December 2002 | I have been reliving old days in scanning what you have sent of Reporting Civil Rights. I am happy to be in it. Ted Poston told a story one night at a party about a school play or pageant in which the little black angels (he was one) took over from the tan and white angels, and he was a funny man. I said, "Ted, write it, and with luck I may get it into The New Republic." He knocked off a version at the deadline speed of something he might be writing for The New York Post. I asked him to work on it some more. I had him rewrite it about five times. The final version was perfect. We published it and it lives on in anthologies of that period. "The Revolt of the Black Angels." It was only a funny story about children and could not be read in any other way. But someone trying to build up Ted's file described it as a call for revolutionary violence.

Ralph Ellison comes up to my desk with Angelo Herndon, who was indicted in Georgia for "criminal syndicalism," for trying to organize a tenant farmer's union. A capital offence. Georgia wanted to hang him. Ralph and Herndon had started The Negro Quarterly and had come to ask me to write a piece. I wrote it. It's in No. 3 of the quarterly. I told my dear wife, "Langston Hughes is in the Library of America anthology—" "Oh I love him." She is not talking about his books. She is talking about Langston Hughes. "Roi Ottley is in it—" "Oh I love Roi!" We would stay with Roi and his wife Gladys Schwartz after late parties. Roi lives on in happy memories for me. He quotes me in New World A'Comin. I regretted that he seemed to have dropped off the screen as writers of the period were written up. Now you have him back on the screen.

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