Langston Hughes and American Lynching Culture

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. Although I focus on the impact lynching had on these African American men, the historian Nell Irvin Painter reminds us that lynch victims also included “some women and children, that other Americans also were victims, notably Mexicans , but also white people, including white women.” For more information, see Democracy Now, “Senate Apologizes for Not Enacting Anti-Lynching Legislation: A Look at Journalist and Anti-Lynching Crusader Ida B. Wells,” www.democracy now.org/ 2005/6/14/senate_apologizes_for_not_enacting_anti. Chapter 1. The Red Summer of 1919: Finding Reassurance 1. For more information on lynching statistics for Texas, see James M. SoRelle, “Jesse Washington Lynching,” The Handbook of Texas Online, University of Texas at Austin, www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/JJ/jcjl.html. 2. Further information on NAACP membership can be found in Michael L. Gillette, “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,” The Handbook of Texas Online, University of Texas at Austin, www.tsha.utexas.edu/ handbook/online/articles/view/NN/ven1.html. 3. More information about the “Waco horror” can be located in James M. SoRelle, “Jesse Washington Lynching,” The Handbook of Texas Online, University of Texas at Austin, www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/JJ/jcjl. html. 4. The events surrounding Samuel L. Jones and Calvin P. Davis are described in Ken Durham, “Longview Race Riot of 1919,” The Handbook of Texas Online, University of Texas at Austin, www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/ view/LL/jcl2/html. 5. The illustration of the man being burned can be found in the December 1910 issue of Crisis (15); “The National Pastime” appeared in the January 1911 Crisis (18–19); and the reference to Great Britain’s lack of lynchings is from the February 1911 Crisis (14). 6. See the inside covers of the December 1918 and February 1919 Crisis for these full-page advertisements promoting the work of the NAACP. 7. The story reported by the Houston branch can be found in Crisis, February 1919, 182. For the report on the revival of the Klan in Texas, see Crisis, March 1919, 229. The two-page lynching summary can be found in Crisis, February 1919, 180–81. 8. More information on the events in Arkansas can be found in Richard Wormser , “Red Summer,” Jim Crow Stories, Public Broadcasting Service, www.pbs.org/ wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_red.html. For more about the incident at Wilmington , see Richard Wormser, “Wilmington Riots,” Jim Crow Stories, Public Broadcasting Service, www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow?stories_events_riot.html. 9. For further philosophical analysis of the relationship between memory and active participation with nature, see Barfield, Saving the Appearances. 10. See Green, Black Women Composers 52–53, for more about Margaret Bonds’s composition of Hughes’s “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” See also Berry, Langston Hughes 248, for information about Marian Anderson’s performance of Hughes’s poem; Berry’s text also notes the postcards Hughes sent out to friends (300) and makes mention of his film proposal (305). Chapter 2. The Scottsboro Case and World War II America: Poetic Anger 1. To view each of Taylor’s three different lithographs for the cover as well as the others I discuss in this chapter that were included in Scottsboro Limited, see Rose and Quiroz’s The Lithographs of Prentiss Taylor, 68, 69, 77, 78. 2. See Rice, Witnessing Lynching 271, for a photograph of Ruby Bates appearing with the mothers of the Scottsboro Boys on Mother’s Day, May 14, 1934, in Washington, D.C. 3. One example is Hughes’s letter addressed to Guy B. Johnson, 31 October 1933, series 2.1, box 8, folders 110–131, Guy B. Johnson Papers #3826, Wilson Library , University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 4. See Wells-Barnett, On Lynchings, for a statistical analysis of the surprisingly low number of lynchings committed in response to accusations of rape. 152 Notes to Pages 29–48 5. Hughes read his poems in Gerrard Hall. In The Life of Langston Hughes, this building is mistakenly identified by its architectural features as the “Greek Revival Little Theater” (1: 225). Moreover, The Life of Langston Hughes suggests that Hughes made another appearance at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the winter of 1960 (2: 309); however, no record of such an appearance exists in the university’s archives, although appearances by Robert Frost, Kenneth Rexroth, Roy Wilkins, Andres Segovia, Ray Charles...