Live from the Reading Room: Langston Hughes to E. Ethelred Brown

Live from the Reading Room: Correspondence is a podcast series that aims to share interesting and engaging letters written by or to key historical figures from the African Diaspora. 

Each episode highlights a letter from popular collections housed in the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.

Today’s episode features a letter from Harlem Renaissance poet, playwright, and activist Langston Hughes to Jamaican born preacher of Harlem’s Hubert Harrison Memorial Church, E. Ethelred Brown.

Langston Hughes.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. "Langston Hughes." The New York Public Library Digital Collections

Today’s correspondence is recited by Robert G. O’Meally, Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University.