日本大学生産工学部研究報告Ｂ Articles 2015 年 ６ 月 第 48 巻

Wright and Hughes: and Two Major African American Writers

Toru KIUCHI＊ and Noboru FUKUSHIMA＊

（Received December 16, 2014）

Abstract The Chicago Renaissance has long been considered a less important literary movement for American modernism than the Harlem Renaissance. The differences between the two movements have to do not only with history, but with aesthetics. While the Harlem Renaissance began in the 1920s—flourishing during the decade, but fading during the 30s in the throes of the Depression—the Chicago Renaissance had its origin in the turn of the nineteenth century, from 1890 to 1920, gathering momentum in the 30s, and paving the way for modern and postmodern realism in American literature ever since. Theodore Dreiser was the leader for the first period of the movement, and was the most influential figure for the second period. The first section of this article will examine not only the continuity that existed between the two periods in the writers’ worldviews but also the techniques they shared. To portray Chicago as a modern, spacious, cosmopolitan city, the writers of the Chicago Renaissance sought ways to reject traditional subject matter and form. The new style of writing yielded the development of a distinct cultural aesthetic that reflected ethnically diverse sentiments and aspirations. The panel discussion will focus on the fact that while the Harlem Renaissance was dominated by African American writers, the Chicago Renaissance thrived on the interactions between African and European American writers. Much like modern , writings in the Chicago Renaissance became the hybrid, cross-cultural product of black and white . The article will explore, in particular, the roles that and Richard Wright played in the development of the movement.

Keywords: Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Chicago, African American Literature

the Chief of Police for a rich Chicago area, Brentwood Park, 1. The Case of Richard Wright: The Unfinished after Mo Branden, the current police chief, is murdered. At the Quest of His A Father’s Law same time when Ruddy enters his new office, a woman, Janet Wilder, is found dead in the Brentwood Park woods. This is 1.1 the sixth victim, probably killed by the same murderer as the We borrowed the chapter title from Michel Fabre’s biogra- latest victim of serial killer. In the meantime, Ruddy’s son, phy, The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright. At the begin- Tommy, a brilliant sociology student at the University of Chi- ning of the unfinished novel, A Father’s Law, Ruddy Turner, a cago, is connected to these murders as a possible suspect in black Chicago police officer, is awakened by a late night call Ruddy’s unconscious mind. One of the reasons why Ruddy is from police headquarters, ordering that he come to see the doubtful of his own son is that Tommy totally changes his at- Commissioner at once. Ruddy leaves home in a great hurry, titude after the sudden cancelation of his marriage with Marie his wife Agnes concerned and his son Tommy typing intently. Wiggins, whom Tommy loves, but refuses to see after he finds In the novel, which Wright worked on a few months before he that the girl has congenital syphilis. This incident is based died in November 1960, Ruddy finds that he is appointed to upon Wright’s actual 1938 experience with Marion Sawyer, a

＊Professor, Department of Liberal Arts and Basic Sciences, College of Industrial Technology, Nihon University

