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Dec 26, 2019 Producer

Langston Hughes on Trial

American Experience

This video was originally published by American Experience to accompany its documentary, MCCARTHY. Produced by Kirstin Butler, edited by Paul Sanni, illustrated by Jonell Joshua and voiced by Jericho Brown and Kyle Minshew.

In 1953, the author Langston Hughes was called before Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Subcommittee on Investigations to answer questions about Communist influences in his writing. The private, closed-door interrogation pitted Hughes against the Subcommittee’s chief counsel, Roy Cohn. This video dramatizes the hearing transcripts of Hughes’s testimony, made public 50 years later.

Award-winning poet Jericho Brown voices Langston Hughes.

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