Noted Poet Langston Hughes Grilled by Joe McCarthy, Bends But Does Not Break
The noted poet Langston Hughes, one of the leading African-American literary figures, was grilled by Senator Joe McCarthy and his committee on this day. Hughes, for the most part, maintained his dignity (as many other witnesses did not), but yielded on some important points.
In the 1930s and until about 1950, Hughes had been an outspoken critic of racism in America and the failure of democracy on this issue. He was associated with leftist causes, but was never a member of the Communist Party. Hughes put political themes in a number of his poems and other writings, which was the reason why Senator McCarthy subpoenaed him to testify. The hearing on this day was one of two that were held in executive sessions (the transcripts were made public in 2003); Hughes then testified in a public session on March 26th.
The principal focus on McCarthy’s investigation was the State Department (which he believed had “lost” Eastern Europe and China to Communists), and in this instance the libraries the department maintained around the world to help people better understand the U.S. The State Department maintained 150 libraries in 63 countries. McCarthy eventually argued that 30,000 books in those libraries were “tainted” by leftist ideology. McCarthy’s investigation found that sixteen different books by Hughes were in 51 different State Department libraries (for a total of about 200 copies).
In his testimony, Hughes stated honestly that he had never been a member of the Communist Party, and had cut his leftist associations gradually until ending them completely around 1950. He stood his ground in maintaining that “I believe in an America that changes as Americans want it to change,” and that the desire for change was not “un-American.” When Senator McCarthy asked if some of his books “largely followed at times some aspects of the Communist line” “should be on our shelves throughout the world,” Hughes capitulated and replied “I would certainly say “No’.” Hughes’s concession to McCarthy, according to his biographer, was driven by the fact that he had the careers of people who tried to fight McCarthy (and also HUAC) destroyed.
In the end, largely as a result of an outrageous tour of State Department libraries in Europe by two of McCarthy’ aides, the State Department removed several hundred books from its overseas libraries, many were “pulped,” and eleven were actually burned. See the tour by his aides Roy Cohn and G. David Schine at April 5, 1953. See also President Eisenhower’s indirect rebuke in his graduation address at Dartmouth College (“Don’t Join the Book Burners“).
Learn more about Langston Hughes: Arnold Rampersand, The Life of Langston Hughes, V. II, 1941-1967, I Dream a World (1988)
And visit the Langston Hughes Society web site.
Learn more about Joe McCarthy and “McCarthyism:” David Oshinsky, A Conspiracy So Immense: The World of Joe McCarthy (1983)
Read Langston Hughes’ poetry: Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (1994)