─ 1 ─ girl whom Wright was going to marry but, when she turned and it’s a hard, hard grind…I seem to be turning my life into out to have an advanced case of syphilis like Marie Wiggins, newspaper copy from day to day; and when I look into the fu- Wright canceled the marriage immediately. ture it looks no better” (qtd. Rowley 129). It is hard to say how the book was shaped from Wright’s However, on December 14, 1937, Wright was informed that actual experience. For instance, in a short introduction to the his short story, “Fire and Cloud,” won the first prize and $500 novel, Julia Wright, his daughter, attributes Tommy’s despera- in a contest held by the magazine Story. The short story was tion to the incurable disease of Wright’s mother Ella and the chosen from among six hundred entries by a jury consisting of untimely death of Bessie Smith: Sinclair Lewis and others (Fabre 156), and five hundred dol- lars was a big amount of money in those days. Almost at the Tommy’s sick girlfriend, his repulsion for her congenital same time, in mid-December 1937, after his residency re- syphilis, makes moving reading because Richard had not quirement was fulfilled, Wright was finally accepted on to the been able to cure Ella of her life history of seizures….My New York Federal Writers Project (Rowley 138). Furthermore, father’s preoccupation with another story—which suggests Harper and Brothers decided to publish Wright’s collection of that Bessie Smith may have bled to death because the white short stories as Uncle Tom’s Children within the next two or hospital near the scene of her accident would not admit three months (Wright to Lincoln of Norton, 17 December, Co- her—is a reflection of this trauma in his ability to love but lumbia U). As a result, on December 28, 1937, Wright wrote not to save. (Julia Wright, “Introduction”) his last article for the Daily Worker and immediately quit his job as a reporter for the newspaper (Fabre 162). And yet the unfinished quest of the novel will gradually be The year 1937 was a bitter one for Wright but the beginning made clear in due consideration of his biographical facts of of 1938 was the high tide of fortune for him. The moment he which the author made full use in retrospect of the indefinitely was at the climax of his fame, Wright met Marion Sawyer. postponed April 1938 wedding with Marion Sawyer. The idea Probably around January 17, 1938, Wright moved from his of A Father’s Law was probably already in Wright’s mind by friend Abraham Chapman’s apartment to 230 West 136th May 1948—ten years after the breakup with Sawyer—be- Street (Aswell to Wright, 7 March, Yale U), which was the ad- cause he mentioned in an interview “the story of a man who dress of Marion Sawyer and her obliging mother, who let him kills because he has not been convicted for an earlier crime use her kitchen as well, to save him money on meals (Fabre and wants to be punished” (“A Parigi con Wright” in Turin 169). After he met her, Avanti [May 19, 1948], qtd. Fabre 598n37), even though he only actually started to write the novel twelve years later in The young woman, Marion Sawyer, had told him about August 1960. He finished about two thirds in the first rough some “unhappy sexual experience” she had had in the past. draft in August 1960 and even started to negotiate contracts on Now one of the men in the rooming house was pestering it with a publisher in France in late October with the intention her. When Marion was cooking, Wright could chivalrously of finishing the last third. However, the quest in the novel was go to the kitchen to ward him off. (Rowley 147) stopped and left unfinished by his untimely death about one month later in late November 1960. Much later in 2008, the Soon after he moved into Sawyer’s house, Wright almost half-finished novel, edited by Wright’s daughter Julia Wright, got married to a girl from an African American bourgeois was published by Harper Perennial. Even though Wright’s family in Brooklyn around March 1938, but her father did not quest in the last third is unknown to anybody, this chapter fo- consider a “penniless writer” for an appropriate son-in-law cuses on the clarification of Wright’s half-finished quest in the (Fabre 195-96). Wright was then romantically involved with examination of his incorporated biographical facts. Marion Sawyer. In April 1938, Wright introduced Marion to his friend Jane Newton as “a girlfriend,” but soon afterward, 1.2 to Jane’s complete astonishment, he told her that they decided Wright left Chicago and arrived in New York on May 29, to get married. According to Michel Fabre, “It was possibly 1937 to live in the city and work as a reporter for the Daily his resentment at having been rejected by a middle-class fami- Worker. On November 2, 1937, one month before he met ly that caused him to look for a wife among the people.” Ac- Marion Sawyer, Wright wrote his friend that he cordingly, Mrs. Sawyer, Marion’s mother, sent out cards to did not like the job complaining that “It was not for this that I their friends announcing the wedding for Sunday, May 22, came to NYC...I’m working from 9 a. m. to 9 and 10 p. m. 1938 (Fabre 196).

─ 2 ─ In the course of the marriage arrangement, Wright was hon- Sawyer” (Rowley 148). As a result, as many as twenty-two ored to know that Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady, com- years later, Wright wrote the 190 pages long rough draft of a mented on Uncle Tom’s Children in her column, “My Day,” in new idea, “A Father’s Law” (Fabre 512, 622n32) at the Mou- the April 1, 1938 issue of New York World-Telegram: lin d’Andé, an estate about 75 miles northwest of Paris, just opened up to artists and intellectuals in 1957. I have just finished a book which I hope many people will Wright wrote his Dutch translator Margrit de Sablonière re- read. It is called “Uncle Tom’s Children,” by Richard garding his new idea for the novel in an August 2, 1960 letter: Wright. It is beautifully written. What impressed me most is the tragedy of fear portrayed. If only there had been no fear, I started a brand new piece of prose, the idea of which had the outcome of these stories might have been so very differ- been simmering in my mind for a long, long time. I’m ent. The very first one stands out in my mind. There would pounding on the machine morning and night. It makes me have been no shooting if the woman had controlled her fear feel much better. You know I think that writing with me long enough to listen to the boy’s explanation. (Kiuchi and must be a kind of therapeutic measure...Now I’m free, with Hakutani 74) white sheets of paper before me, and a head full of wild ideas (qtd. Rowley 516), ideas that excite me. Maybe writ- Wright had been a nameless and penniless writer and miser- ing with me is like being psychoanalyzed. I feel all the poi- able newspaper reporter only a few months prior. But now the son being drained out. I’ll tell you in another letter about First Lady mentioned him in her newspaper column. From the theme that has me by the throat. (qtd. Fabre 512) 1937 to 1938, one of the biggest events happened in Wright’s life. One can easily imagine how delighted and proud Wright Wright finished the 300 page manuscript of “A Father’s was to read her comment. However, on April 15, 1938, only a Law” once and for all (August 18, 1960, Wright to Sablonière, few days after their marriage announcement, Wright moved in Fabre 622n32; Wright to Hornung, August 22, 1960, Fabre a great hurry from 230 West 136th Street, , to Private Collection). Wright nevertheless wrote Sablonière in a 175 Carlton Avenue, Brooklyn (Notice of change of address, late October 1960 letter: “I’m trying to negotiate contracts on Columbia University), which was the address of his friends the new novel with a publisher here in France, but I don’t Jane and Herbert Newton, because he discovered that his fian- think it will work out, or amount to much if it does” (Wright cée Marion, had an advanced case of syphilis (Fabre 196). To to Sablonière, October 25, 1960, Fabre Private Collection). As borrow Jane Newton’s words, Wright “could think of nothing a result, the plan was abandoned and left imcomplete with a but getting out of that rooming house as soon as possible” third unfinished. (Rowley 148). On May 11, 1938, Marion desperately cabled As Wright says, “Maybe writing with me is like being psy- Wright: “I SAW THE DOCTOR” (qtd. Rowley 148) and choanalyzed. I feel all the poison being drained out.” Follow- wrote Jane Newton and other wedding guests that the wedding ing the revelation that Marion Sawyer had congenital syphilis, was “postponed indefinitely” (Rowley 148). In mid-May and the canceled marriage that left him with guilty feelings, 1938, one month after the failure of his marriage, Wright Wright psychologically analyzed Tommy Turner’s desertion asked his friend Ralph Ellison to come with him to make a fi- of Marie Wiggins in order to neutralize his own poison con- nal break with Marion Sawyer and her mother (Rowley 148). cerning his failed affair with Marion. Therefore, Ruddy Turn- Marion’s syphilis was diagnosed to be congenital and in- er’s appointment to Police Chief can be analyzed as a concep- communicable. Wright knew that she was not responsible for tualized fictionalization of Wright’s winning of the Story the disease. Therefore, her syphilis was not the only reason magazine contest and Eleanor Roosevelt’s attention for Uncle why Wright refused so unequivocally to marry her. He decid- Tom’s Children. Tommy Turner tries hard to justify his rejec- ed to marry her only because of his resentment at having been tion of Marie by making the excuse that “I knew what I was rejected by a middle-class family, so he could readily break going to do. I had already done it. I was going to ditch that off the proposed match. Furthermore, he was now a writer re- girl. I couldn’t marry her. One night I even dreamed that I nowned and rich enough to find a more appropriate woman to killed her. I couldn’t blame her for what had happened, but I be married to. Wright knew well what he did to Marion and was hurt, hurt as I had never been hurt in all my life” (89). deeply regretted his actions. He felt so guilty that in August Not only Tommy but the doctor who conducted the blood test 1960, as Rowley contends, “In the last summer of his life, for Tommy and Marie says that “You can’t, under the law, Richard Wright was haunted by his cruelty toward Marion marry this girl while she is ill” (89). As Joyce Ann Joyce ana-

