Our Ancestors Were Messy - Zora Neale Hurston vs. Langston Hughes: The Pleasures & Perils of Working With Friends

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

Correction: An earlier version of this story cited events as having happened in 1970 that occured throughout that decade. Zora Neale Huston and Langston Hughes finally set to work writing their play but outside influences and crossed wires spell trouble for this historic pair. Starring Alicia Walters. Support this independent production and access bonus content at https://ourancestorsweremessy.supercast.com Stay in touch at [e-mail] Follow the show on Instagram at @ourancestorsweremessy Follow the show on TikTok @ourancestorsweremessy Learn more about the show at https://ourancestorsweremessy.com Listen on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@OurAncestorsWereMessy  SOURCES Zora and Langston: A Story of Friendship and Betrayal by Yuval Taylor Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston In Search of Zora Neale Hurston by Alice Walker The Complex Literary Friendship Between Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston by Yuval Taylor Check out The Interstate Tattler digitized and stored by the New York Public Libraries Read the archives at Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Listen, I want to tell you what to do, but if I may offer a suggestion, this is very much the second half of a two-part story. If you haven't already, you should go back and listen to Zorin Langston BFFs before this one, so you have the context to understand what they do next and so that you can empathize, which is the most important thing. Previously, on our ancestors were messy. Zoran Langston won the most awards at the opportunity dinner. Our ancestors start driving north through the south in search of funny, dirty, mystical stories. She might be thinking, man, I can act very passionately and decisively

and not always in my own best interests. Langston Hughes might be thinking, I have a real tendency to get very flirty and tight with people and then push them away. Today, hear how the once-loving friendship between Zora Neal Hurston and Langston Hughes turns sour. You're an awfully amusing person. Zora. This episode stars

artist, writer, and facilitator Alicia Walters. See? I knew it. I knew it. And your host, Nicole Hill. That's what she tells them to do. Of course. This is Our Ancestors Were Messy. A show about our ancestors

and all... Oh, I did not see that coming. To start, we're actually going to go fast forward in time to where we last left off in the story to the year 1970. A 26-year-old writer named Alice is a college student living in Mississippi and doing research for a book that she's writing where the hero uses voodoo to exact revenge. And Alice reads all these books about voodoo, but they're by white guys. And so they're like really racist and just dumb. And then she finds this author, a black woman like her, who'd researched voodoo and even claimed to have photographed a zombie back in the 1920s. And none of her 1970s contemporaries even know who this woman is. They're like, who is this author? We don't know what you're talking about. She starts reading as much of. this author's work as she can, and she actually ends up telling the author's stories to her family

members, and they're like, all that we know those stories. Those are the ones we told each other growing up. We thought they had been completely lost to time, and Alice is like, who is this woman? I need to find her. And three years later in 1973, she decides to go looking for her. Wow. Alice knows that the author is from Eatonville, Florida. So she flies there, and then through this, like, kind of funny combination of, like, chance run-ins at the... the post office and then these kind of like Scooby-Doo style hijings, Alice meets the old friends of the author. And they say she was so famous back in the 20s and 30s and she was always writing before her stroke and her passing. Alice wants to visit the author's grave and they tell her that they'd raise money to bury her since the author had died penniless.

But the graveyard had been abandoned years ago and the author didn't have a headstone. So they were like, it's going to be hard to find her. but Alice goes to the cemetery anyway and everybody had to describe this one sunken in spot where the author was buried and Alice finds the spot she says it's covered in snakes and bugs and she's like oh my god though I found it this is this is her and she deserves a headstone

so Alice goes and has a headstone made using a line from a poem written by one of the author's friends the famed poet of the Harlem Renaissance gene tumor It read Zora Neil Hurston, a genius of the South, 1901 to 1960. In the years that follow, Alice will go on to write the color purple and become a household name. And as Alice Walker's star rises, she brings Zora back into the public consciousness. But how did this star of the Renaissance die, penniless and in obscurity? An argument could be made that maybe you could be made that maybe you're not.

it all would have gone differently, as she and Langston had never agreed to write that play. Ooh, dun, don't, don't. This is part two of the story of the loving friendship turned bitter feud between Zora Neal Hurston and Langston Hughes.

Actors. Oh, you know I don't remember their names. Oh, no, Angela Bassett is Zora. That's right. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that other fine brother, I don't remember. Aaron Pierre. Oh.

And that's the right. attitude because we have to always remember and never forget. People don't talk about this, but everything I read from the past, everybody tearing their hair out, gnashing their teeth, running all over the streets, being like Wise Langston, he's so fine. I don't know what to do, writing songs about it. So this is the level of fine that we're talking about. Exactly.

Turn up the level of fine. So, Zoran Langston returned from their road trip. They arrived in New York City. Now it's the fall of 1927. So just to set the scene, the city's radio district. is 13 blocks that are like around where the World Trade Center is now. And just have all these radios because obviously everybody's buying them. And a lot of them are tuned into the latest rising star, a young Louis Armstrong.

And then nearby Broadway is having its busiest season in its 60-year history, thousands of actors and singers and playwrights. I the bright lights and dream of making a name for themselves along the Great White Way, including Zora and Langston. but first things first they do have to eat. So Zora usually has like 15 jobs and is applying for grants and getting scholarships and stuff like that,

but Langston has found a patron. One, a rich old white lady named Charlotte Mason. So Mason went to one of Elaine, Alan locks. You always, you know, because he spells it Elaine. So I'm like, Elaine Locke. But I'm just going to say Alan because, like, you know. Because it's Alan. Because it's Alan.

Mason went to one of Alan's, lectures about the beauty of black art and she was like, oh my God, this is right up my alley because I believe in primitivism. And primitivism says that the key to society's salvation lies in a return to more natural, simple, quote unquote, primitive ways of living. These, like, thinkers, people who believed in this, were thinking that the people with the most natural, simple, primitive vibes were Native Americans and African Americans. And so, a lot of this like fueled the support of the Harlem Renaissance because white modernness is what they were called and they were like, we should support their art and we should study their ways and learn from them how to live more primitive, simple lives and in this way, like, we'll make society better. This is like kind of the thinking behind this whole philosophy. Charlotte believes this.

