Life And Works Of Langston Hughes: Harlem Renaissance

Langston Hughes
1902–1967

Langston Hughes was first recognized as an important literary figure during the 1920s, a period known as the "Harlem Renaissance" because of the number of emerging black writers. Du Bose Heyward wrote in theNew York Herald Tribune in 1926: "Langston Hughes, although only twenty-four years old, is already conspicuous in the group of Negro intellectuals who are dignifying Harlem with a genuine art life. . . . It is, however, as an individual poet, not as a member of a new and interesting literary group, or as a spokesman for a race that Langston Hughes must stand or fall. . . . Always intensely subjective, passionate, keenly sensitive to beauty and possessed of an unfaltering musical sense, Langston Hughes has given
us a 'first book ' that marks the opening of a career well worth watching."

Despite Heyward 's statement, much of Hughes 's early work was roundly criticized by many black intellectuals for portraying what they thought to be an unattractive view of black life. In his autobiographical The Big Sea, Hughes commented: "Fine Clothes to the Jew was well received by the literary magazines and the white press, but the Negro critics did not like it at all. The Pittsburgh Courier ran a big headline across the top of the page, LANGSTON HUGHES ' BOOK OF POEMS TRASH. The headline in the New York Amsterdam News was LANGSTON HUGHES—THE SEWER DWELLER. The Chicago Whip characterized me as 'the poet low-rate of Harlem. ' Others called the book a disgrace to the race, a return to the dialect tradition, and a parading of all our racial defects before the public. . . . The Negro critics and many of the intellectuals were very sensitive about their race in books. (And still are.) In anything that white people were likely to read, they wanted to put their best foot forward, their politely polished and cultural foot—and only that foot."

An example of the type of criticism of which Hughes was writing is Estace Gay 's comments on Fine Clothes to the Jew.
"It does not matter to me whether every poem in the book is true to life," Gay wrote. "Why should it be paraded before the American public by a Negro author as being typical or representative of the Negro? Bad enough to have white authors holding up our imperfections to public gaze. Our aim ought to be [to] present to the general public, already misinformed both by well meaning and malicious writers, our higher aims and aspirations, and our better selves." Commenting on reviewers like Gay, Hughes wrote: "I sympathized deeply with those critics and those intellectuals, and I saw clearly the need for some of the kinds of books they wanted. But I did not see how they could expect every Negro author to write such books. Certainly, I personally knew very few people anywhere who were wholly beautiful and wholly good. Besides I felt that the masses of our people had as much in their lives to put into books as did those more fortunate ones who had been born with some means and the ability to work up to a master 's degree at a Northern college. Anyway, I didn 't know the upper class Negroes well enough to write much about them. I knew only the people I had grown up with, and they weren 't people whose shoes were always shined, who had been to Harvard, or who had heard of Bach. But they seemed to me good people,
too."

Hoyt W. Fuller commented that Hughes "chose to identify with plain black people—not because it required less effort and sophistication, but precisely because he saw more truth and profound significance in doing so. Perhaps in this he was inversely influenced by his father—who, frustrated by being the object of scorn in his native land, rejected his own people. Perhaps the poet 's reaction to his father 's flight from the American racial reality drove him to embrace it with extra fervor." (Langston Hughes 's parents separated shortly after his birth and his father moved to Mexico. The elder Hughes came to feel a deep dislike and revulsion for other American blacks.) In Hughes 's own words, his poetry is about "workers, roustabouts, and singers, and job hunters on Lenox Avenue in New York, or Seventh Street in Washington or South State in Chicago—people up today and down tomorrow, working this week and fired the next, beaten and baffled, but determined not to be wholly beaten, buying furniture on the installment plan, filling the house with roomers to help pay the rent, hoping to get a new suit for Easter—and pawning that suit before the Fourth of July."

In fact, the title Fine Clothes to the Jew, which was misunderstood and disliked by many people, was derived from the Harlemites Hughes saw pawning their own clothing; most of the pawn shops and other stores in Harlem at that time were owned by Jewish people. Lindsay Patterson, a novelist who served as Hughes 's assistant, believed that Hughes was "critically, the most abused poet in America. . . . Serious white critics ignored him, less serious ones compared his poetry to Cassius Clay doggerel, and most black critics only grudgingly admired him. Some, like James Baldwin, were downright malicious about his poetic achievement. But long after Baldwin and the rest of us are gone, I suspect Hughes ' poetry will be blatantly around growing in stature until it is recognized for its genius. Hughes ' tragedy was double-edged: he was unashamedly black at a time when blackness was demode, and he didn 't go much beyond one of his earliest themes, black is beautiful. He had the wit and intelligence to explore the black human condition in a variety of depths, but his tastes and selectivity were not always accurate, and pressures to survive as a black writer in a white society (and it was a miracle that he did for so long) extracted an enormous creative toll."