─ 3 ─ lyzes, “Therefore, the only certainty we have is that Marie strating how fearful Wright and other people were of syphilis emerges as a fictional, empathetic conceptualization of Mari- in the 1930s. The Tuskegee syphilis experiment was an infa- on Sawyer” (90). mous medical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the As a matter of note, in June 1937, six months after the Na- U. S. Public Health Service to study the development of un- tional Conference on Venereal Disease Control Work, the Chi- treated syphilis in African American men who thought they cago Syphilis Control Program launched its attack against were receiving free health care from the U. S. government. syphilis. It is no small wonder that Tommy Turner is much The study continued even well into the civil rights era. Rever- hurt as Richard Wright was: “By the end of 1938, twenty-six by agues “If the study had been on any other disease, it might states had passed laws that prohibited the marriage of infected not carry such heavy cultural baggage. Syphilis—the great people, although some states continued to require a test of pox, lues venera, or bad blood—was dreaded for nearly half a only men” (Poirier 66). According to Suzanne Poirier, millennium until the age of modern antibiotics” (109). Tommy is only one of many who did not have an accurate knowledge Even though syphilis was curable in the 1930s, it was nev- of the disease and were filled with fear. ertheless repeatedly portrayed as a killer. Similarly, citizens By contrast, Tommy’s father, Ruddy Turner, fearlessly of Chicago in 1937 usually associated syphilis with illicit drives through the April twilight to find the house of Marie sexual “promiscuity” as well as with sexual “liberation” in Wiggins in order to console on her hopeless situation. He ways that foreshadow the association that many people to- reaches the South Side and finds Woodlawn Avenue, where day make of HIV infection with the “gay liberation” of the Ruddy meets Marie, and learns that she sees a doctor three 1970s. (Poirier 213-14) times a week. Ruddy promises to give her twenty dollars a week to help her. Ruddy further learns that not only did her Syphilis in those days was much different from what it is father have syphilis, but Marie’s grandfather as well. Although today. Poirier reported in her book that the U. S. Public her doctor says that she is being cured of syphilis, she ex- Health Service launched the Chicago Syphilis Control Pro- claims to Ruddy, “I wanted to kill, just to kill anybody, every- gram in 1937 and developed a nationwide campaign to find, body, when I knew what had happened to me” (122). Ruddy treat, and eradicate syphilis. Tommy Turner is involved in the understands her desperate situation but to borrow Jerry Ward’s storm of the nationwide campaign against syphilis as Richard words, “Turner is naturally concerned about his son’s emo- Wright was. Tommy explains why there is nothing else he can tional state, but he is relieved that right and just law prevented do except for leaving Marie. The conversation between Tom- his son from marrying ‘a tainted girl’ who has inherited the my and Ruddy is as follows: sins of her forefathers” (Ward 520). Ruddy’s concern here is about his son Tommy’s mental wellbeing, echoing Richard “After that, Dad, I changed my outlook on everything,” Wright’s regret that he deserted Marion Sawyer for such a rea- Tommy said. son choosing instead the path to being a successful writer as “What do you mean?” the author of Native Son and Black Boy. Quite different from “That’s how I got to know Brentwood Park,” Tommy Ruddy’s treatment of Marie, Agnes, Ruddy’s wife, dispassion- said in a low voice. ately and rationally analyzes and understands Marie’s sad …… plight, putting herself in Marie’s shoes, saying, “The girl was “I could no longer do my fieldwork in the Black Belt. It sick, that was all. It was not all her fault. Why couldn’t he was contaminated. Poisoned. I told my professor I had to have given her time. Why did he rush it so? Break off so bru- quit. I begged off and asked to change my thesis.” (91) tally?” (256). Furthermore, Agnes continues to say, “I’m not saying that he should have married her. No, not unless he Tommy not only stops seeing Marie but also changes his wanted to. But to leave her like that, so suddenly, all alone. study from the Black Belt to Brentwood Park because he is And the way her family acted toward her…” (256). Agnes’s scared of remaining in the contaminated Black Belt area, just sympathetic view functions as Wright’s conscience. Immedi- as Richard Wright moved in a great hurry from Marion Saw- ately after this incident, Wright concentrated on the writing of yer’s house to Jane and Herbert Newton’s house. Tommy’s Native Son from May 1938 as if trying to scratch out his fear of the disease is not totally understandable when viewed nightmarish memory. However, he was “haunted by his cruel- with today’s understanding. ty toward Marion Sawyer” twenty-two years later. The so-called Tuskegee study is a good example demon-

