On Cassette: Frank Marshall Davis, 7

Davis talks about an appearance before a committee headed by Sen. James O. Eastland (D-MS) in 1957.  Davis had prepared a statement but was cut off when Eastland realized he would be a hostile witness.

Davis is asked about his lifelong committment to the struggle for racial and economic justice and their place in his poetry.  He replies that it was not until 1943 that he decided to join with others.  He discovered that "I couldn't get anywhere by myself."

Davis believes his earlier poems (he mentions "47th Street," "Chicago Congo," and "American Negro") are more personal and centered on racial justice.  He sees himself gradually becoming more proletarian.

He talks about the difference between the African-American writers of Chicago and the New Negro Renaissance (Harlem Renaissance) in New York.  He calls Chicago a "big, bragging bully of a town" while the East was "so genteel" and "too sophisticated, polished."

He describes Langston Hughes as a "close personal friend." While Hughes admired Davis' writing style, he also found it "too polemical."  Davis disagrees with that view.

He recalls that Melville Hershkovits, a professor of anthropology at Northwestern University and founder of the nation's first African-American studies program, liked to invite Davis to an annual discussion on race because Davis' views were "hardboiled" as opposed to academic.