![]() While on tour in the American Jim Crow South, he could not eat anywhere he wanted, rest anywhere he could afford, or use the restroom at his leisure because he was a black man, yet his play ran on Broadway and was "listed among the twelve longest runs for 1935-36" (even if it took him a while to realize that someone else was putting his name to his work, even if his agent didn't tell him about the play until after it was produced, even if he had to get the Dramatist Guild to represent him so he get paid royalties for his own work). He was seated as a guest of honor in Japan's most celebrated theaters, yet he was deported from Japan due to fears that he'd travelled to Russia and China, so he could have been a communist. Hughes could not sit at the same table with Hemingway in America, due to the color lines drawn, but both he and Hemingway could dine together with writers in Barcelona, during the war. In Hughes' memoir, I read as he observed how art in the form of theatre, dance, writing, folklore, music, and graphics helped snap portraits of the world during a time of social change. ![]() ![]() What is it about art that calms the soul and rejuvenates the mind? In times of unrest, art uncovers the truth and displays it with unwavering subtlety. ![]()
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