University of Missouri Press Publishes Fight for Freedom in
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                                             The Collected Works of
Langston Hughes

 The University of Missouri Press is proud to announce the publication
of The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, a compilation of the novels,
short
stories, poems, plays, essays, and other published work by one of the
twentieth century’s most prolific and influential African American
authors. The
eighteen-volume series will make available Hughes’s most famous works as
well as lesser-known and out-of-print selections, providing readers and
libraries
with a comprehensive source for the first time.

Nearing the end of a distinguished literary career that spanned nearly
fifty years, Langston Hughes took on the daunting task of writing the
official history of
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Beginning with the social, political, and economic contexts that led to
the founding
of the NAACP in 1909 and ending with a summary of its targeted goals for
1963, Hughes attempted to write a history that would be comprehensive in
scope
and singular in its purpose of highlighting the ways in which the
Association had a direct and positive influence on racial justice in the
United States. Focusing
on the individuals who had the greatest impact on the NAACP and the
issues with which the organization was most concerned in its first fifty
years of
existence, Hughes produced the widely acclaimed Fight for Freedom,
striking an exceptional balance between biography and cultural history.

      Long before the publication of Fight for Freedom, Hughes had begun
writing nonfictional prose about these same issues as a regular
columnist and
essayist for the nation’s most influential African American
publications, including the Chicago Defender and Crisis. A selection of
these popular columns and
other essays—which reveal the extent to which Hughes’s unique, varied,
and sometimes Blues-tinged narrative voice shifted in tone over the
course of his
extensive career—is included in this volume.

      Hughes intersperses historical facts with compelling anecdotes
that often frame subtly ironic commentaries on various themes. The
result is history
that provides a lens through which to view Hughes’s attitudes in the
early 1960s toward the ways the NAACP addressed the vital social,
cultural, political, and
economic issues central to its agenda. This volume makes a unique
contribution to the oeuvre of an African American writer whose full
significance to
American literature, history, and culture will continue to be defined
well into the twenty-first century.

      Christopher C. De Santis is Assistant Professor of American and
African American Literature at Illinois State University in Normal. He
is the editor of
Langston Hughes and the Chicago Defender: Essays on Race, Politics, and
Culture, 1942–62.

The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Volume 10 (0-8262-1371-5, $29.95
cloth), is available at local bookstores or directly from the University
of
Missouri Press. Individuals placing orders should include $4.00 shipping
and handling for the first book and $.50 for each additional book. For
further
publicity information contact Jennifer Brown, University of Missouri
Press, 2910 LeMone Boulevard, Columbia, MO 65201.