Charlotte believes this. Yeah, yeah. So she went to Allen's lecture about black art and she was like, I'm, I'm with. it because I believe in all the stuff. So she goes up to Alan and she's like, I have a lot of money. And I want to sponsor some black artists. So what you got? And he's like, all right, let's go. So he introduces her to the new Negroes,

aka the niggerati. And when Charlotte meets like 20-something-year-old Langston Hughes, she seems like she develops a big old crush on them, like a big one. They send each other letters. They're very flirted. kind of weird.

She calls him her precious boy. Ooh. I know. I know. And based on his letters, to and about her, he seems like into it. He seems like really value

and respect her opinion. She also expects for everyone to call her godmother, which she does. Look at your face. Your eyebrows. Blame. That's what she tells them to do.

Of course. So then, Langston is like, Alan, can you hook up Zora too? So Alan introduces Mason to Zora and they have an immediate connection that Zora feels is prophetic and spiritual and transcend space and time. She's had like what she feels like our visions, like eight visions in her life and meeting Charlotte, she believes to be one of those visions. Reading their letters is tough. Where Langston's like very flirty. You know, Zora, we talked about this in the last episode, but she is very passionate.

and insistent that the stories that she's collecting be told in the dialect of the people, the southern black people. And she's like, this is how we talk in the South. I don't want it cleaned up. I don't care about your northern respectability. This is how we sound. So when she's with Mason,

she'll recreate the scenes in her stories and talk like the people that she interviewed. And Mason is just laughing it, she's just eating it. She's like, this is amazing. Some of her fellow new Negroes start to side-eye this behavior and how far that Zora is taking it.

But Zora's like, at our parties, when we're all hanging out at Nicarati Manor and we're going to the clubs and stuff like this, this is how I act in front of you, in front of all black people. I refuse to code switch. So white people are going to get the same thing. She develops this really close relationship with Mason, as does Langston. At the end of one of her letters to Charlotte Mason, And this is kind of like all the historians talk about it because they're like, Zora, we can't get in your head.

What were you thinking? She does call herself, you're a little pickinny. I know. It's getting tough. They were messy. Yeah. They were messy. But also, like, we have to remember, like, this is the person who's paying her bills.

So this is the thing. Charlotte Mason, low-key does end up funding, like, the Harlem Renaissance. She funds a lot of people. But Langston and Zora and Allen are her, like, crown jewels. So I don't know her arrangement. with Alan, but here's what she offers Langston. When she's like, okay, I'll be your patron.

Let's talk about like this arrangement. So she says to Langston, I will give you a $150 monthly stipend, which is $3,000 a month today. I will cover your brother's tuition and I'll open accounts for you with New York City's finest tailors, give you beautiful monogram, stationery, and your

very own full-time secretary. And in return, all that you have to give me is a monthly itemized accounts of every single one of your expenses and everything that you eat and have to show me every single one of your works and let me consult on it moving forward. Here's what she offers Zora. A $200 monthly stipend, which is $3,600 monthly today, a car and a movie camera to record all the scenes that she's always reenacting.

And she says, Zora, all that you have to do for me is agree that all of the of your writings from here on out will be my property. Holy shit. That Zora cannot even show her work to anyone else unless Mason clears it. And I think she also has to send her a list of all the stuff she eats and buys.

Your Zora, are you taking this offer? I mean, I wish I could say this is radically different from how foundations work today. You know what I'm saying? I mean, as an artist who has contracted with organizations, do I have to itemize everything?

Yes. Is my work technically their property? Yes. To do with what they want? Yes. Do they have to consult? Like, if they're nice, if they, you know, if it gets written into the contract that I actually have a say over my intellectual property, that's, but that's not a given.

So I'm like, yeah, I would do it because I'm still doing it. That's how it works. That's how art gets made. And unless you are, I mean, there's different setups, right? But unless you are the kind of artist. But even in those situations when you have big name artists that obviously own their own work, like they're still beholden to somebody. Right. Whoever's cutting the checks.

Unless you are making enough money where you is just you. But yeah, but even still, I feel like there's still people that they want to stay in partnership with. They don't want to go afoul of this person. Right. Exactly. And maybe they don't have to approve everything you say, but there's certainly things you can't say. Right. There's certainly things you can't do. Zora takes the deal. Langston does too. And they become the fanciest Negroes in Harlem because now they got all that money. So you know how their whole deal was like, we like to hang out in jazz clubs with the every man. They keep doing that. But now Langston shows up like in the finest attire

and just like throwing money around. And Zora does keep her expenses like pretty modest and she travels so much more than Lansing does with all her of her like, you know, folklore collection and stuff. But Lansing is buying new suits. He's eating in fancy restaurants. He's riding around in Charlotte's limo

which is chauffered by her white driver. So he's like, ooh, oh. Driving Mr. Hughes. So this kind of behavior, this kind of drastic change in fortunes is just the sort of thing that would have landed them on the radar of one of

the most delightful gossip magazines that I've come across called the Interstate Tatler. Tatler? Tatler. Tatler. Tattler. It's like Tatler, Tatler, but yeah, the interstate tatler. The interstate tattler. The interstate tattler launched in 1925 and it was the offshoot of this other kind of like more serious newsier black newspaper. But the Taller was like, listen, And we just want to focus on like plays and social clubs, what they have going on, and like weddings and births and announcing when people come and go from town. This is a really big deal of the black paper. It's like, you know, when you go to black church and if you're a visitor, you have to like stand up and they do that whole thing. This very, all the black papers are basically doing this.

This is where all the churches got it. This is my theory. So the teller does that and a lot of profiling of leaders and celebrities of the day. And of course, there's a section dedicated to gossiping. So that section is called the high hatters. And in it, people anonymously write in these cryptic, devastating one-liners about mess that they're witnessing in and around Harlem. So I'm going to have you read a few.

It's going to be on page eight. Let me see. Okay. Say C.K. What time did you get home Thursday? Teddy, are you still jealous of Hugo and Dawn? Just look at Don and Louise doing that cavalier step. What happened to Thelma?

James Jordan and Lewis Smith are seen together quite a lot recently. Give us a low down, fellas. So this is just people being like, the fuck is going up. What did you do? Did you see so and so? Exactly. And it's like pages, like on one page or it's probably like 40 to 50 of these. So people are actually just looking through and seeing like, am I called out on here?

