Langston Hughes's Political Poetry Directly Challenges American Racial Hypocrisy

Langston Hughes's Depression-era poetry and prose directly challenged American racial hypocrisy. His 1932 poem 'Christ in Alabama' — 'Christ is a nigger / Beaten and black' — written in the context of the Scottsboro trials, was published in Contempo magazine, triggering bomb threats when he read it at the University of North Carolina. His 1935 play 'Mulatto' became Broadway's longest-running play by a Black author to that date. Hughes insisted on using the word 'Negro' with dignity at a time when its connotations were contested. His journalism, poetry, and fiction reached mass Black audiences through newspapers and created cultural vocabulary for resistance.