Hughes testified before Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s Subcommittee on Investigations

Hughes lived in the Soviet Union in the 1930s

Hughes grew interested in the Soviet Union and radical politics in the early 1930s after the Communist Party of the United States defended the Scottsboro Boys, nine Black teenagers wrongly accused and convicted of raping two white women. In 1932, he lived there while working on a film that ultimately fizzled out, and returned home. In 1937, he planned to lead a tour of the country, as advertised below, but canceled it when a newspaper offered him a position reporting from the Spanish Civil War.

Hughes wrote for and about everyday Black Americans

Early in his career, Hughes was often disregarded by prominent white literary critics and criticized by Black intellectuals for his sometimes negative portrayal of Black life. Hughes, though, was unconcerned, saying that he wrote for the “workers, roustabouts, and singers, and job hunters” of New York, Washington, Chicago, and other Black hubs.

Hughes once taught creative writing to junior high and high school students

In 1949, Hughes accepted an eight-week contract at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools to teach creative work, along with seminars on jazz and the “negro theme” in American poetry. He enjoyed his time at the school, but never returned to the classroom, noting that the early mornings and teaching load left little time for his writing.

Langston Hughes scholars have debated the writer’s sexuality

After his death, Hughes scholars discovered unpublished poems that some believe are addressed to a male lover. Hughes’ primary biographer has argued that he was likely asexual. Hughes never married or publicly commented on his sexual orientation.

Poet Robert Lowell was once convinced communists were invading an artist colony

In 1949, the Pulitzer winner accused Elizabeth Ames, director of the Yaddo artist colony in Saratoga Springs, New York, of colluding with Agnes Smedley, a journalist who'd been staying on the property for years and who was working on a project sympathetic to communist causes.

The FBI investigated John Steinbeck, believing he might be a communist.

Hughes recorded an album with jazz legend Charles Mingus

1958’s “The Weary Blues” features Hughes reciting poems over jazz. The back half of the album is accompanied by bassist Charles Mingus and his ensemble, just a year before Mingus would release his landmark record “Mingus Ah Um.”

Langston Hughes' 'I, Too' replies to Walt Whitman

Hughes was a fan of Whitman and used one of the Good Gray Poet's most famous poems, "I Hear America Singing," as the basis for his 1926 poem "I, Too." Hughes' work is both a response and a pointed commentary about the unequal treatment of Black Americans.

The term ‘McCarthyism’ was coined by a political cartoonist

In February 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy infamously proclaimed that he had a list of communist State Department employees. The next month, cartoonist Herbert Block published a cartoon in the Washington Post featuring a reluctant elephant (the mascot of the Republican Party) being pushed to stand on a wobbly tower labeled “McCarthyism.”

Langston Hughes poems inspired Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream'

In 1959, King wrote to Hughes, saying, "I can no longer count the number of times and places … in which I have read your poems." Scholars believe that Hughes' words—particularly his poems "Harlem" and "I Dream a World"—inspired King's most famous speech, "I Have a Dream."

Ginsberg's 'Howl' portrayed people outside the American mainstream

The poem’s portraits of people on society's fringes—including vivid descriptions of drug use, psychiatric wards, and homosexuality—led to its seizure by US Customs agents and the arrest of its publisher Ferlinghetti. The American Civil Liberties Union defended both in a landmark trial that ruled the book was not obscene.

The time Bob Dylan was accused of plagiarizing ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’

“Blowin’ in the Wind” is a defining song of the Civil Rights Movement, one that Dylan openly acknowledged was based on a traditional African spiritual. But when Newsweek accused Dylan of stealing the song in 1963, they weren’t talking about influence. They suggested he’d jacked the tune from a helpless high school student. This article breaks down the falsehood and why it was given so much attention while Dylan was becoming a household name.

A psychedelic hamburger led one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, to testify against the group's leader.