Yes, yes, exactly. Or whatever. Okay, cute, cute. So the paper is very popular in Harlem. So when folks are out and about, they have to be very careful and aware of their neighborhood, toddlers. All right, so for the next couple of years,

Zora and Lengsen are just becoming the best of friends. They toss around ideas, they support each other's work, they gossip about how two-faced Alan Locke is, and they give each other advice on how to keep Godmother happy. Zora's doing a ton of traveling throughout the South, collecting folklore, conducting her anthropological studies, which end up living and dying in godmother's private collection. Right.

And then the Great Depression hits. And Langston starts having this little problem. He's okay economically because even though Charlotte Mason lost half of her fortune, she can still afford their monthly stipends. She's super rich. But that's the thing that's really bothering him. He's feeling like being so well taken care of in the midst of so much devastation, especially among black people,

it's starting to make him feel very gross. And he's wondering if the setup with Mason is impacting his confidence, which is in turn impacting his writing. So at the same time, he's also been seeing this woman and they've exchanged rings, but then he suddenly pushed her away

and ended things, maybe because he's gay, but he's still really upset about the breakup. And he just is feeling, like, awful altogether. So he goes to Mason, and he's like, I just need to get out of the city. I think if I'm more isolated, I can get more work done. And so she's like, I know the perfect place to isolate New Jersey. So, sorry, New Jersey.

I know it's a beautiful state. I don't know if you've heard of this paradise. Just definitely. We can escape at all. So she moves him into an apartment where he can focus on writing full time. Meanwhile, Zora finally decides to divorce her husband, Herbert. who were meant recall, she'd married him on impulse. Yeah.

And after this divorce, she has this newly single person, energy and drive. She tells Langston that the world is full of possibilities for her again, and she wants to create, create, create, and she wants people reading it. Yes, I feel her. Yes. I'm there with you, Zora. As free, let's go. So she starts finding sneaky little ways to start showing her work to people and subverting godmother's rules carefully, but she's doing it. Mason suggests to Zora that she moved to the same building as Langston

and take all the folklore that she'd been gathering for Mason and turn it into a book for Mason's private collection. So Zora shows up in New Jersey. She's like, Langston Hughes, guess what? I'm your neighbor. And we need to forget about what we're supposed to be doing. And we need to write this play. And Lankton is like Zora Neal Hurston, let's go.

Our ancestors, they're not interested in writing like a contemplative art house kind of small thing. They want to write a Broadway hit. That's what they are sitting down to do. A common complaint among their crew was that most of the non-menstrual show plays about black people are like these devastating dramas about racism. People are asking where are the stories about black life where the characters are allowed to be messy and real. And Zoran Lansing are like, we got you. We got them worry about that. So this is what they play it.

They set out to write a comedy about a love triangle that escalates into a legal battle when one suitor hits the other with a magical mule bone or a turkey leg. Oh. Right. The plot's never going to come up again. So it doesn't really matter. But that's like what it is high level. And here's what's important to know about this play and this arrangement.

They named the play Mule Bone, a Comedy of Negro Life, and agreed to split the credit and the proceeds 50-50, right down the middle. The play is based on the folk tales that Zora has been collecting and outlines that she's already developed. And Langston is going to be helping with the dialogue and creating scenes. And Charlotte Mason, godmother, she cannot know. She thinks the theater is vulgar and that like a primitive wouldn't even understand it. Like, they would even like it.

Wait, did she refer to us as primitives? Yeah, because she's a primitivist. We are primitial. So, okay. You know, when she has this belief about the theater, I feel like Langston and Zora are like, sure, sure, sure. But on the low, they're like theater heads. Of course.

Of course they do. They're artists. So they start writing, and they enlist the help of Langston's new full-time secretary. Her name is Louise Thompson. She is important to the story, so I feel we should cast her, and a picture of her is on page. age nine. Let's see.

Oh, she's beautiful. She's gorgeous. It's giving, like, Afro-Latina, actually. Yeah, I'm sure she's got, like, some. I mean, she's very light-skinned. She might have some other stuff in there, but I don't know. Okay, who was playing her? What about Rosario?

Is she too old? Oh, well, she'd be too, because she's, like, in her 20s. But if we were doing, like, a young... A young Rosario of Dawson? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I could see it. the jaw. Yes.

Like I can see it a little bit in that. And the wide set eyes and the beautiful lips. Well, I think, yes. But Luis is like more, I think in a color photo

of her, you would be like, this is a black woman. You wouldn't think she was as, yeah, yeah. Just like super light-skinned. I could also see, who was in passing?

I think it was Tessa Thompson. I don't even need like a starring, I could just be, I could just have a cameo. And she would totally love to dress up like that too. Oh, yes. I mean, this is like coming on the heels of passing. She's like, it's same era.

Let's just go. Just go. I'll bring my wardrobe. Let's go. Luis is from all over the west, California, Oregon, Washington, Utah. She graduates from UC Berkeley. And then a few years later, she and her mother moved to Harlem. Once she's there, she lands a job as a typist, like a secretary, for Wallace Thurman,

who is a member of the new Negroes, the Nigurati. And not long after she starts working for Wallachian, Wallace, they get married. Now, everyone is very surprised by this marriage because Wallace is gay. Everybody kind of knows that. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows that. But he says he's straight.

Oh. So they get married. And then Louise discovers, like, pretty much immediately that he's gay. Oh. And they divorce a month after the wedding, but they seem to remain friends. Well, get it done quick, you know. By now, get out. Yeah, exactly.

So to support herself and her mom, Louise keeps taking jobs as a typist for other members of the Renaissance. And she becomes a bit of a star among them because she is, she seems to be very brilliant. She did study economics at Berkeley. Wow. She's very well read, very curious woman. One day, Alan Locke comes knocking and he's like Louise. I know this very rich old white lady and she's collecting blacks. Would you like to be part of the collection?

Luis is like, let's see. That's up her face. This is what it is. So Louise and Charlotte Mason meet. They hit it off right away. But Louise is like, I will never call you, godmother. It's not going to happen. Go ahead.

She maybe doesn't tell her that, but she's like, absolutely not. And Charlotte Mason seems to accept this. So she hires Louise to be Langston and Zora's typist. And she pays her $150 a month. And Louise is thrilled because she's a huge fan of Zora's and a big, of Langston's. And she's making as much as Langston. Yes, I like that.

Okay, I'm not mad at that part, Ms. Mason. That's okay. And the fact that Zora's making more than Lankston. I like that, too. But all of Zora's work belongs to Mason and she can't show it. Also that. Like, okay, so no. So Louise goes to New Jersey, and the three of them absolutely click.