─ 4 ─ 1.3 ilarly, Richard Wright says in his review of Hughes’s autobi- Tommy becomes increasingly under suspicion not only be- ography, The Big Sea: “The double role that Langston Hughes cause he deliberately tries to be involved in a gas station rob- has played in the rise of a realistic literature among the Negro bery but also because the cement on the sole of Tommy’s ten- people resembles in one phase the role that Theodore Dreiser nis shoes are scientifically identified to be the same as that in played in freeing American literary expression from the re- the cement mixer in which the gun used in the murder was de- strictions of Puritanism” (Gates and Appiah 21). Mary Hricko stroyed and broken into pieces. “Chief, most of that gun was wrote in her study The Genesis of the Chicago Renaissance buried in the first two slabs of concrete we broke up,” Lieu- that Theodore Dreiser is considered the leader of its first peri- tenant Parrish reports to Ruddy. “Those two samples of ce- od, and Richard Wright as the most influential figure for the ment you sent over to the lab…are the same. There’s no doubt second period. To consider Hughes’s contribution to the Chi- about it” (263). At the end of the novel, Tommy confesses his cago Renaissance, the second section of this chapter focuses guilt to a newspaper. To the complete surprise of Ruddy, his on how Hughes filled the gap between these two Renaissances colleague Captain Snell brings him the newspaper, whose by having an influence on Wright and other writers after seek- headline says “POLICE CHIEF’S SON CONFESSES TO ing ways to reject traditional subject matter and form through MURDER WAVE” (267): the reading of Vachel Lindsay, Edgar Lee Masters, Carl Sand- burg, and Dreiser. It was in this long moment that the scepter of moral leader- ship in the office of the chief of police passed from Ruddy 2.2 to his friend Ed; it passed without a word, without a ges- Hughes wrote about these writers in his autobiography, The ture. (268) Big Sea. It was 1916 and Hughes was only fourteen years old:

