1967-- Lyndon B. Johnson is the United States President and the Vietnam war is in its twelfth year. Ronald Reagan is the new governor of California, The Door’s release their debut album, and “Respect” by Aretha Franklin is hitting the airwaves. The Twenty Fifth amendment is ratified. Martin Luther King, Jr. denounces the Vietnam War. The First Boeing 737 takes flight. Large demonstrations against the Vietnam war rage across the United States. The hippie era is in its height. The book, The Outsiders, is published. Elvis Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu are married. Loving v. Virginia declares laws against interracial marriages as unconstitutional. Thurgood Marshall is the first African American justice to be sworn into the Supreme Court of the United States as Race Riots spread across America. Tensions are high and American culture is in such as state of transformation and contention.
Langston Hughes dies on May, 22nd, 1967.
A moment not often seen mentioned in the “Most Important events of 1967” pages, Hughes’ later life, especially his last month’s alive, are never explored at the same degree as his Harlem renaissance years with his Jazz poetry or his time during World War II with his major pieces of work. What can be found about Langston Hughes and his life during this year is that he experiences many frustrations, a constant sense of hopelessness, but all the while producing some of his most vibrant and emotional pieces of poetry.
Langston Hughes’ opens the new year with Toy Harper, the wife of the owner of the East Harlem home Hughes stayed in, falling devastatingly ill and her husband following suit in a mild manner. Hughes was not even home for most of the year prior as he spent 1966 on a three-month European tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department. (Rampersad, p 414)
After a year of travel, exploration, and working on some new writing projects, 1967 opened up with him having to run the fourteen-room house on East 127th Street while the Harpers recovered. He learned quickly what it meant to run the East Harlem home as not soon after the responsibility was given to him, he was required by city regulations to do $7000 of renovations to the place. The renovations would cause him to have to move out of the East Harlem home and into the Hotel Wellington in East Manhattan until the workmen finished. (Rampersad, p 415)
Bad news kept arriving at Hughes’ doorstep as the husband of the niece of Emerson Harpers who lived right around the corner had died. Of course, Hughes, a longtime friend of the Harpers, helped them during this strenuous time. Around this time, His uncle was also being put in a nursing home. Langston was forced to cancel dinner dates with his friends including one with the poet Muriel Rukeyser and another opera date with Amy Spingarn. (Rampersad, p 415)
It was at this point that Hughes was craving change in his life. His secretary Raoul Abdul commented that during this period of his life, Hughes felt “kind of used and depleted,” and “He just wanted to go off…go back to France, renew his acquaintances in Paris, and with Paris, not so much people but the place itself, and just live there. I think he had a dream of that…” (Rampersad, p 415) Before, Friends in Paris had offered him an apartment which quickly became no longer available, but this made Hughes make up his mind about what he wanted. He told his friends that if anything else was for rent or lease that he wanted to know at once. He wrote to Arna Bontemps that he hoped to stay in Paris for “toujours.” (Berry, 1997) Hughes wanted an escape and he felt Paris was that escape.
There were a lot of things he wanted to escape beyond the mess at the Harlem home. After years and years of writing and advocating for black civil rights and equality, 1967 did not begin to shine any sense of hope. Representatives voted to unseat Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Jr. who was the first African American to be elected from New York to Congress. Segregationist Lester Maddox became the Governor of Georgia. Another Segregationist George Wallace was succeeded by his wife as Governor of Alabama. A high-ranking Puerto Rican city official was convicted of a crime. And then, a black man’s home was bombed in Brooklyn. Soon his uncle would need to be put into a nursing home as well due to his declining health. He felt the whole world was going wrong, and so early into 1967, he unplugged his phone entirely so he could not hear any more bad news. He did not even celebrate his own 65th birthday that year and did not want anyone to even notice it. And now, because of the expensive construction at the Harlem home and his hotel fees, Hughes was strapped for cash. (Rampersad, p 416)
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