You can picture, like, your standard friendship montage. they're in the writer's room, which is like somebody's kitchen. And Zora is acting out all these hilarious moments from her travels. And Lansing is like laughing and pitching ideas for how to turn those moments into scenes. And then Luis is typing it all up in the southern dialect of the Everyman. And they work, work, work, work all day, all night. And then they go party and have so much fun. I love it.

So you're Zora. How is this arrangement sitting with you? Anything you want to do to maintain the vibe? I mean, the first thing that came up for me was there's some inequity happening here. And there's a potential power differential that needs to be named, which is this is Sora's work. Like the play is based on her work. I think she's more primary than Langston is. Like he's almost like they are co-writing.

They have different roles. But the fact that it comes from her work. Mm-hmm. It's sourced from her research. Like, I just, I don't know, I would want a differentiated thing. I would want that to be known. Bebe make clear, yeah. Which is hard to tell your friend, but it does matter.

It matters. Langston is growing more and more uncomfortable, living so large in the midst of the Great Depression. This is still an issue for him. Right. Luis is also just scraping by. She has never really had very much money. And even with the money that she's making, she's supporting herself and her mother in Harlem, which is not cheap, even though it's way back then. So she kind of gets this discomfort that he's feeling.

And she also has a lot of thoughts about income inequality in America. She is an actually literally card-carrying communist, as are many black people at this time. The Communist Party is about it in ways that the NWACP and Urban League, people like that, they're not doing what the Communist Party is doing yet. Because they're taking Jim Crow laws to court. They're fighting for worker protections and civil rights. They're actively protesting the mistreatment of black people. And Luis is at the meetings and she's down with all of it.

And so she starts talking to Langston about it. He's like, well, I would like to learn more about communism. And so they start having these chats and going to these meetings together. Also, in addition to being an economics major, Luis minored in Spanish and pledged a Spanish sorority. So actually maybe we should have kept Rosario. For me, I just felt so grateful for the opportunity. You both need to audition is what we're saying. It's not it.

We're not just giving you the role. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We got competition here. Luis minor in Spanish. She pledged a Spanish sorority. And Langston knows Spanish from his time living with his dad on that ranch in Mexico. Mm-hmm. So the two start practicing their Spanish together.

Zora does not speak Spanish. Langston's mom ends up meeting Louise, and she tells her son, you should marry that girl. And Louise tells her friends that if Langston Hughes asked her to marry him, she would say yes. Is she going to marry another gay man? I'm so true. Why didn't even think about that? That's so true.

Oh, Louise, Louise. One day, someone reports to the Interstate Tatler that they had seen Langston and Louise walking around Harlem holding hands. This causes so much gossip and so much speculation that Louise's boyfriend at the time confronts her, and then he ends up breaking up with her. And it's around this time that the new Negroes start to notice that this Langston-Louise friendship, it's getting under Zora's skin. Ooh, I did not see that coming. So then Langston comes to Zora with this idea.

Luis is in the room, and he's like, oh, Zora. Louise, she's not being paid to type up the play. She's being paid to type up our work for Mason. And so I think that it's unfair to have her doing this labor and not being properly compensated for it. But I have an idea. I think that a way to pay her for her additional work is to not pay her now, but to instead release the play, wait for it to be a hit, split the proceeds three ways. Hmm. That's tricky. That is elevating her role in a way that, I mean, a portion of the proceeds, perhaps. Is it three ways, a third, a third, a third? I don't know. Because she's not a part of the creative side, the creative team. Right. Right. And that's where Zora's at. She's like, What are you talking about?

Then she says to Louise directly, because she's in the room, here's what we can do. We can pay you $5 a day for the work that you're doing, which is $89 today. So it's like, yeah, we'll just pay you every day for what you're doing on top of what Mason is giving you. According to Zora, Luis puts on this big show of turning to Langston and being like, I don't want to be paid now. I don't want to talk about money. You know I'm not doing this about money. It doesn't matter. Let's figure it out later.

Hmm. No, let's figure it out now. I'm not going to wait until later. Zora's like, I'm the one that pitched you on that idea, so I don't know why you're only addressing him. Right. What are you two doing? Also, yeah, exactly. Mm-hmm. So then later, Langston approaches Zora again, and he's like, oh, Sora, I just hate to not be paying Louise for her work. why don't we make her our business manager for the play? And then she'll take a percentage of all the deals that we make. Okay. What's really going on here? We need to separate some issues here, right? It's like Louise needs to be paid for her work. Absolutely. I'm with you on that. I'm willing to pay Louise for her work. But I feel like if I were in my non-violent communication styles, I would be like, Langston, I'm noticing that you're approaching me quite often. with what I feel like is concerned for Louise's well-being. And I respect that.

And, like, we should talk about that separately from what's best for our play, for our creative project and what it needs to live and be in the world. I see those as separate things, but it seems like those are kind of related for you. What's that about? What's that about? Tell me more. And I don't know if it's coming also from this place of, like, Louise being a card carrying communist and thinking like this should all be like everybody's equal in this. Is this a question of hierarchy? And I don't think all hierarchies are bad personally.

Agree. I agree. Sometimes you need that structure. Some structure here. And I'm okay with that. And for that to be based, especially as I think about that threesome in particular, where Zora's like, I'm older than y'all. This is my fucking work. I'm holding this primary vision of what this thing is. Thank you for typing it up for me. Right. And. This is based on my life's work. Right. Yes. So Zora is like, why would I make somebody my business manager that knows less about

business than me? She's not like a little unknown person. Zora Nealerson is a big deal. Yeah. For entire fucking life. She knows how to get shit produced, published out in the world on very little resources. Mm-hmm. And now she's actually got some to work with.

Yeah. No. She's like, what even is this? She's like, how about this? Why don't we just tell Godmother what we're doing? And so that's what they end up doing. And Godmother, as you can imagine, it's like, knock it off. Shut that's it down.

