As Martin Luther King Jr. gained national prominence, the FBI launched several investigations to prove that King and his radical allies were communist sympathizers and a danger to America.
Black writers like Charles Chesnutt had to contend with a dilemma writers today know all too well: give the audience and editors what they want, or wallow in obscurity.
Two men were convicted in 1859 of violating the Fugitive Slave Act. They had rescued a runaway slave from slave hunters in Ohio, one of the small acts of resistance that led to the Civil War.
In order to avoid being labeled a communist sympathizer, King needed to publicly distance himself from the controversial poet. Privately, King found ways to channel Hughes’ prose.