African American folklore, 78–79, 136–37, 144
African American identity, 57, 64
African American literature, 4, 70, 243–44
African art, 88
Afro-Caribbean folklore, 144
Afrofuturism, 244
Agricultural, Mechanical and Normal School of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, 148
Alabama, 98–99, 101, 103–10, 111, 183
Albert and Charles Boni, 19
American Folklore Society, 99
American Indians, 71, 85, 151
American Legion Magazine, 234
Amsterdam News, 93
Anderson, Regina, 11
Anglo-African tradition, 42–43
Angus, Donald, 128
antiblack riots, 11
anti-Semitism, 151, 223–24
Appearances, 162
Arkansas, 102
Armstrong, Louis, 11
Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 49, 99
Author’s Guild, 205
Bailey, Sue, 154, 175
Baker, Josephine, 11, 72, 75, 201
Baldwin, James, 236
Baltimore, Maryland, 31, 120–21, 125
Baltimore Afro-American, 81
Bamville Club, 20
Banks, Paul, 208, 211–12
Baraka, Amiri, 34
Barnard College, 21, 61, 131, 137, 140
Barnes, Alfred C., 11, 19, 44, 54
Barthé, Richmond, 89, 129
Belo, Jane, 159, 177
Benchley, Robert, 10, 15
Bennett, Gwendolyn, 11, 50, 77, 79, 81, 109
Berkley, Alabama, 110–11, 112
Bernard, Emily, 53, 72, 76, 80
Berry, Faith, 170
Biddle, Francis, 86–87
Biddle, Katherine Garrison (née Katherine Chapin), 86–87, 129, 130, 154, 233
Biddle family, 87
“Big Sweet,” 141
Birmingham, Alabama, 222
Black and White, 222–23
black arts, 9, 11, 63–64, 78–79, 88, 136–37. See also African American culture; specific arts
identity and, 64
independence from white cultural norms, 62–64, 92
Negrophilia and, 71–72
superiority of, 70
Black Arts movement, 244
black comic culture, 64
black dance, 65
black folk art, 127
black language, 78–79, 176
black music, 54, 63, 65, 78–79. See also blues; jazz
black musicals, 163
blackness, 13
black theater, 161–62, 163. See also under specific authors
Black Thursday, 154
black volksgeist, 93
black writing, 12, 13. See also African American literature; Harlem Renaissance; specific authors
Blake, Eubie, 11, 51
Block, Harry, 189
blues, 14–15, 54, 62, 63, 65, 68, 92, 120–21, 136–37
Boas, Franz, 57–60, 70–71, 99, 132, 138, 140, 147, 161, 224, 230
Bontemps, Arna, 5, 22, 48, 148, 175, 227–28, 233, 239
The Book of Negro Folklore, 6, 235–37, 241
The Poetry of the Negro, 235
Booker T. Washington Agricultural School on Wheels, 109–11, 112, 113
Botkin, Benjamin, 235
Boyd, Valerie, 65, 103–4
Brawley, Benjamin, 93, 113
Brewton, Alabama, 107
Brooks, Gwendolyn, 236
Brooks, Van Wyck, 10
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 51
Brown, John, 35
Brown, Sterling A., 33, 68, 242
Bunche, Ralph, 222
Burris, Andrew M., You Mus’ Be Bo’n Ag’in, 162, 199, 210
Bynner, Witter, 10, 14
Campbell, Thomas Monroe, 112
the Caribbean, 227
Carmel, California, 223, 225
Carver, George Washington, 112
Castleberry, Alabama, 107
The Century magazine, 13
Chapin, Cornelia, 86–87, 128, 130, 146, 154, 187, 209, 233
Chapin, Katherine. See Biddle, Katherine Garrison
Chapin, Paul, 130
Chapin, Schuyler, 87
Chapin family, 87. See also specific family members
Charleston, South Carolina, 124
Cheraw, South Carolina, 125
Chesnutt, Charles, 63
Chicago Defender, 90, 93, 114
Chicago Whip, 93
Civic Club, 12, 18, 41, 81
Clark, Barrett, 194, 202
Clark, Carrie. See Hughes, Carrie
Clark, Gwyn, 132
Cleveland, Ohio, 3, 36, 38, 192, 195, 200, 202, 205–6, 209–10
the Clotilda, 105
Cogdell, Josephine, 40