It's shut down. Wow. Mm-hmm. Which, like, maybe Zora wanted, but Langston is not happy. And Langston is just not feeling the whole godmother arrangement overall anyway. He's really starting to believe that his writer's block is about the guilt from taking all this money. and he's like, I just cannot continue on in this. So in the midst of the whole Luis Pays situation, Langston goes to see Godmother,

and he's like, you know, like, hey girl, because, you know, they're very, they have this, like, very flirty thing going. And he's like, let me tell you something. Your patronage, really your friendship, it's meant the world to me. You got me here. But now it's time for me to stay on my own, too, and be the kind of man that we can both be proud of. I need to end our patronage relationship, and I need to go and make my own money.

and then me and you can be proper friends. She is like, who do you think you are? Who do you think you are? I knew it. You're going to go out here in these three and make more money than I'm providing you. She's like, I bought the clothes on your back. I put the food in your belly,

and now you think you're going to walk away from me. She lists out, she has all of his monthly expenses, down to the things that he eats. She just starts listing it. She's like, I bought your caviar. I bought your this, I bought your that, and he is humiliated. Like, can you imagine?

Obviously, this is so humiliating. Right. And she's like, everybody told me how ungrateful Negroes are and they were right. What? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. She's like, you don't quit me. I quit you.

You're cut off. Immediately. Get out. Wow. Mm-hmm. Langston is completely shocked. He really thought that she would be proud of him, it sounds like. And so he's reeling and he can't afford to be cut off like that, like just immediately.

He has not been, it doesn't sound like he's been saving his money. so he's really scared. And he did seem to admire her and care for her. So he's just devastated. He's scared. He's confused. It's this hour of need. He's crying.

He goes looking for someone that he knows will understand, someone who can help him map a path forward. His real fucking godmother. Louise. Laura. What? He went to Louise? He went to Louise.

Zora hears about the falling out later, but not from Langston. Really? She seems to have learned also that in this hour of need, Langston sought out Luis for help, who he just met and who just started working with Godmother, not Zora who's been helping him navigate this woman for years. And she says that it was then that she realized that for some reason she'd become a stranger to Langston. He decided to push her away. and that realization probably also helped her confront the fact that whatever he was trying to do around the payment with the play,

it was not designed to protect her. In fact, it was actually designed at her expense. I mean, I don't fault him for leaving the relationship with Charlotte, but I do, I think he got kind of a rude awakening. She wanted you to call her godmother. I mean, she has a god complex. She wanted to own them. Yeah, she did. of them. So Zora

doesn't want to fight. And she does not want to be seen as a loser or a victim. Not being seen as a victim is so important to her. That's big for her. Yeah, okay. And so without saying a word to Louise or Langston, Zora packs up her things and moves back to Manhattan.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So she speaks with her actions. She's like, I'm out. Yeah. Y'all can have each other. Yep. So she leaves in the summer of 1930. Langston tries to contact her, but she won't take his calls. He's like, Louise, can you try her? No luck.

He's writing. Would it still work for her at this point? I guess she's supposed to be, but neither of them can find her. They can't get in touch with her. So they write, she doesn't write back, they call, she doesn't respond. She then finally agrees to meet up with Langston, but then she never shows. Langston's like, Louise, I do not, I don't know what happened. Do you have any idea what could have happened?

And Louise is like, I don't, but I did hear from a friend that Zora wants to punch me in the face. So there's one clue. So I've been loving this book. It's called Our History Has Always Been Contraband. It was edited by Robin D.G. Kelly and Keonga Taylor and Colin Kaepernick. And Our History Has Always Been Contraband was published in July of 2023 in response to this growing effort to remove certain content from AP African American Studies courses.

So the book documents these efforts to not teach black. like history and the ways in which people fought back. There are so many important books to be reading, especially right now, but I hope you will add this one to your reading list. That's our history has always been contraband. You can pick it up at your

local library or independent bookseller today. Ancestors were messy. Zora is back in Harlem finishing up the play on her own. By the fall of 1930, she's done with it, and she shows it to a friend, a fellow new Negro, and

they're like, wow, this is so good. And then that guy takes the script and starts showing it around to other people without Zora's knowledge. Meanwhile, Langston is talking to people about the play, and he's getting some initial interest. So he contacts Zora and he's like, people want to see us cook. Like, you got to call me back. Let's go. When Zora hears this, she's like, who told him he could tell people about my play?

See? I knew it. I knew it. Yep. And she's like, I think he's trying to steal it from me. So she goes and gets it copywritten under the title, De Turkey and De Law, like D.E. Turkey, D.E. Law, because she wants to capture the Southern dialect,

and she lists herself as the sole author. Now it's January 1931, six months after Zora moved out, and Lansing's visiting his mom and some friends up in Cleveland, Ohio. The papers, ones like the interstate Tatler, but also others, they would have announced his coming and going. We talked about this, the church, the whole thing.

So he pops in to see a friend from childhood, this white lady named Rowena, and she runs an amateur all-black theater troupe. And she really wants to integrate theater spaces. This is her big thing. So they're like hanging out, they're catching up. And then Rowena is like, oh, my God. Langston, I can't believe I didn't already tell you this. We're going to be putting on a play that I think you would love

because it's a comedy about the Everyman. And it was written by this black woman from the South, but based in New York City. And it's called The Meal Book. bone. Wow. So when Zora had showed that play to her friend and her friend had started showing it around, oh my God. It made its way up to Cleveland under its original title, not the copywritten title. But Zora doesn't even know? So Zora doesn't know. Oh my God. And Langston, he's in shock. He's like, that's my play too. What do you mean it's under just Zora's name? The last I heard about it, it wasn't even done.

This initiates a historic one-week slow-motion showdown via the males. The day after Langston finds out about the play from Rowena, it just so happens, and this does seem like a coincidence, that Louise is passing through Cleveland. So we may have gotten our announcement in the paper as a standard so that everybody knows. And then Langston arranges a meeting with him, Louise, and Rowena so that Louise can confirm Langston's role in the writing of Mule. bone and also that Zora Niel Herston is out of control. Langson and Zora finally talk on the phone. He tells her what he's learned and she is like, how did my play end up in Cleveland? Also, I don't want it staged by a bunch of amateurs.

Like, this is a Broadway hit. And Lansing is like, Zora, that's not the point. How did our play end up with just your name on it? Oh, my God. Zora's like, I'm not going to be discussing this with you over the phone. We need to write letters because it does seem like so interesting. So remember like when we first started texting and there were things that you wouldn't text somebody?

So this seems like there are things you don't say on the phone and you write them down. Yeah. So they hang up the phone, they write each other letters. Langston writes, Dear Zora, what is the deal with this play? You've been so evasive. Can you please tell me straight, what happened between us?

