Poet Langston Hughes is being honored with a Google Doodle to make what would have been his 113th birthday. Hughes was best known for his poem “I Dream a World.” His work was influential during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Like many African American artists living in segregated America, Hughes was drawn to the idea of Communism. In the 1930s, he traveled to the Soviet Union to produce a Soviet film on “Negro Life” but the film was dropped. In 1953, when called before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, Hughes denied being a Communist.
Hughes stated: “I never read the theoretical books of socialism or communism or the Democratic or Republican parties for that matter, and so my interest in whatever may be considered political has been non-theoretical, non-sectarian, and largely emotional and born out of my own need to find some way of thinking about this whole problem of myself.” After that, when selecting his poetry for his Selected Poems
‘Ballad of Lenin’ by Langston Hughes
Comrade Lenin of Russia,
High in a marble tomb,
Move over, Comrade Lenin,
And give me room.I am Ivan, the peasant
Boots all muddy with soil.
I fought with you Comrade Lenin.
Now I’ve finished my toil.Comrade Lenin of Russia,
Alive in a marble tomb,
Move over, Comrade Lenin,
And give me room.
I am Chico, the Negro
Cutting cane in the sun.
I lived for you, Comrade Lenin.
Now my work is done.Comrade Lenin of Russia,
Honored in a marble tomb,
Move over, Comrade Lenin,
And give me room.I am Chang from the foundries
On strike in the streets of Shanghai.
For the sake of the Revolution
I fight, I starve, I die.Comrade Lenin of Russia
Rises in the marble tomb:
On guard with the fighters forever – –The world is our room!