Cold Keener (collaborative opera), 136
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 31
colonialism, 71, 133
Columbia, South Carolina, 125
Columbia University, 38–39, 41, 57–60
Columbus, Georgia, 114
Communism, 5, 229, 232, 234
Communist Party, 182–83, 222–23, 224
Connelly, Marc, 162
Conrad, Joseph, 74
Cook, Will Marion, 51, 61
Cotton Club, 20, 72
The Courier, 90
Coussey, Anne, 43
Covarrubias, Miguel, 89, 130
Crane, Hart, 54
Crigwa (Crisis Guild of Writers and Artists) Players, 164
The Crisis, 8, 11–12, 41, 50, 64, 74, 75, 77, 93, 108, 115, 219
Crossett, Raymond, 216, 217–18
Cuba, 99, 155–56
Cullen, Countee, 9, 11–12, 45–50, 62–63, 69–70, 82, 94, 139, 177, 178
“Heritage,” 73
Millay and, 79
review of Langston’s Weary Blues, 63
“A Song of Sour Grapes,” 15
“To a Brown Boy,” 45, 143
“To One Who Said Me Nay,” 15
Cummings, E. E., 44
Cunard, Nancy, 182
Negro: An Anthology, 226
Curtis, Natalie, 85–86, 87, 133
The Indians’ Book, 85–86, 130
dance, 65
Davis, John P., 50, 77
decadence, 64–65
Decatur, Alabama, 110
Deeter, Jasper, 184, 185, 200
Delaney, Sadie, 114
desegregation, 235–36
Dexter Avenue Church, 107
disenfranchisement, 101
Douglas, Aaron, 50, 72, 74, 77, 143, 148, 155, 177, 188
Douglas, Alta, 155, 177
Douglas, Ann, 56
Douglass, Charles H., 121, 122
Douglass, Frederick, 34
Drama Critique, 237
Dramatists Guild, 218
Draper, Muriel, 54
Du Bois, W. E. B., 8, 11–12, 18, 33, 48, 63, 89, 108, 123, 137, 148, 162, 206
Crigwa (Crisis Guild of Writers and Artists) Players, 164
“Criteria of Negro Art,” 64–65
reception of Fire!! 81
on Van Vechten’s Nigger Heaven, 75
Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 61, 63, 111
Dylan, Bob, 22–23
Eastman, Max, 54, 129
Eatonville, Florida, 24, 25–29, 59–60, 61, 136, 162, 194, 220, 232
Eau Gallie, Florida, 144
Ellington, Duke, 11, 41, 72, 242
Ellison, Ralph, 68, 236
exoticism, 71, 73
Farrar, John C., 14
Fauset, Arthur Huff, 80, 89
Fauset, Jessie, 11, 13, 23–24, 33, 41, 48, 80, 108, 109, 113, 177
in Harlem, 39–40
leaves The Crisis, 219
There Is Confusion, 12, 18
Federal Works Progress Administration, 101, 124
Fifth Avenue restaurant, 7–8, 9, 20
Firbank, Ronald, 74
Fire!! 3,
74, 77–81, 241
First African Baptist Congregation, 124
Fisher, Dorothy Canfield, 10, 63
Fisher, Rudolph, 94, 177, 226
Fisk University, 219
Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 75
Florida, 24–25, 91, 99, 124, 140, 143–144, 164, 175, 220, 233, 237
Flournoy, Angela, 180
folk art, 127
folklife, 124
folklore, 174–78, 198, 235–37
African American folklore, 78–79, 136–37, 144
Afro-Caribbean folklore, 144
The Book of Negro Folklore, 235
Hurston’s research on, 57–61, 68, 91–92, 98–101, 113, 120, 132–33, 135–45, 158–61, 174, 178, 188–89, 224–25, 242
“folk plays,” 162
folkways, 236–37, 241
Fort Pierce, Florida, 237
Fort Valley, Georgia, 115–16, 120, 122
France, Negrophilia in, 71–72
Frank, Waldo, 54
Frazier, E. Franklin, 9
“funny parties,” 55
Gale, Zona, 13
Garvey, Marcus, 33
Gates, Henry Louis Jr., 42, 190
Gee, Jack, 122
Genoa, Italy, 47–48
Georgia, 101, 109, 114–24
Gershwin, George, 54
Gilpin Players, 192, 194, 195, 197, 199, 200, 202, 208, 210, 213, 237
gourds, 114
Grant, Madison, 70
Great Depression, 154
Great Migration, 101–2, 115
Great Mississippi Flood, 99, 102
The Green Pastures, 162
Gregory, Montgomery, 15, 33
Grimké, Angelina, 19, 33
Guillaume, Paul, 44
Guillén, Nicolás, 66
