Battle Lines : Use of Hughes Poem on Gay History Poster Ignites Furor

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--Langston Hughes

The tone is plaintive, not provocative. Yet when organizers of the Los Angeles Public Library's June celebration of Lesbian and Gay History Month chose Langston Hughes' poem "Tell Me" on a promotional poster, they ignited a furor over an icon.

Should Hughes, the late poet revered as a hero in the African-American community, be forced out of the closet?

No, says a coalition of black librarians who persuaded City Librarian Elizabeth Martinez Smith to withdraw the posters and a bibliography of homosexual works that, rightly or wrongly, includes Hughes.

Absolutely yes, say gay activists, including many library employees. Claiming Hughes as a cultural hero of their own, gays accuse the black librarian's group and Martinez Smith of insensitivity, censorship and bigotry.

"That's undisguised homophobia," said Phillip Wilson, the city's AIDS services coordinator and co-chairman of the National Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum. By editing Hughes out of the Lesbian and Gay History Month program materials, Wilson said, officials demonstrated that open prejudice against gays, unlike open racism or anti-Semitism, remains the socially acceptable norm.

Martinez Smith, completing her first year as chief of the nation's second-largest public library system, ruefully says that her intent was to avoid controversy.

The administrator, who has made Los Angeles' cultural diversity a central theme of the library system, points out that scholarly debate over Hughes' sexuality is by no means settled. "My role is to provide accurate information and not to espouse any one cause," she said.

Martinez Smith said that had she not exercised her "editorial rights," the library would instead be facing resentment from African-Americans angered by the suggestion that Hughes was homosexual.

Members of the California Librarians Black Caucus say that they based their objections not on their own attitudes regarding homosexuality, but on concerns that many African-American patrons would be disturbed by the implication that Hughes was homosexual.

One black librarian, Wanda Johnson, said that when she showed the posters to her predominantly black staff at the Mark Twain branch in South-Central Los Angeles, the reaction was instantly negative.

"Most of the librarians had not heard he was gay," Johnson said, adding "we did not feel comfortable about trying to explain to the public why the library needs to educate people about his sexuality."

In a letter to Martinez Smith, Joyce Sumbi, an officer in the black librarians group, said use of the Hughes quotation "would be insensitive and divisive at a time when African-Americans have set unity as major goal. . . . We have identified our own heroes, heroines and role models. . . . In no way do we intend insult to other groups in our celebrations and we ask that others show us the same courtesy."

But insult is precisely the feeling, gays say. The action reinforced the view that homosexuality is a shameful taboo, they said. "Gays are so denigrated they can't be heroes," said Cosmo Bua, a clerk at the Wilshire Branch Library and founder of Gay and Lesbian United Employees (GLUE), a group that consists largely of library employees.

Many gays expressed astonishment along with outrage. Gay literary anthologies routinely include Hughes' work. Wilson's organization of African-American gays produced a documentary titled "We Have a Legacy" that honors Hughes and such gay black figures as writer James Baldwin and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin.

Hughes died in 1967 without acknowledging whether widely circulated rumors of his homosexuality were true. The evidence was circumstantial: he never married, he had many openly gay friends, he frequently had effeminate male companions. Moreover, many readers see gay themes in his poetry.

Within gay society, Hughes' homosexuality was "an open secret" since the 1940s, said Jim Kepner, founder and curator of the 20-year-old International Gay and Lesbian Archives.

As with many others in that far less tolerant era, it was assumed that Hughes, often dubbed the poet laureate of black America, feared ruin if his sexual life were revealed.

Kepner, 67, suggests that the writer was quite possibly confused and ashamed of his sexual desires. It was common then, he said, for homosexuals to confine themselves to anonymous, emotionally hollow encounters rather than steady relationships. Fear of discovery prompted gays "to cover for each other," he said.