The novel ends there all of a sudden, implying that Ruddy Although I had read of before—in an article, will lose everything from his son to his job to pride. In con- I think, in the Kansas City Star about how bad free verse clusion, my conjecture of the plot is that the murderer is in was—I didn’t really know him until Miss Weimer in sec- fact Marie, and Tommy claims her crime as his own, surren- ond-year English brought him, as well as Amy Lowell, dering voluntarily to the police on her behalf. When Ruddy Vachel Lindsay, and Edgar Lee Masters, to us. Then I began visits to console her at her house, Marie desperately exclaims to try to write like Carl Sandburg. (The Big Sea 28) to him, “I wanted to kill, just to kill anybody, everybody, when I knew what had happened to me” (122). Marie’s des- Hughes must have read Masters’s Spoon River Anthology, perate remarks foreshadow her future murders. Tommy could Sandburg’s Chicago Poems, and Lindsay’s well-known poem have another woman for a wife just as Wright did, but Marie “General William Booth Enters into Heaven” and other po- has no future, so she then kills six people with a gun in Brent- ems, which were already published in 1913, 1915, and 1916, wood Park with unjustified resentment based on a misunder- respectively. Two years later in the summer of 1918 when he standing of the world. Tommy happens to know that the mur- was sixteen, Hughes went to Chicago to join his mother and derer is Marie, so he sacrifices himself in compensation for found the city street “full of workers and gamblers, prostitutes his refusal of marriage, just as Wright did when writing A Fa- and pimps, church folks and sinners” (The Big Sea 33). ther’s Law as “a kind of therapeutic measure,” feeling “all the Hughes noticed that critics in those days wrongly underesti- poison being drained out.” mated Sandburg’s poetry and later borrowed much from Sand- burg as it is clear that Sandburg’s “Old Timers” is a model for 2. The Case of Langston Hughes: His Contri- Hughes’s “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (Tracy, Writers 8). bution to the Chicago Renaissance Hughes began to read Dreiser in Cleveland, Ohio, recalling in his autobiography: “I was reading Schopenhauer and Ni- 2.1 etzsche, and Edna Ferber and Dreiser, and de Maupassant in The Chicago Renaissance has its origin from 1890 to 1920, French” (The Big Sea 33). Hughes must have read Dreiser’s which is considered its first period. The second period of the Sister Carrie and Jennie Gerhardt, which were published in Chicago Renaissance began in the 1930s. According to Yoshi- 1900 and 1911, respectively. In the same year (1925) as Dreis- nobu Hakutani, Langston Hughes was instrumental in filling er’s An American Tragedy was published, Lindsay discovered the gap between these two periods (“Preface” Hricko xi). Sim- Hughes as a poet, when Hughes was working at a Washington,

─ 5 ─ D. C. hotel. cial Order” along with Bontemps, Augusta Savage (Program When he came to Chicago again from California in Decem- featuring Wright, Yale U; Fabre 126), and Frank Marshall Da- ber 1935 after he established his reputation as a poet by pub- vis (Fabre 128). In the afternoon at the congress Hughes intro- lishing The Weary and Not Without Laughter, Hughes duced Wright to the young poet , who recol- transformed himself from an artist to the revolutionary writer lects: we never know. Hughes became acquainted with several radi- cal writers, including Richard Wright, and was more involved I tried to press my manuscripts on Langston but when I ad- in a wide range of social-political activities and organizations mitted I had no copies he would not take them. Instead, he that fostered his exploration into the radical aesthetic. Much turned to Wright who was standing nearby, listening to the later, as a columnist for the African American newspaper, the conversation and smiling at my desperation. Langston said, Chicago Defender, Hughes chronicled the hopes and despair “If you people really get a group together, don’t forget to of African Americans. He wrote forcefully and eloquently not include this girl.” Wright promised that he would remem- only about race relations in America but also abroad, imperi- ber. (Ray and Farnsworth 47-49) alism and fascism, communism, and African American art and culture. He found value in the cultural politics of Chicago’s Hughes took an active interest in connecting people togeth- South Side, and during this period he wrote some of his most er in this way. Walker, one of the important Chicago Renais- revolutionary prose and poetry. sance poets, had already met Hughes four years earlier when When Hughes came to Chicago in 1935, Wright, in his late he did a poetry reading at New Orleans University on Febru- twenties, had just begun his literary career and published his ary 11, 1932 (Rampersad, I 232). At that time, Hughes had poems “Rest for the Weary” and “A Red Love Note” in the just turned thirty and Walker was only seventeen years old. January 1934 issue of Left Front, and also published “I Have However, Hughes’s insightful eye for the talented turned out Seen Black Hands” in the 26 June 1934 issue of . to be right because Wright became a bestselling writer with Wright’s leftist poem, “Rest for the Weary,” was probably Native Son a few years later and Walker won the Yale Young written under the influence of Hughes’s The Weary Blues. Be- Poets Prize for her collection of poems, For My People. Walk- cause Hughes was always looking for new young talent and er recalls in one of the interviews with her: “I think Langston’s signs of change among the young generation, he happened to poetry and his life have influenced me remarkably from the read these poems in Left Front and New Masses and wanted to time I was a child” (Graham 20). see Wright. The August 1, 1939 issue of New Masses printed “Red Clay On the other hand, to Wright, by 1934, Hughes had already Blues,” written by Wright in collaboration with Hughes. The published Not Without Laughter, The Weary Blues, and The poem shows how deeply Wright was influenced by Hughes: Ways of White Folks and was a successful writer. So on No- vember 23, 1934, Wright was aware of Hughes’s importance I want to be in Georgia, when the and discussed the thirty-two year life of Hughes in detail and Big storm starts to blow. examined his The Weary Blues and The Ways of White Folks Yes, I want to be in Georgia when that at the Indianapolis Club, in Indiana (Brochure fea- Big storm starts to blow. turing Wright, Yale U; Left front 1 [May-June 1934]). Four I want to see the landlords runnin’ cause I years later, Wright published a collection of short stories, Un- Wonder where they gonna go! cle Tom’s Children, probably also under the influence of Hughes’s The Ways of White Folks. This poem in some ways echoes sentiments found in On December 6, 1935, Hughes came to Chicago and said to Wright’s 12 Million Black Voices, later published in 1941. his friend , “About this Richard Wright who’s Wright, however, left Chicago in 1937 but returned to the city writing for The Masses, haven’t you met him yet? Let’s go out a number of times for ten years before leaving the United and find him” (Hill 199). Around January 1936, Hughes final- States for France. Thus Wright and Hughes were collaborating ly met Wright with Bontemps for the first time at a party even after they left Chicago. Hughes was also sometimes (Bontemps to Hughes, 26 January 1961, Nichols 406). present in Chicago and, as Lawrence Jackson says, “The On February 16, 1936, the third day of the National Negro movement of Richard Wright and Langston Hughes between Congress opened in Chicago and Hughes attended the session New York and Chicago increased the contacts between radical “The Role of the Negro Artist and Writer in the Changing So- black writers of both cities” (Tracy, Writers 78).

