Mar 25, 2021 - Sale 2562

Sale 2562 - Lot 270

Price Realized: $ 625
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(LITERATURE.) Langston Hughes. Letter denying press reports that he had dinner with Fidel Castro. Letter Signed to New York Post columnist Leonard Lyons. One page, 8 1/2 x 5 1/4 inches, on his personal letterhead; mailing folds, minimal wear. New York, 27 September 1960
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Fidel Castro, having recently consolidated his power as leader of Cuba, came to New York in September 1960 for the General Assembly of the United Nations. In the midst of the Cold War, Castro used this opportunity to deepen his alliance with the Soviet Union and accelerated his opposition to the United States. He stayed at the Theresa Hotel in Harlem, where a group called Fair Play for Cuba Committee hosted a dinner for him on 22 September. A popular syndicated columnist from the New York Post, Leonard Lyons, claimed that Hughes was in attendance--not an absurd claim, as Hughes had been deeply involved in leftist politics and causes as a young man, although he had become less overtly political by 1960. In this remarkable letter, Hughes categorically denies the columnist's assertion:

"Dear Leonard Lyons, Just to put into writing the information I gave you today on the phone; in reference to the item in your LYONS DEN today where, like Daniel, I have been caught: I received no invitation to dine with or to meet Castro. I have never met Castro. I was not a guest at dinner Friday night or any other time at the Hotel Theresa or elsewhere with Castro. There have been about 20 phone calls this afternoon, including other newspapers calling. And just now Claudia McNeil of RAISIN IN THE SUN phoned from Boston to breathe a prayer for me in case it were true I had dined with such a 'Satanic person.' Claudia, as you probably know, is Catholic. I told her I'd been in the country working on the 10th version of my Theatre Guild play, TAMBOURINES TO GLORY, and knew nothing of it all, until I read it in your column. With cordial regards, and best wishes to you for a continued mass readership, Sincerely yours, Langston Hughes."

The Swann staff was not at the Hotel Theresa that night, so we can't say for certain what really happened--but a simple Internet search for Langston Hughes and Fidel Castro will turn up hundreds of modern sources stating that Hughes was there. We are inclined, however, to believe Hughes on this point.