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    In Lost Essay, Langston Hughes Recounts Meeting A Young Chain Gang Runaway

    The work, previously published only in Russian, was discovered by Professor Steven Hoelscher. The encounter occurred in 1927, when Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston went on a road trip through the South.
    by Ari Shapiro Jul 17, 2019 3 minutes
    In the summer of 1927, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston drove together from Alabama to New York. Just outside Savannah, Ga., they gave a ride to a young person running away from a chain gang. An essay Hughes wrote about that encounter has recently resurfaced: <strong><a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/lost-work-langston-hughes-180972499/">Read it here.</a></strong>

    When Steven Hoelscher first came across an essay with Langston Hughes' name on it, he says it felt "totally random." Hoelscher, a professor at University of Texas at Austin, was doing research in the archives of an investigative journalist named John L. Spivak.

    It was in Spivak's papers that Hoelscher found three pages titled "Foreward From Life," written by Langston Hughes — one of the most celebrated poets of the Harlem Renaissance.

    In the short essay, Hughes recounts an experience he had outside Savannah, Ga.,

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