle." Pinn has found that such writers are sometimes ignored in the narrative of American history that chiefly credits the civil rights movement to the work of affiliated Christian people. During World War II, Hughes became a proponent of the Double V campaign ; the double Vs referred to victory over Hitler abroad and victory over Jim Crow domestically. Arna Bontemps Arna Wendell Bontemps ( / b ɒ n ˈ t ɒ m / bon- TOM ) (October 13, 1902 – June 4, 1973)

8019-884: Was a schoolteacher. The family was Catholic , and Bontemps was baptized at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral . They would later become Seventh-day Adventists . When Bontemps was three years old, his family moved to Los Angeles, California , in the Great Migration of blacks out of the South and into cities of the North, Midwest and West. They settled in what became known as the Watts district. After attending public schools, Bontemps attended Pacific Union College in Angwin , California, where he graduated in 1923. He majored in English and minored in history, and he

8118-537: Was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry. Well, everyone knows, except us, that all Negroes have rhythm, so they elected me as class poet. During high school in Cleveland, Hughes wrote for the school newspaper, edited the yearbook, and began to write his first short stories, poetry, and dramatic plays. His first piece of jazz poetry, "When Sue Wears Red",

8217-473: Was active as an educator and activist for voting and rights for African Americans. His and Mary's daughter Caroline (known as Carrie) became a schoolteacher and married James Nathaniel Hughes (1871–1934). They had two children; the second was Langston Hughes, by most sources born in 1901 in Joplin, Missouri (though Hughes himself claims in his autobiography to have been born in 1902). Langston Hughes grew up in

8316-425: Was also a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity. Following his graduation, Bontemps met and befriended the author Wallace Thurman , founder of Fire!! magazine, in his job at Los Angeles Post Office. Bontemps later traveled to New York City , where he settled and became part of the Harlem Renaissance . In August 1924, at the age of 22, Bontemps published his first poem, "Hope" (originally called "A Record of

8415-594: Was also able to edit American Negro Poetry (1963), which was a popular anthology. He compiled his poetry in Personals (1963) and also wrote an introduction for a previous novel, Black Thunder , when it was republished in 1968. Bontemps died aged 71 on June 4, 1973, at his home in Nashville , from a myocardial infarction (heart attack) , while working on his collection of short fiction in The Old South (1973). Bontemps

8514-526: Was an American poet, novelist and librarian, and a noted member of the Harlem Renaissance . Bontemps was born in 1902 in Alexandria, Louisiana , into a Louisiana Creole family. His ancestors included free people of color and French colonists. His father was a contractor and sometimes would take his son to construction sites. As the boy got older, his father would take him along to speak-easies at night that featured jazz . His mother, Maria Carolina Pembroke,

8613-534: Was an adolescent. The family moved to the Fairfax neighborhood of Cleveland , Ohio , where he attended Central High School and was taught by Helen Maria Chesnutt , whom he found inspiring. His writing experiments began when he was young. While in grammar school in Lincoln, Hughes was elected class poet. He stated that in retrospect he thought it was because of the stereotype about African Americans having rhythm. I

8712-567: Was born in Thibodeaux, Louisiana , the sixth of eleven children to Everett Ward and his wife Mary Louise (née Pierre). His father had been born into slavery but, upon being granted freedom, became a schoolteacher and part-time salesman to support his growing family. As a result of his father's occupation, Ward was well-educated as a young boy and became interested in writing plays at a very early age. Ward's devout father staunchly disapproved of these artistic ambitions, however, and he once burned one of

8811-559: Was fatally wounded. Ten years later, in 1869, the widow Mary Patterson Leary married again, into the elite, politically active Langston family. Her second husband was Charles Henry Langston , of African-American, Euro-American and Native American ancestry. He and his younger brother, John Mercer Langston , worked for the abolitionist cause and helped lead the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society in 1858. After their marriage, Charles Langston moved with his family to Kansas, where he

8910-493: Was futile for him to attempt to address his writing to his own generation, so he chose to focus his serious writing on younger and more progressive audiences. Bontemps met Jack Conroy on the Illinois Writers’ Project, and in collaboration they wrote The Fast Sooner Hound (1942). This was a children's story about a hound dog, Sooner, who races and outruns trains. Embarrassed about this, the roadmaster puts him against

9009-570: Was hired to write the English dialogue for the film. The film was never made, but Hughes was given the opportunity to travel extensively through the Soviet Union and to the Soviet-controlled regions in Central Asia, the latter parts usually closed to Westerners. While there, he met Robert Robinson , an African American living in Moscow and unable to leave. In Turkmenistan , Hughes met and befriended

9108-634: Was homosexual and included homosexual codes in many of his poems, as did Walt Whitman , who, Hughes said, influenced his poetry. Hughes's story "Blessed Assurance" deals with a father's anger over his son's effeminacy and "queerness". Additionally, Sandra L. West, author of the Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance , contends that his homosexual love of black men is evidenced in a number of reported unpublished poems to an alleged black male lover. The biographer Aldrich argues that, in order to retain

9207-477: Was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. Langston Hughes James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri . One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry , Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance . He famously wrote about

9306-459: Was of mixed ancestry. Both of Hughes's paternal great-grandmothers were enslaved Africans, and both of his paternal great-grandfathers were white slave owners in Kentucky. According to Hughes, one of these men was Sam Clay, a Scottish-American whiskey distiller of Henry County , said to be a relative of statesman Henry Clay . The other putative paternal ancestor whom Hughes named was Silas Cushenberry,

9405-456: Was one of the most successful state projects; it employed numerous noted writers. The project work helped them survive economically, and most also worked on their own writing. Bontemps, in addition to other work for the IWP, oversaw such young writers as Richard Wright , Margaret Walker , Katherine Dunham , Fenton Johnson , Frank Yerby , Richard Durham , Kitty Chapelle, and Robert Lucas, in creating

9504-623: Was praised for his poetic style, his re-creation of the black language, and his distinguishing characters throughout this novel. However, despite the abundant amount of praise, W. E. B. Du Bois viewed it as "sordid" and equated it with other "decadent" novels of the Harlem Renaissance. Later in his career, Bontemps collaborated with Countee Cullen to create a dramatic adaption of the novel. Together in 1946 they published this adaption as St. Louis Woman . Bontemps also began to write several children's books. In 1932, he collaborated with Langston Hughes and wrote Popo and Fifina . This story followed

9603-575: Was produced in 1938 by the Negro Unit of the FTP to much local fanfare. The success of Big White Fog in Chicago prompted Ward to seek wider reaching theatrical success in New York City. He traveled east as an actor in the chorus of the FTP's 1939 production of The Swing Mikado , and settled in with Wright in Harlem where he was writing for the Communist newspaper, the Daily Worker . Without warning, however, Congress announced that they were shutting down

9702-625: Was unhappy for a long time, and very lonesome, living with my grandmother. Then it was that books began to happen to me, and I began to believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world in books—where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas." After the death of his grandmother, Hughes went to live with family friends, James and Auntie Mary Reed, for two years. Later, Hughes lived again with his mother Carrie in Lincoln, Illinois . She had remarried when he

9801-618: Was written while he was in high school. Hughes had a very poor relationship with his father, whom he seldom saw when a child. He lived briefly with his father in Mexico in 1919. Upon graduating from high school in June 1920, Hughes returned to Mexico to live with his father, hoping to convince him to support his plan to attend Columbia University . Hughes later said that, prior to arriving in Mexico, "I had been thinking about my father and his strange dislike of his own people. I didn't understand it, because I

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