Nevertheless, Hughes, more than any other black poet or writer, recorded faithfully the nuances of black life and its frustrations.
Although Hughes had trouble with both black and white critics, he was the first black American to earn his living solely from his writing and public lectures. Part of the reason he was able to do this was the phenomenal acceptance and love he received from average black people. A reviewer for Black World noted in 1970: "Those whose prerogative it is to determine the rank of writers have never rated him highly, but if the weight of public response is any gauge then Langston Hughes stands at the apex of literary relevance among Black people. The poet occupies such a position in the memory of his people precisely because he recognized that 'we possess within ourselves a great reservoir of physical and spiritual strength, ' and because he used his artistry to reflect this back to the people. He used his poetry and prose to illustrate that 'there is no lack within the Negro people of beauty, strength and power, ' and he chose to do so on their own level, on their own
terms."

Hughes brought a varied and colorful background to his writing. Before he was twelve years old he had lived in six different American cities. When his first book was published, he had already been a truck farmer, cook, waiter, college graduate, sailor, and doorman at a nightclub in Paris, and had visited Mexico, West Africa, the Azores, the Canary Islands, Holland, France, and Italy. As David Littlejohn observed in hisBlack on White: A Critical Survey of Writing by American Negroes: "On the whole, Hughes ' creative life [was] as full, as varied, and as original as Picasso 's, a joyful, honest monument of a career. There [was] no noticeable sham in it, no pretension, no self-deceit; but a great, great deal of delight and smiling irresistible wit. If he seems for the moment upstaged by angrier men, by more complex artists, if 'different views engage ' us, necessarily, at this trying stage of the race war, he may well outlive them all, and still be there when it 's over. . . . Hughes ' [greatness] seems to derive from his anonymous unity with his people. He seems to speak for millions, which is a tricky thing to do."

Hughes reached many people through his popular fictional character, Jesse B. Semple (shortened to Simple). Simple is a poor man who lives in Harlem, a kind of comic no-good, a stereotype Hughes turned to advantage. He tells his stories to Boyd, the foil in the stories who is a writer much like Hughes, in return for a drink. His tales of his troubles with work, women, money, and life in general often reveal, through their very simplicity, the problems of being a poor black man in a racist society. "White folks," Simple once commented, "is the cause of a lot of inconvenience in my life." Simple 's musings first appeared in 1942 in "From Here to Yonder," a column Hughes wrote for the Chicago Defender and later for the New York Post. According to a reviewer forKirkus Reviews, their original intent was "to convince black Americans to support the U.S. war effort." They were later published in several volumes.

A more recent collection, 1994 's The Return of Simple, contains previously unpublished material but remains current in its themes, according to a Publishers Weekly critic who noted Simple 's addressing of such issues as political correctness, children 's rights, and the racist undercurrent behind contraception and sterilization proposals. Donald C. Dickinson wrote in his Bio-Bibliography of Langston Hughesthat the "charm of Simple lies in his uninhibited pursuit of those two universal goals, understanding and security. As with most other humans, he usually fails to achieve either of these goals and sometimes once achieved they disappoint him. . . . Simple has a tough resilience, however, that won 't allow him to brood over a failure very long. . . . Simple is a well-developed character, both believable and lovable. The situations he meets and discusses are so true to life everyone may enter the fun. This does not mean that Simple is in any way dull. He injects the ordinary with his own special insights. . . . Simple is a natural, unsophisticated man who never abandons his hope in tomorrow." A reviewer for Black World commented on the popularity of Simple: "The people responded. Simple lived in a world they knew, suffered their pangs, experienced their joys, reasoned in their way, talked their talk, dreamed their dreams, laughed their laughs, voiced their fears—and all the while underneath, he affirmed the wisdom which anchored at the base of their lives. It was not that ideas and events and places and people beyond the limits of Harlem—all of the Harlems—did not concern him; these things, indeed, were a part of his consciousness; but Simple 's rock-solid commonsense enabled him to deal with them with balance and intelligence. . . . Simple knows who he is and what he is, and he knows that the status of expatriate offers no solution, no balm. The struggle is here, and it can only be won here, and no constructive end is served through fantasies and illusions and false efforts at disguising a basic sense of inadequacy. Simple also knows that the strength, the tenacity, the commitment which are necessary to win the struggle also exist within the Black community." Hoyt W. Fuller believed that, like Simple, "the key to Langston Hughes . . . was the poet 's deceptive and profound simplicity. Profound because it was both willed and ineffable, because some intuitive sense even at the beginning of his adulthood taught him that humanity was of the essence and that it existed undiminished in all shapes, sizes, colors and conditions. Violations of that humanity offended his unshakable conviction that mankind is possessed of the divinity of God."

