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115 Chapter 8 Langston Hughes and the Black and White Film Group  They left the train to touch their hands to Soviet soil, lift the new earth in their palms, and kiss it.1 —Langston Hughes (1956) In June 1932, Langston Hughes joined a group of twenty-one people to make a film in the Soviet Union. “This unexpected chance to work in films in Russia seemed to open a new door to me.”2 Homer Smith was equally excited. “I yearned to stand taller than I had ever stood to breathe total freedom in great exhilarating gulps, to avoid all the hurts that were increasingly becoming the lot of men (and women) of color in the United States. . . . Moscow seemed the answer.”3 For Henry Lee Moon, it was a bridge to his future. “It meant the end of my frustration in trying to penetrate the color bar at the New York Times where my efforts were repeatedly rebuffed with the Times’ standard response, ‘No, not yet.’”4 Black and White was to be a major Soviet propaganda film that would show the American Negro “in his true character” and expose the evils of racism. The story, situated at a steel mill in the American South, would demonstrate the solidarity between white and black workers overcoming the most draconian of situations. It was to “be a departure from the traditional pattern [and trace] the development of the Negro people in America, their work, their play, their progress, their difficulties—devoid of sentimentality as well as of buffoonery.” The film was sure to be welcomed “by discriminating patrons of the cinema and those people sincerely interested in the Negro.”5 All the official Black and White film members were black, save one, Allen McKenzie. Six of them, Hughes, Wayland Rudd, Juanita Lewis, Thurston McNairy Lewis, Dorothy West, and Estelle Winwood, had previous experience in the theater. Most, save Hughes, Smith, Louise Thompson, and one or two others, had no formal political agenda. Most were temporary sojourners, glad to be going for their contracted time; and some were secretly hoping to find ways to stay on. Noted Hughes, “[The] two professionals [Rudd and Winwood] were also the only real mature people in our group, everyone else being well under thirty and some hardly out of their teens . . . an art student just out of Hampton, teacher, a 116 Blacks, Reds, and Russians girl elocutionist from Seattle, three would-be writers other than myself, a very pretty divorcee who traveled on alimony, a female swimming instructor, and various clerks and stenographers.” Smith noted, “They came from such distances as California, Minnesota and even Montego Bay, Jamaica. . . . Wayland Rudd, who had worked in ‘Porgy’; Taylor Gordon, writer and concert singer; Loren Miller, now a prominent Los Angeles attorney; Ted R. Poston, New York newsman; and Henry Lee Moon, prominent publicist and author, were amongst the twenty-two.” Faith Berry’s list was the most comprehensive: Lawrence O. Alberga, an agricultural worker; Matthew Crawford, an insurance clerk; Sylvia Garner, a singer and actress; social workers Constance White, Katherine Jenkins, and Leonard Hill; George Sample, a law student and Jenkins’s fiancé; Mildred Jones, an art student; Juanita Lewis, a singer; Mollie Lewis, a graduate student; Thurston McNairy Lewis, an actor; Allen McKenzie, a salesman; Frank C. Montero, a student; Henry Lee Moon, a reporter; Lloyd Patterson, a paperhanger and artist; Theodore R. Poston, a reporter; Wayland Rudd, an actor; Neil Homer Smith, a postal clerk and journalist; and Dorothy West, a writer and actress. Although several of the participants had the last name Lewis, Berry did not indicate whether any of them were relatives.6 Two of them, McKenzie and Rudd, were also known to have white female traveling companions.7 No matter their personal reasons, the journey was important enough that they were willing to pay their own passage. Organizer Thompson had assured them that they would be reimbursed once they got to the Soviet Union, but they still had to put forth their money first. Hughes wrote, “Very few professional theatre people were willing to pay their own fares to travel all the way to Russia to sign contracts they had never seen. Only a band of eager, adventurous young [people] were willing to do that.”8 A week before they left, Amsterdam News columnist and project publicrelations representative Moon issued a press release. He stated that the twentytwo -member group represented a “fair cross section of Negro life” and noted that they...

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