He sends it. Zora writes, Dear Langston, I've been so evasive about the play. Let me tell you straight up what happened between us. You suggested we split the proceeds evenly with our secretary. No, she sends it. They wait for each other's letters.

Langston submits the unfinished version of the play that they've been working on back in New Jersey to the U.S. Copyright Office, under the name the Mule Bone, and with both of their names on it. And he tells Rowena, I'm going to finish this version, and then you can stage that. And she's like, ooh, okay.

And then he writes Zora another letter. And he's like, Dear Zora, I went out and I got our play copywritten under its original title. Also, this theater company, they're not amateurs. They're great. They're going to stage this play after I finish it, and it'll be great, just like we play them. And he also starts talking to their mutual friends, the new Negroes, and being like, this is what Zora did, she's tripping, and why is she acting this way? And they're like, Zora's so emotional.

She's so irrational. Zora gets Langston's first letter being like, why have you been so evasive? And she really softens. and she writes back, all this was my fault from the beginning. The Cleveland Theater can put on the play. I left the apartment in New Jersey because I'm actually going to have you read her response to him on page 10. My thoughts were too painful for me to talk to you. I couldn't hear myself saying certain unpleasant phrases to you.

So I just went off to myself and tried to resolve to have no more friendships. Tears unceasing have poured down in. inside me. I just went off to work the play out alone, carefully, not using what was yours. Please believe me when I say the money doesn't matter. You can have anything I have at any time. Oh. I know. So she did the thing where she didn't have the conversation and she just licked her wounds by herself. And it's so wild because when I thought of Zor and what she do, I think of her as this giant, but it's like she's a human. She was so tender. She was like, I was hurt.

Mm-hmm. Oh. So maybe at the same time, and she's writing that letter, Langston gets the letter where she says, this is all happening because you suggested that split with the secretary, and it sets him off. Oh, my God.

They should have just talked on the phone. They should have just talked on the phone. This is what the phone is for people. Real-time communication. Also, their fellow New Negro start hearing Zora's explanation of the Luis Payment scheme, because they had only heard Langston's, side before. And so now they're taking sides. And Langston's getting very worried. He doesn't want to lose the friend group.

Then Zora announces she's coming to Cleveland. Okay, Zora arrives in Cleveland in February. The papers may have done their announcement thing. And then there are three meetings. Meeting number one. February 1st, 1931. Langston's 29th birthday. Alan Luck has given Zora a letter of introduction to Rowena because it's the 30s. And in it, he's like, hey girl, it's me, Father of the Renaissance. And I just want you to know that I back Zora 100%. Langston Hughes is trying to steal this play from her. Wow.

And Rowena is like, this is too much. We're not going to stage the play. It's done. And Zora is like, great. Meeting number two. Zora and Langston finally sit down. Now we only have his side of the story. which was that he was totally calm and rational.

And Zora was a raving lunatic. She called Louisa Gold Digger. She seemed very jealous of her. Seems like Zora has a crush on him. They go round and round. But by the end of it, if you can believe it, they're on the same page. Zora agrees that they can work together, again, on finishing the play. And she is okay with the debuting in Cleveland.

They call it Rowena. They're like, Rewina, forget everything we said before. It's a go. She's like, okay. Later that same day, though, same day of meeting number two. Somehow, perhaps because the papers have been announcing everyone's comings and goings, Zora learns that Luis has been in Cleveland and that she met her and Lankson had the sit-down meeting with Rowena about the play,

and nobody had mentioned that to her before. So she calls up Rowena, and she's like, do you think I'm stupid? You met with a secretary and Lansing about my play? this is not going to happen. She starts going off. Rowena is like, okay, meet me at Langston's house. Well, Langston's mom's house

and let's talk it out there. Meeting number three. They all get to Langston's mom's house. According to him, Zora's a banshee. Screaming. Can't be controlled. What does she even on?

Would I do that at somebody's mom's house? At somebody's mom's house. I mean, I don't know if I believe that. Mm-hmm. She goes off from Rowena and is like, Langston barely held. helped me write this play because he was too busy off with Louise teaching her Spanish.

Louise was speaking his Spanish. He says that Zora told Rowena, I never wanted this play performed in your muddy, dirty yard having theater in Cleveland. Wow. Rowena is like, I've never been so insulted in my life. I am leaving. And then he says that Zora and his mom got into it so bad that she threw Zora out. Wow.

That evening, Zora goes to a frat party in Langston's honor. Shockingly, Langston Hughes was a cue. I don't know if you knew that. Oh, wow. If you can picture him doing the bark. So he's sick in bed, so he's not at the party. Okay. She's there.

She tells everyone Lankton Hughes is a thief. Roena's theater company hears all the gossip And so they start to divide up into factions Team Zora versus Team Langston And Rowena is like I never want to hear about this play again Never gonna stage this play Zora and Langston and their lawyers

Go back and forth for a while But by the spring The vibe has been officially killed And the play is abandoned Stay for the rest When he continues Oh man, every episode There's so much that I want to

to include, but I can't. Otherwise, they'll be so long. Okay, well, this, the vibe of this one's super different than next door. So it's a little more fun, a little messier. Okay. A little less racist. Be a little less racist. Somebody's got a pit bull. You know who has the pit bull. You know who has it. Shut up about that. Shut up, Susan. Luckily, I have a place where I can go to share these extras and director's commentary and bonus content, a community of history love and nerds who've got time. That's the household. Thank you to everyone that's signed up and is a member. Your support is adding up and making a very real difference.

If you would like to support this show and go a little deeper with each episode, visit our Ancesterswemessi.supercast.com and sign up to become a member of the household today. That's Our Ancestorswemessi.com to join. the link is in the show notes and thank you. The conclusion of this week's installment of our ancestors were messy. 1932.

Okay. Have we moved on from, are they over it or no? Oh shit. Okay. No. So Wallace Thurman, new Negro member,

longtime friend of both Zora and Langston. He'd actually been a part of the making of fire, that magazine way, way, way back in the day. He'd been like the lead of that. He is also Luis's ex-husband, if you'll recall, who still claims to love her very much. He publishes his most famous novel, Infants of the Spring, and then he basically turns on the Harlem Renaissance completely. The book is a satire, and in it he drags everyone. All of them, he says he believes them to be overrated creative figures of the Harlem scene.

