If one looks to uncover linkages between the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s and the earlier radicalisms of the 1930s and 1940s, the work of Langston Hughes as a writer, editor, and cultural catalyst during the 1950s and 1960s is a good place to start. Not only was his writing a crucial forerunner of Black Arts poetry, drama, essays, and short fiction, but Hughes tirelessly promoted the careers of the young (and sometimes not so young) militant black artists then, providing practical, moral, and emotional support and encouragement. At the same time, Hughes constructively criticized both the new black writing and the responses of some of the artists, activists, and intellectuals of his generation, reminding the younger artists of a long tradition of black radicalism in the arts while chiding older artists and intellectuals for their own cultural amnesia about their radical youth.