Im enrolled in a 100-level African American literature college course. The professor claims that Hughes was labeled a "radical" because he supported racial equality. While I am sure there is some truth to this, my professor failed to mention who labeled him a "radical" and failed to provide evidence for the motive. Furthermore, I have searched and found that Hughes was a Soviet sympathizer and the time he wrote "Put one more 'S' in the U.S.A." follows the first Red Scare. This seems like a plausible, and possibly but not necessarily alternative, motive for labeling Hughes a "radical." What is the historical consensus on this issue rather than the canned explanation?
The problem with Langston Hughes is not just that he supported racial equality, It was the calls for racial equality and embracing Communism. During the First Red Scare after the Russian Bolsheviks revolution, the United States government was worried that African Americans would attempt to spark a similar revolution here in the states because of the parallels between the Bolsheviks and African Americans.
President Woodrow Wilson stated privately that "the American Negro returning from abroad would be our greatest medium in conveying Bolshevism to America."
During this time in 1919, the Communist Party USA was created, from the jump it was under attack from the Federal Government, leading to many of their members being deported under the Sedition Act of 1918. In the beginning, they had almost no Black members but by the 1930s, they started to activity recruit African Americans recognizing the similar struggle. They began supporting labor unions and created the International Labor Defense (which was the legal wing of the CPUSA) They famously defended the Scottsboro boys (which was nine African American boys accused of rape in Scottsboro, Alabama in 1931)
Because of all this many African Americans saw Communism as an possible alternative to a segregated capitalist America. In 1932, the Soviet Union invited Hughes and a group of African-Americans to visit Russia to make a film about American racism. Hughes also had his works published in the CPUSA newspaper and he was involved in the drive to free the Scottsboro Boys. All though he never actually joined the CPUSA.
Following World War II, United States and the Soviet Union became engaged in the Cold War, leading the second Red Scare. Joseph McCarthy and the House of Representatives, began investigating Communists working inside the federal government or in Hollywood. Of course, Hughes was called before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations led by McCarthy. By that time Hughes’s involvement with communism had waned and began to move away from overtly political poems. when asked by he never joined the CPUSA he stated
“It was based on strict discipline and the acceptance of directives that I, as a writer, did not wish to accept.”