─ 6 ─ On the other hand, , another poet on Theatre, where he wrote his play , staged in which Hughes had an influence, whom Hughes met at the Na- New York by the Negro Playwrights Company, which he tional Negro Congress, was also a promising poet, only two co-founded with Hughes and . He wrote 30 years younger than Hughes but was late to begin his career as more plays, including Our Lan’. Hughes had a deep impact on a poet because he began his career as an African-American Ward as a playwright when he attended a reading of Ward’s newspaper reporter in Chicago. During the play Big White Fog and “immediately hailed Ward’s work as period, his poetry was sponsored by the Works Progress Ad- the best drama ever written by a black American” (Rampersad, ministration (WPA), and he also played an important and ac- I 357-58). tive role in the South Side Writers’ Group along with Richard In a July 23, 1936 letter, Hughes wrote to Wright from Wright. Davis wrote of Hughes in his memoir: “On one of his Cleveland, Ohio: infrequent trips to Chicago, I met Langston Hughes…. I there- fore considered him a writing generation ahead of me…. Not I don’t know whether the enclosed request from Nancy Cu- only did he help fellow writers but often contributed original nard has reached you before or not, but she has asked me to work to publications badly in need of a big name to attract at- send her the names of Revolutionary Negro poets as she tention” (Davis 238). wants them to send in poems for her anthology. So if you is another playwright whom Hughes have anything suitable, which I know you have, please sub- helped. On May 15, 1936, the first annual drama contest at mit some of them to her. (Yale U) Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable High School in Chicago under the auspices of South Parkway Y. M. C. A. Education Com- Hughes is talking about Cunard’s massive anthology, Ne- mittee saw the performance of Hughes’s short one-act play gro: An Anthology, published in 1934, carrying Dreiser’s es- “Soul Gone Home,” along with Theodore Ward’s play “Sick say, “Speech on the Scottsboro Case, June 5, 1931,” along and Tiah’d,” and ’s “Hymn to the Rising Sun” with Hughes’s controversial poem “Goodbye, Christ,” and (Program, Yale U). The first stage directions for Hughes’s other poems and essays. In the letter, Hughes asked Wright to “Soul Gone Home” read “A tenement room, bare, ugly, dirty. introduce him to African American revolutionary poets for An unshaded electric-light bulb. In the middle of the room a Cunard’s anthology. As this letter shows, Hughes was always cot on which the body of a Negro Youth is lying. His hands a mediator between people and later introduced to Wright Af- are folded across his chest” (Smalley 39). This is reminiscent rican American poets living in Los Angeles such as Vincent of both the opening and end scenes in Wright’s Native Son, Williams, Harry Armstrong, and Loren Miller (Hughes to where Bigger Thomas awakes in the opening scene to the Wright, June 6, 1937, Yale U). glaring sound of the alarm clock in the prison, sentenced to Hughes worked more effectively as a mediator when Ralph death. Wright later attended the performance of Hughes’s Ellison asked Hughes to introduce him to Wright around April Don’t You Want to Be Free? on Broadway in New York 1937 (West B3). In late May Hughes dropped Wright a card, on June 4, 1938 (Advertisement, Daily Worker). introducing Ellison to him (Graham and Singh 292), saying The short play “Sick and Tiah’d” impressed Hughes and that a young writer named Ellison was also interested in other aspiring black writers present at the contest, including Wright’s poems published in New Masses (West B3). Then, on Bontemps, Davis, Owen Dodson, and Walker. With their in- May 30, 1937, Wright for the first time met Ellison through fluence and encouragement, Ward completed his first full- Hughes at the place of his friend Henrietta Weigel (Fabre/ length work, Big White Fog, which was produced in 1938 by Webb interview with Ralph Ellison, February 3, 1963, Schom- the Negro Unit of the Federal Theater Project. Ward was born berg, New York Public Library), and the friendship between in Louisiana in 1902—the same year as Hughes—and came to Wright and Ellison began. Chicago in 1933, one year earlier than Hughes. According to In June 1932, Hughes traveled to the Soviet Union with a Alan M. Wald, in that year, Ward happened to attend a chapter group of twenty-two African Americans, including Dorothy meeting at the John Reed Club in Chicago and saw the perfor- West. Hughes and William Attaway were later featured in the mance of a skit treating the right of African Americans to vote magazine Challenge, which West founded in 1934. West also in the South and began to give form to the play, “Sick and published the magazine’s successor, New Challenge. During Tiah’d.” (Theodore Ward” 321). The play concerns a southern the second Chicago Renaissance, numerous black journals African American poor farmer who has his own family and were published, and New Challenge (November 1937), edited plot of land. Ward joined the Chicago branch of the Federal by Dorothy West and Marian Minus, was among them, carry-