Gurdjieff, George, 89
Gynt, Kaj, Cock o’ the World, 220
Hampton Institute of Virginia, 148
Handy, W. C., 51
Hansberry, Lorraine, 224
Happy Rhone’s nightclub, NAACP benefit at, 48
Harlem, New York, 34, 38–41, 48–49, 53–54, 75, 153–54, 159
Hughes’s love for, 40–41
Hurston and Hughes’s first meeting in, 3, 7
as “Nightclub Capital of the World,” 41
Harlem Branch Library, 40
Harlem Experimental Theatre, 162, 164
Harlem magazine, 139, 154
Harlem Renaissance, 4, 10–11, 33, 76–77
Charles Johnson’s role in, 9
childlessness among members of, 177
end of, 219
launched by Civic Club dinner, 12
The New Negro and, 17, 18–19
white patronage of, 20
Harlem Suitcase Theater, 224
Harlem YMCA, 40
Harper, Ethel, 217
Harper’s Ferry, raid on, 35
Harris, Dorothy Hunt, 115–16
Havana, Cuba, 99, 155–56
Hayes, Roland, 89
H.D., 44
Hedgerow Players, 184, 192, 209
Hedgerow Theater Company, 184, 186
Helburn, Theresa, 161–62, 184, 201
Hemenway, Robert E., 6, 17, 32, 57, 80, 106, 139, 142, 226
Henderson, Fletcher, 48, 51
Heyward, DuBose, Porgy, 94
Holsey, Albon, 109
Holstein, Casper, 9
Houénou, Kojo Tovalou, 44
housing discrimination, 52
Howard Prep, 32
Howard University, 32–33, 35, 46, 47, 49, 187–88
Hubbard, Clifton, 122
Hubbard, Maceo, 122
Hubbard, Samuel, 122
Hubbard, William, 122
Hughes, Carrie, 23, 34–36, 38, 41, 49, 75, 137, 176, 189, 192, 211–12
Hughes, James Langston. See Hughes, Langston
Hughes, James Nathaniel, 34–35, 38–39, 41, 179
Hughes, Langston, 11–13, 31, 207–8, 209, 217–18, 233. See also Hughes, Langston, correspondence of; Hughes, Langston, works of
Africa and, 128
African American culture and, 236
aftermath of literary quarrel and, 219–37
in Alabama, 103–10, 111, 112–14
Alice Walker and, 243
arrested on false pretenses, 205–6
arrives in New York, 39–40
aversion to commitment, 24
in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 99
blues and, 136–37
on book tour in Jacksonville, Florida, 220
break with Cullen, 48–49
burst of poetry writing after break with Mason, 181–82
in Carmel, California, 223, 225
at Carnegie Hall, 89
character of, 238–39
childhood of, 24, 34–39
in Cleveland, Ohio, 36, 38, 189, 192, 205–6, 210, 211–12
co-founds Harlem Suitcase Theater, 224
collaborations with Hurston, 61–62, 128–29, 135–36, 161–67, 171, 174–78, 183–88, 190–218, 230, 236–37
at Columbia, 41
Communism and, 182–83, 229, 232, 234
complaint to Dramatists Guild, 218
death of, 241
defiant view of black literary production, 70
denounced in US Senate, 234
desire to increase financial independence, 170–74, 214
dinner cooked in his honor, 81–82
discomfort around black people, 65–66
elusive sexuality of, 55–57
enrolls in Lincoln University, 52
falling out with Mason, 166–71, 176, 178–81, 182, 183, 188, 189
falls in love with Williams, 155
under FBI surveillance, 234
finances of, 23–24
Fire!! and, 77, 79, 81
forced to testify before McCarthy’s subcommittee, 234
in Georgia, 114–24
graduates from Lincoln, 153–54
in Havana, Cuba, 99, 155–56
homosexual experiences of, 55
identity as African American, 57
impact on black youth, 22–23
in Italy, 47–48
job as mess boy, 42
at Johnson’s literary salon, 33
joins John Reed Club, 183
joins New Masses magazine, 183
in Lawrence, Kansas, 24, 35–36
legacy of, 243–44
in Lincoln, Illinois, 36
at Lincoln University, 52, 81, 108, 153–54
Lindsay’s “discovery” of, 52
literary quarrel with Hurston, 3, 5, 178, 190–218, 219, 230, 238