It was Hughes 's belief in humanity and his hope for a world in which people could sanely and with understanding live together that led to his decline in popularity in the racially turbulent latter years of his life. Unlike younger and more militant writers, Hughes never lost his conviction that "most people are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have been." Reviewing The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times in Poetry, Laurence Lieberman recognized that Hughes 's "sensibility [had] kept pace with the times," but he criticized his lack of a personal political stance. "Regrettably, in different poems, he is fatally prone to sympathize with starkly antithetical politics of race," Lieberman commented. "A reader can appreciate his catholicity, his tolerance of all the rival—and mutually hostile—views of his outspoken compatriots, from Martin Luther King to Stokely Carmichael, but we are tempted to ask, what are Hughes ' politics? And if he has none, why not? The age demands intellectual commitment from its spokesmen. A poetry whose chief claim on our attention is moral, rather than aesthetic, must take sides politically."

Despite some recent criticism, Hughes 's position in the American literary scene seems to be secure. David Littlejohn wrote that Hughes is "the one sure Negro classic, more certain of permanence than even Baldwin or Ellison or Wright. . . . His voice is as sure, his manner as original, his position as secure as, say Edwin Arlington Robinson 's orRobinson Jeffers '. . . . By molding his verse always on the sounds of Negro talk, the rhythms of Negro music, by retaining his own keen honesty and directness, his poetic sense and ironic intelligence, he maintained through four decades a readable newness distinctly his own."

The Block and The Sweet and Sour Animal Book are posthumously published collections of Hughes 's poetry for children that position his words against a backdrop of visual art. The Block pairs Hughes 's poems with a series of six collages by Romare Bearden that bears the book 's title. The Sweet and Sour Animal Book contains previously unpublished and repeatedly rejected poetry of Hughes from the 1930s. Here, the editors have combined it with the artwork of elementary school children at the Harlem School of the Arts. The results, noted Veronica Chambers in the New York Times Book Review, "reflect Hughes 's childlike wonder as well as his sense of humor." Chambers also commented on the rhythms of Hughes 's words, noting that "children love a good rhyme" and that Hughes gave them "just a simple but seductive taste of the blues." Hughes 's poems have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Russian, Yiddish, and Czech; many of them have been set to music.