Every single member of the Ngarati gets it, but Zora gets it the worst. So he characterizes all the work she's doing telling these stories and the dialect of Southern Black people about their interpersonal struggles rather than their battle against racism as being done so that she can remain palatable to white people and so that they will keep paying her way. He says her characters are always singing a Negro spiritual and doing a little day as just the way they do in menstrual shows. And he talks about her love of telling black stories to white people

and saying, quote, she's better at performing little tales for an adoring white audience than writing them down. Ooh. And he obviously doesn't know that Mason is keeping. Well, maybe he does. I don't know how much he knows about her arrangement with Godmother. So another thing, Godmother was like, no one can ever know about me. You can never tell them that the money's coming from me or that I'm your patron. That's a sign of abuse, just so we're all clear.

So he may not know that she's keeping the work under lock and key. but this critique becomes the lens through which the men of the movement, men she's loved and trusted for years view her work. Langston does not come to her defense. She refuses, though, to be seen as anybody's victim. She decides to get to writing and prove them all wrong. So she goes on a little tear.

So in 1932, she stages a folklore concert on Broadway with Mason's support. She somehow talked her into it. And during the play, she meets a young man named Percy, who she calls the love of her life. There's stories for the cute. In 1934, Zor publishes her first novel, Jonas Gordvine, about a philandering preacher who's torn between his spirituality and his lust.

The character is inspired by her father. The book's a hit. Also in 1934, Langston produces a play called Milato, and it's a big hit on Broadway. Next, Langston publishes a book of poetry called The Ways of White Folks about the gross dynamic that can exist between black people and white people. She says this all stems from.

racism, and in it he drags Godmother. Not by name, but like everybody knows who it is. The book's a hit. Mason is still alive to read it. In 1936, because of this devastating breakup that she'd had with Percy, the love of her life, Zora writes, their eyes were watching God. It is a mega hit. The remaining new Negroes, they hate it.

They call it or they call her the mass. of blackface comedy, and Langston accuses her of mining black stories for white entertainment. The old heads hate it. Alan Locke writes a critique saying basically like, this sounds like primitivism, Zora. This sounds like something godmother. I'm sure she loves him very much. And then he implores her in his critique to grow up as a writer and become more concerned with the life and death issues of racism in America. and now there are others.

New writers who were infants when she and Langston were being crowned the next big thing at the opportunity dinner. They're the ingenues like Richard Wright, soon to be author of Native Sun, and he says this of Zora's characters, if you'll read on page 12. They eat and laugh and cry and work

and kill eternally in that safe and narrow orbit in which America likes to see black people. This new crew, They're not interested actually in any. The old heads and certainly none of the new Negroes. The other rising star is James Baldwin, and this is what he says of Langston's work. Every time I read Langston Hughes,

I'm amazed all over again by his genuine gifts and depressed that he has done so little with them. So this new generation believes that art should be about confronting racism head-on and talking about how angry it makes them. And Langston is like, well, what we, When we were the young revolutionaries, we published this literary magazine called Fire and what we were trying to do. And they're like, okay, Boomer. Wow.

Langston ends up writing an autobiography. And in it, he says, of Zora. She loves shucking and jiving for white people, writing these little characters that act like characters in menstrual shows. He characterizes all of her anthropological studies and all of her folklore collection as, like, racist and primitivist. He talks about at the time, you know, there's all the signs trying to prove that black people were less smart than white people. and so they did phrenology, which is like measuring skulls. And so he says like, oh, she was always going around Harlem measuring skulls. Come on.

And her big thing was, you know, we talked about in the first one. It was like, look at all of our stories. Look at the way we use language. Look at all these amazing things we do. We're brilliant. Yes. And she was helping people disprove things like phrenology. But he writes that anyway.

And then he takes all the credit for the play. Oh, my God. Although he does say that the drama around the play and they're falling out for him marked the end of the Harlem Renaissance. Wow. When Zora writes her autobiography, she does not mention Lankton Hughes at all, which I do think is the better.

It's the best kind of revenge. Like, it's not good either way, but like... A little in my life. Who? Oh, Lankston. Mm-hmm. So the last few years of people piling on to Zora and her work leave her very disenchanted

with who she calls the highly literate Negroes. And she's also accused of sexual assault of a minor. And it's proven that she couldn't have done it. She'd been out of the country for a while. And the minor eventually admitted that she hadn't been involved. But the black press still runs with the story and nobody comes to her defense. So all this happens and Zora decides to leave Harlem for good.

By the 1940s, she's bouncing around her beloved South. And she begins publishing all these critiques. of the burgeoning civil rights movement. She says, this is the quote. Colored people, especially in the South, have their own places of amusement and social gatherings and no more desire to associate with the whites than the whites had to associate with them.

That's her position. Then in 1954, Brown versus Board passes, ending segregation in America, and Zora releases the following statement on page 15. How much satisfaction can I expect to get from a court order for someone to associate with me who does not wish me near them? If there are adequate Negro schools and prepared instructors and instructions, then there is nothing different besides the presence of white people. And for this reason, I regard the ruling as insulting rather than honoring my race. I mean, I feel like, okay, as a practitioner of centering blackness and desiring and wanting to create safe and sacred spaces for black people to exist outside and without the gaze and presence of non-black people, I get it.

You know, like we're always trying. We've always had to try and create our own. sacred, safe places. And I understand for someone like Zora who actually grew up in a black town surrounded by black folks loving and caring for each other and supporting and contributing to their own community

and being somewhat self-sufficient to have that in your experience and then to have an end to segregation without any resources. Like I totally get what she's basically saying, like, we can do for ourselves. And we'd like to just have the resources, thank you very much,

and hang out with ourselves. And then go off to ourselves. We'd just go off to ourselves. And I think there's a lot of people who make that argument. Well, actually, speaking of which, there is one person who agrees with her, a big deal, W.B. Du Bois. Mm-hmm.

Oldhead. So he felt sure that white teachers would discriminate against black students either consciously or unconsor consciously and that this would negatively impact their learning and life outcomes. He's so vocal in his stance that he ends up having to leave the NAACP, the organization that he started, and he moves to a Krogana where he spends the rest of his life. Which, like, I didn't really know until I started diving into this history how divided people were about integrating and the way and the different ideas about how we could integrate,

whether it needed to be. Right. It didn't seem like very many people imagined what would come next and how kind of what it would do to the all black spaces to integrate the way we did. I think they thought we could maintain. Like, hey, this is not the silver bullet answer that you think it is. Right. Right. And end to segregation.

