critics as a playwright despite the popular success
of Mulatto; however, one critic surmised, “The dra-
matic world of Langston Hughes is a quite differ-
ent world from that of any other playwright, and
the discovery of that world is, in itself, an enter-
taining, wonderful, and enlightening experience”
(Smalley, 269).
In 1940, Hughes published The BIG SEA, an au-
tobiography that covered his first 30 years, assess-
ing the strained relationship with his father and
the impact of the Harlem Renaissance. His later
autobiographical volume, I Wonder as I Wander
(1956), covers his years lived abroad, detailing the
Soviet Union experience and his support of social-
ist principles at the time.
By the 1940s, Hughes had moved away from his
leftist perspectives, publishing another volume of
poetry, Shakespeare in Harlem (1942), and in that
same year taking on a role as a columnist for the
Chicago Defender, a weekly black newspaper. For
the column, Hughes created a memorable charac-
ter, Jesse B. Semple, who spoke on various issues
and concerns of the day. This character, who be-
came known as “Simple,” possessed
the right blend of qualities to be Black Amer-
ica’s new spokesman—just enough urban
humor, cynicism, and sardonic levity and just
enough down-home simplicity, mother-wit,
innocence, and naiveté.... At times, Simple is
full of pain; at times, he is full of wise tolerance;
at times, he is vocally indignant to the black
man’s lot; but he is never consumed by anger
or overwhelmed by fear or paralyzed by racial
paranoia. (Barksdale and Kinnamon, 516).Hughes wrote this column for more than 20
years, placing selected pieces into five books, in-
cluding Simple Speaks His Mind (1951), Simple
Takes a Wife (1953), Simple Stakes a Claim (1957),
The Best of Simple (1961), and Simple’s Uncle Sam
(1965). Additionally, the stage production of the
musical play Simply Heaven (1957) enjoyed a pop-
ular Broadway run.
During the 1940s Hughes also produced more
verse, including the poetry volume Jim Crow’s Last
Stand (1943) and a book of poems titled Fields of
Wonder (1947). But Hughes found a related success
during this decade in writing song lyrics, as he col-
laborated on the musical play Street Scene (1947),
which brought still further attention to his creativ-
ity during its five-month Broadway appearance.
In 1953, Hughes was required to answer ques-
tions at Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Commu-
nist committee hearings. Because of his activities
and writings in the Soviet Union, Hughes’s politics
were publicly examined, but he denied ever having
been a member of the Communist Party. His re-
sponses and willingness to divorce himself from his
political writings of the 1930s apparently provided
an acceptable contrition for McCarthy and his fol-
lowers. Hughes published two more collections of
short fiction in his impressive career: Laughing to
Keep from Crying (1952) and Something in Com-
mon (1963). In addition, he completed two more
collections of poetry in the 1960s, Ask Your Mama
(1961) and The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our
Times (1967).
It is worth noting that Hughes wrote books for
children, most of which provided cultural and his-
torical lessons as well as entertainment. Those cul-
tural and historical concerns prevailed also when
he joined his nonfiction to photos by Milton Melt-
zer in two collaborations: A Pictorial History of
the Negro in America (1956) and Black Magic: The
Pictorial History of the Negro in American Enter-
tainment (1967). In conjunction with the NAACP,
he wrote the history and development of the or-
ganization in the book Fight for Freedom (1962).
Likewise, as an editor, he contributed to the rec-
ognition and celebration of black literary and cul-
tural expressions in numerous books: The Poetry
of the Negro, 1746–1949 (1949), coauthored with
Bontemps; The Book of Negro Folklore (1958), also
with Bontemps; New Negro Poets USA (1964); The
Book of Negro Humor (1966); and The Best Short
Stories by Negro Writers (1967).
When Langston Hughes died in 1967 in New
York, he had firmly positioned himself as a liter-
ary giant and an internationally known voice in
American letters. And perhaps more significant to
Hughes, he had confirmed his role as a spokesper-
son for generations of blacks who were continually
kept invisible because of their race, class, and gen-258 Hughes, Langston James Mercer