Donald B. Gibson noted in the introduction to Modern Black Poets: A Collection of Critical Essays that Hughes "has perhaps the greatest reputation (worldwide) that any black writer has ever had. Hughes differed from most of his predecessors among black poets, and (until recently) from those who followed him as well, in that he addressed his poetry to the people, specifically to black people. During the twenties when most American poets were turning inward, writing obscure and esoteric poetry to an ever decreasing audience of readers, Hughes was turning outward, using language and themes, attitudes and ideas familiar to anyone who had the ability simply to read. He has been, unlike most nonblack poets other than Walt Whitman, Vachel Lindsay, andCarl Sandburg, a poet of the people. . . . Until the time of his death, he spread his message humorously—though always seriously—to audiences throughout the country, having read his poetry to more people (possibly) than any other American poet."
CAREER
Poet, novelist, short story writer, playwright, song lyricist, radio writer, translator, author of juvenile books, and lecturer. In early years worked as assistant cook, launderer, busboy, and at other odd jobs; worked as seaman on voyages to Africa and Europe. Lived at various times in Mexico, France, Italy, Spain, and the Soviet Union. Madrid correspondent for Baltimore Afro-American, 1937; visiting professor in creative writing, Atlanta University, 1947; poet in residence, Laboratory School, University of Chicago, 1949.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
POETRY (PUBLISHED BY KNOPF, EXCEPT AS INDICATED)
The Weary Blues, 1926.
Fine Clothes to the Jew, 1927.
The Negro Mother and Other Dramatic Recitations, Golden Stair Press, 1931.
Dear Lovely Death, Troutbeck Press, 1931.
The Dream Keeper and Other Poems, 1932.
Scottsboro Limited: Four Poems and a Play, Golden Stair Press, 1932.
A New Song, International Workers Order, 1938.
(With Robert Glenn) Shakespeare in Harlem, 1942.
Jim Crow 's Last Stand, Negro Publication Society of America, 1943.
Freedom 's Plow, Musette Publishers, 1943.
Lament for Dark Peoples and Other Poems, Holland, 1944.
Fields of Wonder, 1947.
One-Way Ticket, 1949.
Montage of a Dream Deferred, Holt, 1951.
Ask Your Mama: Twelve Moods for Jazz, 1961.
The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times, 1967, reprinted, Vintage Books, 1992.
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Knopf (New York, NY), 1994.
The Block: Poems, Viking (New York, NY), 1995.
Carol of the Brown King: Poems, Atheneum Books (New York, NY), 1997.
The Pasteboard Bandit, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1997.
NOVELS
Not Without Laughter, Knopf, 1930.
Tambourines to Glory, John Day, 1958.
SHORT STORIES
The Ways of White Folks, Knopf, 1934.
Simple Speaks His Mind, Simon & Schuster, 1950.
Laughing to Keep from Crying, Holt, 1952.
Simple Takes a Wife, Simon & Schuster, 1953.
Simple Stakes a Claim, Rinehart, 1957.
Something in Common and Other Stories, Hill & Wang, 1963.
Simple 's Uncle Sam, Hill & Wang, 1965.
The Return of Simple Hill & Wang, 1994.
Short Stories of Langston Hughes, Hill & Wang (New York, NY), 1996.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The Big Sea: An Autobiography, Knopf, 1940.
I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey, Rinehart, 1956.
NONFICTION
A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia, Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR, 1934.
(With Roy De Carava) The Sweet Flypaper of Life, Simon & Schuster, 1955.
(With Milton Meltzer) A Pictorial History of the Negro in America, Crown, 1956, 4th edition published as A Pictorial History of Black Americans, 1973, 6th edition published as A Pictorial History of African Americans, 1995.
Fight for Freedom: The Story of the NAACP, Norton, 1962.
(With Meltzer) Black Magic: A Pictorial History of the Negro in American Entertainment, Prentice-Hall, 1967.
Black Misery, Paul S. Erickson, 1969.
JUVENILE
(With Arna Bontemps) Popo and Fifina: Children of Haiti, Macmillan, 1932.
The First Book of Negroes, F. Watts, 1952.
The First Book of Rhythms, F. Watts, 1954, also published as The Book of Rhythms, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1995.
Famous American Negroes, Dodd, 1954.
Famous Negro Music Makers, Dodd, 1955.
The First Book of Jazz, F. Watts, 1955, revised edition, 1976.
The First Book of the West Indies, F. Watts, 1956 (published in England as The First Book of the Caribbean, E. Ward, 1965).
Famous Negro Heroes of America, Dodd, 1958.
The First Book of Africa, F. Watts, 1960, revised edition, 1964.
The Sweet and Sour Animal Book, Oxford University Press (New York City), 1994.
