Black Artists in Red

Throughout our readings and my search for a primary source, I continued to find this enduring dream of communism and communist uprisings, this fantastical vision of a near magical future where equality, equity, and social justice were common and taken for granted. Even more, I continued to stumble upon these poets, writers, authors, and artists supporting and visiting the USSR; they continued to dream of this revolution, this national uprising that would give them a voice and their humanity. Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Langston Hughes were all communists praising the USSR society and propagating this new image of a “better” society. Moreover, though we learn about these authors in school, we never publicize or mention their political beliefs. For instance, when we discuss Langston Hughes and his life, we discuss his PG-rated poems, we use censored verses to express his ideas and the renaissance of Harlem, ignoring those Langston ideas that clash with American society, those ideas that call into question white supremacy and those investments into whiteness. For instance, Hughes wrote a poem entitled “Ballad of Lenin,” yet we never learn about it or this part of his life, the years he spent in the USSR and his ideas that grew out of those experiences. In this poem Hughes leaves almost no room for interpretation:

            Comrade Lenin of Russia,

            High in a marble tomb,

            Move over, Comrade Lenin,

            And give me room

            I am Ivan, the peasant

            Boots all muddy with soil.

            I fought with you Comrade Lenin.

            Now I’ve finished my toil.[1]

Ultimately, Hughes Wright, and Ellison believed int he revolution: "Put one more S in the U.S.A/ TO make it Soviet/ One more S in the U.S.A/ Oh, we'll life to see it yet." [2] They believed in these ideas because they were ostracized from every other ideology: they were removed from democracy; they were dehumanized by capitalism, and they were exiled in Christianity. Though some of them eventually lost this dream, many black activists continued and continue to use this communist dream of racial justice through revolution and action. They used and use this ideology to fulfill their dreams of racial equality and justice, and as a result, whiteness hides this reality from our schools. We teach a whitened image of Langston Hughes because his model of blackness vying for equality and justice threatens white supremacy and white investments. We hid and continue to hide it, because it scares our white selves.

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[1] Langston Hughes, “Ballads of Lenin,” Accessed February 21, 2017, http://poetrynook.com/poem/ballads-lenin.

[2] Langston Hughes, “Langston Hughes: Communist Poet,” Accessed February 21, 2017, https://stalinsmoustache.org/2013/01/23/langston-hughes-communist-and-one-of-the-greatest-us-poets-of-the-20th-century/.