─ 7 ─ ing in the first issue Anthony Lespès’s poem “Song for (Tracy, Writers 98). This episode happened in 1933, when Youth,” translated by Hughes. The magazine was among the Brooks was only sixteen years old. There Hughes encouraged first to publish literature featuring realistic portrayals of Afri- her writing and became her literary mentor. Brooks later ex- can Americans. Among the works published were Richard tolls Hughes in her poem, “Langston Hughes”: Wright’s groundbreaking essay “Blueprint for Negro Writing,” together with writings by Walker and Ellison. Hughes’s trans- Has a long reach, lation was to introduce Haitian literature and culture to the Strong speech, writers in Chicago and other cities. Lespès is a revolutionary Remedial fears. Haitian poet, whom Hughes has known since he criticized the Muscular tears. (Selected Poems 123) Haitian “dignified native citizens with shoes” in his essay, “People without Shoes: The Haytian Masses,” published in Other writers Hughes helped include , the October 1931 issue of New Masses and reappearing in Cu- Fenton Johnson, Marian Minus, Willard Motley, Gordon nard anthology, Negro: An Anthology: “Borrowing govern- Parks, Frank Yerby, , and Richard Durham, ment money abroad to spend on themselves—and doing noth- to name a few. ing for the people without shoes; building no schools, no fac- tories, creating no advancements for the masses, no new 2.3 agricultural developments, no opportunities—too busy feeding In conclusion, Hughes’s impact on other Chicago Renais- their own pride and their own acquisitiveness” (Hughes, “Peo- sance writers is clear. He introduced some poets and play- ple” 289). Lespès, whom Hughes translated and introduced in wrights to others in a variety of American cities, handing New Challenge, is one of the poets of the so-called “the Indi- down cultural legacy during Dreiser’s first Chicago Renais- genist Movement,” a movement by a young generation of sance period to writers during Wright’s second Renaissance Haitian intellectuals who were stimulated by the revolutionary period. His friendship made Hughes indispensable to the poets’ denouncement of the Eurocentrism of the Haitian bour- emergence of a young generation of African American artists, geoisie and sought inspiration from their African heritage. The writers, and critics in Chicago that attracted national and inter- Indigenist Movement is characterized by its interest in Haitian national attention. Hughes could be remembered as Chicago’s popular culture, the Haitian language, and African mainte- pioneering and pivotal figure among Chicago Renaissance nance in Haitian culture. Because Hughes had a strong con- writers such that without his existence and support the energy nection with Haiti and visited there in 1931, he recognized behind the South Side Writers Group, the Chicago Defender, that the efforts of the Chicago Renaissance to seek “ways to the John Reed Club in Chicago, and the League of American reject traditional subject matter and form” (Hakutani xvii) Writers would have been simply impossible. Most important- corresponded to the ideas of the Indigenist Movement in Hai- ly, Hughes, who admitted the influence of the Chicago De- ti, bringing an international perspective to the Chicago Re- fender when he was young, later published his early poems in naissance. the newspaper and continued to write a weekly column “From Hughes also encouraged young struggling writers such as Here to Yonder” from 1942 through 1962, introducing his Claude A. Barnett, Alden Bland, Edward Bland, and Marita character, Jesse Semple, in the column and stimulating a con- Bonner. For example, in Chicago, Attaway showed little inter- siderable number of younger generation artists and intellectu- est in school until he was assigned a poem written by Hughes. als in Chicago. His legacy made a lasting impact on writers of Once he learned that Hughes was a black poet, Attaway decid- the Chicago Renaissance, demonstrating how to use African ed to start applying himself to his school work. He even en- American vernacular language and music as a poetic diction, joyed writing so much that he wrote for his sister Ruth’s ama- along with his humanism and his use of folk tradition. Hughes teur dramatic groups. learned a new American literary tradition from Dreiser and , a most important Chicago Renaissance woke up Wright and other younger generation Chicago writers poet, considered Hughes her mentor. Her biographer Stephen and artists to the new tradition. Caldwell Wright notes: “In subsequent years, Brooks cultivat- ed a professional relationship with Hughes, whom she met at Works Cited the South Side Community Center, where Brooks and other aspiring writers visit on a regular basis, under the philanthrop- Brooks, Gwendolyn. Selected Poems. 1963; New York: Peren- ic tutelage of white benefactress Inez Cunningham Stark” nial Classics, 1999. Print.