EDITOR
Four Lincoln University Poets, Lincoln University, 1930.
(With Bontemps) The Poetry of the Negro, 1746-1949, Doubleday, 1949, revised edition published as The Poetry of the Negro, 1746-1970, 1970.
(With Waring Cuney and Bruce M. Wright) Lincoln University Poets, Fine Editions, 1954.
(With Bontemps) The Book of Negro Folklore, Dodd, 1958.
An African Treasury: Articles, Essays, Stories, Poems by Black Africans, Crown, 1960.
Poems from Black Africa, Indiana University Press, 1963.
New Negro Poets: U.S., foreword by Gwendolyn Brooks, Indiana University Press, 1964.
The Book of Negro Humor, Dodd, 1966.
The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers: An Anthology from 1899 to the Present, Little, Brown, 1967.
TRANSLATOR
(With Mercer Cook) Jacques Roumain, Masters of Dew, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947, second edition, Liberty Book Club, 1957.
(With Frederic Carruthers) Nicolas Guillen, Cuba Libre, Ward Ritchie, 1948.
Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral, Indiana University Press, 1957.
OMNIBUS VOLUMES
Selected Poems, Knopf, 1959.
The Best of Simple, Hill & Wang, 1961.
Five Plays by Langston Hughes, edited by Webster Smalley, Indiana University Press, 1963.
The Langston Hughes Reader, Braziller, 1968.
Don 't You Turn Back (poems), edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins, Knopf, 1969.
Good Morning Revolution: The Uncollected Social Protest Writing of Langston Hughes, edited by Faith Berry, Lawrence Hill, 1973.
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Knopf, 1994.
The Collected Works of Langston Hughes (18 volumes), University of Missouri Press, 2001, 2002.
OTHER
(With Bontemps) Arna Bontemps-Langston Hughes Letters: 1925-1967, edited by Charles H. Nichols, Dodd, 1980.
(With Zora Neale Hurston) Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life (play), HarperCollins, 1991.
Langston Hughes and the Chicago Defender: Essays on Race, Politics, and Culture, 1942-62, edited by Christopher C. De Santis, University of Illinois Press, 1995.
Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964, edited by Emily Bernard, Knopf, 2001.
Author of numerous plays (most have been produced), including Little Ham, 1935, Mulatto, 1935, Emperor of Haiti, 1936, Troubled Island, 1936, When the Jack Hollers, 1936, Front Porch, 1937, Joy to My Soul, 1937, Soul Gone Home, 1937, Little Eva 's End, 1938, Limitations of Life, 1938, The Em-Fuehrer Jones, 1938, Don 't You Want to Be Free, 1938, The Organizer, 1939, The Sun Do Move, 1942, For This We Fight, 1943, The Barrier,1950, The Glory round His Head, 1953, Simply Heavenly, 1957, Esther, 1957, The Ballad of the Brown King,1960, Black Nativity, 1961, Gospel Glow, 1962, Jericho-Jim Crow, 1963, Tambourines to Glory, 1963, The Prodigal Son, 1965, Soul Yesterday and Today, Angelo Herndon Jones, Mother and Child, Trouble with the Angels, and Outshines the Sun. Also author of screenplay, Way Down South, 1942. Author of libretto for operas,The Barrier, 1950, and Troubled Island. Lyricist for Just around the Corner, and for Kurt Weill 's Street Scene,1948. Columnist for Chicago Defender and New York Post. Poetry, short stories, criticism, and plays have been included in numerous anthologies. Contributor to periodicals, including Nation, African Forum, Black Drama, Players Magazine, Negro Digest, Black World, Freedomways, Harlem Quarterly, Phylon, Challenge, Negro Quarterly, and Negro Story. Some of Hughes 's letters, manuscripts, lecture notes, periodical clippings, and pamphlets are included in the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University. Additional materials are in the Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library, the library of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and the Fisk University library.
FURTHER READING
BOOKS
Baker, Houston A., Jr., Black Literature in America, McGraw, 1971.
Berry, Faith, Langston Hughes, Before and Beyond Harlem, Wings Books (New York, NY), 1995.
Berry, S. L., Langston Hughes, Creative Education (Mankato, MN), 1994.
Black Literature Criticism, Gale, 1992.
Bone, Robert A., The Negro Novel in America, Yale University Press, 1965.
Bonner, Pat E., Sassy Jazz and Slo ' Draggin ' Blues: Music in the Poetry of Langston Hughes, P. Lang (New York, NY), 1996.
Children 's Literature Review, Volume 17, Gale, 1989.
Concise Dictionary of Literary Biography: The Age of Maturity, 1929-1941, Gale, 1989.
Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale, Volume 1, 1973, Volume 5, 1976, Volume 10, 1979, Volume 15, 1980, Volume 35, 1985, Volume 44, 1987.