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

Eleanor Roosevelt sheltered student activists at the White House after they were subpoenaed by HUAC

In 1939, when Congress subpoenaed leaders of the American Youth Congress on suspicion of communist ties, Eleanor Roosevelt attended the hearings herself and then invited all 10 students to stay at the White House, as they had nowhere to sleep.

Scholars allege the CIA funded the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop

The graduate program—which instructed legendary writers like Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver, and John Berryman—received funding from several CIA fronts. Some academics suggest this was in the service of promoting a realist American literature as a counterpoint to Soviet fiction.

Allen Ginsberg on how Walt Whitman changed poetry

In this 1992 appearance on "Charlie Rose," Beat Generation icon Ginsberg articulates why Whitman mattered not only to the Beats but to all of poetry, arguing that he forever changed the possibilities of the form.

The exile and return of Charlie Chaplin

In 1952, amid accusations of communist ties and a threatened reentry ban during the Red Scare, Charlie Chaplin left the US and chose exile in Switzerland. Two decades later, he returned to accept an honorary Oscar, receiving a 12-minute standing ovation—the longest in history.

The Supreme Court's first major free-speech ruling rested on a legal standard that was later overturned

In Schenck v. United States (1919), the court introduced the "clear and present danger" test—permitting the government to restrict speech that posed an immediate threat to public safety. Although the doctrine was later replaced, the ruling upheld the conviction of a man who had distributed anti-draft pamphlets.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

An NSA analyst helped avert nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis

In October 1962, NSA cryptographer Juanita Moody headed analysis of U‑2 surveillance data and urgently produced intelligence on Soviet missile deployments in Cuba. Her reports drove high-level US decision-making, and were critical to avoiding nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In 1985, one player said 40% of his colleagues used cocaine

The 1985 Pittsburgh Drug Trials found over a dozen MLB players taking the stand to testify about drug use around the league. Mets star Keith Hernandez, who was given immunity, testified 40% of players used cocaine. The trial led to seven convictions.

Lenny Bruce's stand-up challenged US law

Bruce came up in burlesque theaters, but began to find success as stand-up comedy developed a more political and subversive bent. His sets often satirized what he believed to be an oppressively conformist society, which led to his arrest on several occasions.

Kurt Vonnegut's 'Cat's Cradle' was inspired by the bombing of Hiroshima

The writer fought in World War II and witnessed the firebombing of Dresden, which he recounted in 1969's satirical "Slaughterhouse Five." Six years earlier, though, he wrote about the bombing of Hiroshima in "Cat's Cradle," channeling some of the horror he witnessed in Dresden to write about the dropping of the atomic bomb. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Writer Christopher Hitchens on why Orwell matters

In this 2008 segment with NPR, the author of "Why Orwell Matters" discusses his admiration for the author and fields questions from callers. Hitchens notes that anyone can write about tyranny, but that Orwell's brilliance is in exploring why people "are so keen to obey."

Twain claimed to possess 'mental telegraphy'

In an 1891 essay, the writer claimed to possess psychic powers. It’s something that seemingly supported by his mother and his own death: Twain predicted he would die the day after Halley’s Comet returned in 1910, which did indeed happen.

Interred Japanese Americans wrote satirical poetry

Senryu is a Japanese poetic form that is similar to the haiku, though its aim is often satirical and its composition is often collaborative. At California’s Tule Lake Segregation Center, interred citizens met to write senryu together, often composing verse that criticized their surroundings.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

In 1915, workers recovered a submarine-like vessel from the Chicago River, prompting fears of German espionage

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

During the French Revolution, a botanist's letter asking about "dear Rhus" (poison ivy) was intercepted, leading authorities to suspect he was conspiring with the Russians.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.

The Ramones' 'Pet Sematary,' the theme song for the Stephen King novel of the same name, was written while the band was admiring the writer's collection of horror memorabilia.

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

Radioactive elements can introduce software errors because the ionizing radiation they produce can detach electrons from atoms, and computer code relies on the distribution of electrons.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Hookworm infection, though risky, may help fight certain autoimmune conditions by tamping down the immune system's inflammatory response.