─ 8 ─ Davis, Frank Marshall. Livin’ the Blues: Memoirs of a Black Print. Journalist and Poet. Ed. John Edgar Tidwell. Madison: Poirier, Suzanne. Chicago’s War on Syphilis, 1937–1940: The U of Wisconsin P, 1992. Print. Times, the Trib, and the Clap Doctor. Champaign, Ill.: U Fabre, Michel. The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright. Urba- of Illinois P, 1995. Print. na: U of Illinois P, 1993. The Second Edition. Print. Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes: I, Too, Sing Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and K. A. Appiah, eds. Langston America. Vol. 1: 1902-1941. New York: Oxford UP, Hughes: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New 1988. Print. York: Amistad, 1993. Print. Ray, David, and Robert M. Farnsworth, eds. Richard Wright: Graham, Maryemma, ed. Conversations with Margaret Walk- Impressions and Perspectives. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan er. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2002. Print. P, 1973. Print. ──, and Amritjit Singh, eds. Conversations with Ralph Elli- Reverby, Susan M. Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphi- son. Jackson: U of Mississippi P, 1995. Print. lis Study and Its Legacy. Chapel Hill: U of North Caroli- Hill, Herbert, moderator. “Reflections on Richard Wright: A na P, 2009. Print. Symposium on an Exiled Native Son.” Anger, and Be- Rowley, Hazel. Richard Wright: The Life and Times. New yond: The Negro Writer in the United States. Ed. Herbert York: A John Macrae Book, 2001. Print. Hill. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. 196-212. Print. Smalley, Webster, ed. Five Plays by Langston Hughes. Bloom- Hricko, Mary. The Genesis of the Chicago Renaissance: ington: Indiana UP, 1968. Print. Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and James T. Farrell. Tracy, Steven C., ed. Writers of the Black Chicago Renais- New York: Routledge, 2009. Print. sance. Urbana-Champaign: U of Illinois P, 2011. Print. Hughes, Langston. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” The New Wald, Alan M. “Theodore Ward.” In Tracy, Writers 320-40. Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Ed. Alain Print. Locke. 1925; New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. 141. Ward, Jerry, W., Jr. “Richard Wright, A Father’s Law.” Afri- Print. can American Review 43 (2-3) (Sum.-Fall 2009): 519-21. ──. “People without Shoes: The Haitian Masses.” Negro: Print. An Anthology. Ed. Nancy Cunard. New York: Ungar, West, Hollie I. “Interview: From an Ellison Perspective.” The 1970. 288-90. Print. Washington Post (21 August 1973): B1, B3. Print. Jackson, Lawrence. “Edward Bland.” In Tracy, Writers 76-82. Wright, Julia. “Introduction.” Wright, A Father’s Law. v-xiii. Print. Print. Joyce, Joyce Ann. Richard Wright’s Art of Tragedy. Iowa City: Wright, Richard. A Father’s Law. New York: Harper Perren- U of Iowa P, 1986. Print. nial, 2008. Print. Kiuchi, Toru, and Yoshinobu Hakutani. Richard Wright: A Wright, Stephen Caldwell. “Gwendolyn Brooks.” In Tracy, Documented Chronology, 1908-1960. Jefferson, NC: Writers 96-120. Print. McFarland, 2014. Print. Acknowledgement: This work was supported by JSPS KAK- Nichols, Charles H., ed. Arna Bontemps—Langston Hughes ENHI Grant Number 21520284. Letters, 1925-1967. New York: Paragon House, 1980.

─ 9 ─ ライトとヒューズ──シカゴと二人の主要アフリカ系アメリカ人作家

木内 徹・福島 昇

概 要 リチャード・ライトはミシシッピー州ナッチェズの東 35 キロの村ロキシーで生まれた。1927 年５月，Ｈ・ Ｌ・メンケンを攻撃する記事を見つけて興味を持ち，黒人には本を貸し出さないので白人に頼んでカードを 借り，メンケンの著作を図書館で借りる。冬にシカゴに到着し，黒人町の下宿屋に部屋を借りる。1929 年， 大恐慌のため職を失い，生活苦に陥る。こうして 1937 年にニューヨークへ行くまでシカゴを作家修業の舞 台としてきた。『アメリカの息子』や，ここにあげる『父親の法則』などシカゴを舞台にした作品が数多く ある。 一方，ラングストン・ヒューズは詩人，劇作家で，最も重要なアフリカ系アメリカ人作家の一人である。 1942 年黒人新聞「シカゴ・ディフェンダー」にコラムを書き始め，シカゴとの関係を深めている。1949 年 シカゴ大学客員教授ともなり，1950 年代はマッカーシーの赤狩旋風が吹き荒れ，ヒューズも証言台でいか に自分もアメリカを愛しているかを証言する。アメリカ黒人に最も愛されている，ハーレム・ルネッサンス の代表的詩人で，早くからラングストン・ヒューズ学会が設立され研究者も多い。また日本でも最も翻訳の 多い黒人作家である。 本論は二人の主要アフリカ系アメリカ人作家がシカゴとどのように関わったかを検証するものである。

キーワード：リチャード・ライト，ラングストン・ヒューズ，シカゴ，アフリカ系アメリカ人文学

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