Cooper, Floyd, Coming Home: From the Life of Langston Hughes, Philomel Books (New York, NY), 1994.
(Dace, Tish, editor) Langston Hughes: The Contemporary Reviews, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1997.
Davis, Arthur P., and Saunders Redding, editors, Cavalcade, Houghton, 1971.
Dekle, Bernard, Profiles of Modern American Authors, Charles E. Tuttle, 1969.
Dickinson, Donald C., A Bio-Bibliography of Langston Hughes, 1902-1967, Archon Books, 1967.
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale, Volume 4: American Writers in Paris, 1920-1939, 1980, Volume 7:Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, 1981, Volume 48: American Poets, 1880-1945, Second Series, 1986, Volume 51: Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940, 1987.
Dunham, Montrew, Langston Hughes: Young Black Poet, Aladdin (New York City), 1995.
Emanuel, James, Langston Hughes, Twayne, 1967.
Gibson, Donald B., editor, Five Black Writers, New York University Press, 1970.
Gibson, Donald B., editor and author of introduction, Modern Black Poets: A Collection of Critical Essays,Prentice-Hall, 1973.
Harper, Donna Sullivan, Not So Simple: The "Simple" Stories by Langston Hughes, University of Missouri Press (Columbia), 1995.
Hart, W., editor, American Writers ' Congress, International, 1935.
Hill, Christine, H., Langston Hughes: Poet of the Harlem Renaissance, Hanslow Pub. (Springfield, NJ), 1997.
Hughes, Langston, The Big Sea: An Autobiography, Knopf, 1940.
Hughes, Langston, I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey,Rinehart, 1956.
Jackson, Blyden, and Louis D. Rubin Jr., Black Poetry in America: Two Essays in Historical Interpretation,Louisiana State University, 1974.
Jahn, Janheinz, A Bibliography of Neo-African Literature from Africa, America and the Caribbean, Praeger, 1965.
Littlejohn, David, Black on White: A Critical Survey of Writing by American Negroes, Viking, 1966.
McLaren, Joseph, Langston Hughes, Folk Dramatist in the Protest Tradition, 1921-1943, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1996.
Meltzer, Milton, Langston Hughes: A Biography, Crowell, 1968.
Myers, Elizabeth P., Langston Hughes: Poet of His People, Garrard, 1970.
Nazel, Joseph, Langston Hughes, Melrose Square (Los Angeles), 1994.
Neilson, Kenneth, To Langston Hughes, with Love, All Seasons Art (Hollis, NY), 1996.
O 'Daniel, Thermon B., editor, Langston Hughes: Black Genius, a Critical Evaluation, Morrow, 1971.
Osofsky, Audrey, Free to Dream: The Making of a Poet, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books (New York, NY), 1996.
Rollins, Charlamae H., Black Troubador: Langston Hughes, Rand McNally, 1970.
Trotman, C. James, Langston Hughes: The Man, His Art, and His Continuing Influence, Garland (New York, NY), 1995.
Walker, Alice, Langston Hughes, American Poet, HarperCollins (New York City), 1988.
PERIODICALS
African American Review, fall, 1994, p. 333.
American Mercury, January, 1959.
Black Scholar, June, 1971; July, 1976.
Black World, June, 1970; September, 1972; September, 1973.
Booklist, November 15, 1976; January 1, 1991, p. 889.
Bulletin of the Center for Children 's Books, January, 1995, p. 168; January, 1996, p. 162.
CLA Journal, June, 1972.
Choice, February 1996, p. 951.
Crisis, August-September, 1960; June, 1967; February, 1969.
Ebony, October, 1946.
Emerge, May, 1995, p. 58.
English Journal, March, 1977.
Horn Book, September-October, 1994, p. 603; January-February, 1996, p. 86.
Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 1994, p. 578.
Library Journal, February 1, 1991, p. 78.
Life, February 4, 1966.
Los Angeles Times Book Review, February 26, 1995, p. 1.
Nation, December 4, 1967.
Negro American Literature Forum, winter, 1971.
Negro Digest, September, 1967; November, 1967; April, 1969.
New Leader, April 10, 1967.
New Republic, January 14, 1974; March 6, 1995, p. 37.
New Yorker, December 30, 1967.
New York Herald Tribune, August 1, 1926.
New York Herald Tribune Books, November 26, 1961.
New York Times, May 24, 1967; June 1, 1968; June 29, 1969; December 13, 1970; February 8, 1995, p. C17.
New York Times Book Review, November 3, 1968; December 25, 1994, p. 15; February 12, 1995, p. 18; November 12, 1995, p. 38.
Philadelphia Tribune, February 5, 1927.
Poetry, August, 1968.
Publishers Weekly, May 9, 1994, p. 62; October 3, 1994, p. 30; October 31, 1994, p.54; November 13, 1995, p. 60.
San Francisco Chronicle, April 5, 1959.
Saturday Review, November 22, 1958; September 29, 1962.
School Library Journal, February, 1995, p. 92.
Smithsonian, August, 1994, p. 49.
Tribune Book 's (Chicago), April 13, 1980.
Washington Post, November 13, 1978.
Washington Post Book World, February 2, 1969; December 8, 1985.