Locke and, 45–48, 153, 172, 178, 207, 213, 215, 217, 222, 238, 241
love for Harlem, 39–40
Mason and, 5, 87–89, 94–97, 100, 109–12, 127–28, 131–48, 152–55, 160–61, 166–77, 201–9, 212–17, 220–27, 231–32, 238–41, 244
meets Bessie Smith, 120–21
meets Thompson, 148
in Mexico, 38–39
in Mobile, Alabama, 98, 103–7
moves into “Niggerati Manor,” 51
moves to New Jersey, 154
in Moylan, Pennsylvania, 184
in Nashville, Tennessee, 99
in New Orleans, Louisiana, 99
at New World Cabaret, 72
in New York, New York, 39–40, 41, 48–49, 82, 127, 130–34, 153–54, 159, 189, 217, 224
novel writing and, 127–28, 135, 155, 174
Nugent and, 78, 219–20
at Opportunity award ceremony, 10
orality and, 43
in Paris, 43, 46–47
passion for social and racial justice, 241–42
pattern of ruptures with close friends, 238–39
in Philadelphia at Lincoln University, 81
photographs with Hurston, 113–14
playwriting and, 163–67, 182, 183–84
poetic style of, 44–45
politics and, 182–83, 188, 234
portrayal of Hurston in The Big Sea,
227–31
praise for Negro idiom, 63–64
primitivism and, 153, 181–82
publishes poems in Workers Monthly, 183
race/ethnicity of, 34
racial injustice and, 65–66
reads poems at Fisk University, 99
receives Harmon Gold Award from Federated Council of Churches, 207–8
receives stipend from Sullivan, 226
reception of, 92–93
rejection of white conventions of literacy, 92
renounces his claim to The Mule-Bone, 220
resolves to go to Columbia University, 38–39
runs into Hurston in Alabama, 98–99
self-promotion by, 51–52
sexual and emotional solitude of, 55–57
shuns literary culture, 43–44
the South and, 98–126, 127, 148, 230
theater and, 137–38, 161–65, 183–84, 198–99
Thompson and, 154–55, 159, 168–70, 175–78, 184–87, 195–96, 201–4, 207–13, 217–18, 224, 228, 239, 241
tools of, 139–40
travels to Africa on SS Malone, 42–43
travels to Europe, 43–44, 46–48
travels to Moscow, USSR, 222–23, 234
in Turkestan, 57
at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, 99
Van Vechten and, 20–21, 75–76, 108, 171, 185, 194–95, 199–201, 204, 225, 228, 235, 239
on Van Vechten’s Nigger Heaven, 75
vernacular poetry of, 19
visits Eatonville, Florida, 220
in Washington, D.C., 49, 51–52
in Westfield, New Jersey, 154–56, 216
wins prizes in Opportunity contest, 14–15
work featured in The New Negro, 17, 19
works as busboy at Wardman Park Hotel, 51
Hughes, Langston, correspondence of
with Hurston, 91, 92, 135, 142–45, 148, 183, 195–99, 202–8, 213–16, 220, 236, 240–41
letter to Bennett published in Opportunity, 109
with Locke, 140
with Mason, 145–46, 170–74, 178–81, 182, 189, 213–14, 241
with Van Vechten, 115, 116, 118, 211–12
Hughes, Langston, works of
“Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria,” 170
“Afro-American Fragment,” 170, 181–82
“Alabama Earth,” 107
“America,” 15
autobiography of (see Hughes, Langston, works of, The Big Sea)
“Ballad of Gin Mary,” 123
The Barrier, 233–34
The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers, 243
The Big Sea, 34, 39, 42–43, 94, 165, 167–71, 180, 213, 225, 227–32, 238
“The Blues I’m Playing,” 223–24
The Book of Negro Folklore, 6, 235–36, 236–37, 241
Cock o’ the World, 220
“Crap Game,” 123
Cross, 182
“Danse Africaine,” 73
“Dear Lovely Death,” 181
“Epilogue,” 44–45
Fine Clothes to the Jew, 62, 92–93, 137, 139, 236
“The Gold Piece,” 164
“Goodbye Christ,” 232
“Greetings to Soviet Workers” letter, 183