But also with what to support black people thriving. Right. Without undoing any of the economic structures or social structures that keep black. black people deprived and less than and culturally seen as less than without any infusion of resources and supports and overturning of those systems. What does integrating do? What does ending segregation do? But just make people have to be around each other, which can be violent. Which was violent. You think about all these things like. Exactly. Harmful and violent for black folks. Yes. Yeah. We look at like the little girl going to school,

Bridges, which like this is this famous photo. I mean, we celebrate her, we love her, but I'm terrified for that child. Terrified. And as the only chocolate drop or one of few chocolate drops in an all-white school in the 80s and 90s, I can tell you, I went to school with skinheads. That shit is terrifying.

Here's where Zora disappears from black history. She becomes a Republican and she publicly backs candidates that oppose any kind of special, quote unquote, special treatment of black people in the form of government assistance because she thinks that it makes black people look like victims and like we're lazy.

Zora keeps writing, but publishers don't want anything to do with her, given her, politics. Their eyes were watching God goes out of print and Zora goes broke. In 1960, at the age of 69, she dies in a nursing home, a segregated nursing home. Before she passes, she tells a friend that her breakup with Langston Hughes was one of the biggest regrets of her life. Oh. And that would have been the end of the story, but then in the 70s, Alice Walker was researching zombies and she stumbled across Zora.

But actually before that, in the 60s, Alice stumbled across someone else. So she was attending a play written by this writer-poet playwright that she'd heard was great, but whose work she'd never read. And after the show, she went up and introduced herself. And that is when she met then 66-year-old Langston Hughes. one of the last living members of the new Negro movement. So at that point, Langston had claimed his seat in black history. He'd gained worldwide acclaim.

He'd written novels and plays and screenplays, whatever he wanted. He was still very close with Luis Thompson. And he's a living legend. But he and the younger generation, they still don't see eye to eye. They still find him like cringe. And he finds them overly intellectual and really angry. But he'd been sent some of time. 21-year-old Alice Walker's work, and he loved it.

She dives into his catalog, and she finds in it a guide for how to write about black life beyond racism. And she calls him her human son and her hero. He never tells her about Zora, though, despite them having so many overlapping interests. A couple years after they met, right before he passes, Langston publishes one last book. It's called The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, 1899 to 1967. And in it, he features one of Alice's stories, and she's elated. He also features the works of Richard Wright and James Baldwin, even though they hate on him.

And he puts a story that he written in there. And in his collection of the very best black writers, he includes Zora Neal Hurston short story, The Gilded Six Bits, about a happy pair whose love for one another is tested when an outsider enters their union. Really? Mm-hmm. Alice Walker says this about the impact the two had on her work. I think of Zora Neal Hurston and Langston Hughes as literary parents. It's so easy to see how and why they would love each other.

Each was to the other an affirming example of what black people could be, wild, crazy, creative, spontaneous, at ease with who they are and funny. I like to think of them wandering about. about together in those early days, telling each other jokes, eating watermelon, and zooming about in Zora's little car. There's so much more that happens, but for now, that is the story of the friendship-turned-fewed between Zora Neal Hurston and Langston Hughes. God. I mean, it's so, our ancestors were messy. It's just messy. It's life. And it's all, It's like, oh, what if she had done this and what if he had done that?

And the interplay between the generations. And, you know, I think we see these same themes playing out today. We're like in each generation, in each iteration of our social movements and art movements, there's insiders and outsiders. There's the ways that you're supposed to do things. There's the standards of blackness that we set on ourselves. Yes. And who is falling within and outside and who's judging that?

You know, it's like this, the people who were creating beautiful, radical or rebellious or even just sweet, like works in their days having to critique. And then the younger generation having to critique them instead of just letting what they did and the time that they lived just stand for what it was and appreciate it. I just think we put ourselves in so many boxes and we do so much policing of each other and expression is supposed to look like. And we can look at all of these folks and be like, no one is actually trying to cause harm to black people.

Right. None of them are trying to cause harm to black folks. They had perspectives on what, you know, what impactful, radical art should be in that moment, but they were never trying to cause harm. Right. And I believe even Zora and her Republican self was not trying to cause harm. I disagree with that.

I disagree with her perspective, but I don't think she was trying to cause harm. Right. And can we be in dialogue with that and around that? There are black folks trying to cause harm to black folks. Zora Niel Herson was not one of them. How do you feel about black history knowing the messy beginnings? How does knowing the messy beginnings kind of impact how you think about the story?

I love knowing the messy beginnings. Like actually, it just, it warms my heart in a way because ancestors, they're just like us. I just love, I kind of love knowing they're messy. I mean, as you were saying, we see them as these giants who somehow figured it out and made a way. And they did. And they were in conflict. And they didn't like just because they were coming up in the same time. and in the same little group of amazing radical artists producing whatever,

they didn't agree. And they had beef. And they had to navigate a lot of what we're still navigating. And they didn't always do it perfectly. Yeah. In fact, they mostly didn't. And so, but they kept creating and they kept going. And I think for me, that gives me a lot of confidence and permission to just to keep going,

to just keep trying to work it out and figure it out. And it makes me also want to, like, add these two particular ancestors to my altar and be like, what wisdom do you have for me as I navigate these collaborations? And how can I learn from your mistakes, but also your successes? And I feel like there's a lot of wisdom in making it through the mess. This show was written and researched and produced by me, Nicole Hill. Thank you again. to my wonderful guest for these last two episodes, Alicia Walters.

I'm so glad we ran into each other at Sketchfest. It was destiny. A lot of my research is based on the novel, Zora and Langston, a story of friendship and betrayal by Yuval Taylor. Thank you to The A-Team. My executive producer, A. A. Hernandez, my sound designer, Kyle Murdoch, story producer, Martina Abraham Zilunga. Research producer and voice talent, Chiope Ayansen.

My script editor is Shante Hill, and my show art is by Aselika Smith. To support the show, become a donor at our ancestorswemessi.com. To learn more about the show, you can visit our ancestorswemessi.com. Before I go, I just have to say, I'm a storyteller by training, becoming more of a historian and an archivist every day. And I made this show in part because when I found these old black newspapers, I was reminded of this quote by the French poet Alphonse de la Martin.

History teaches everything. including the future.