The poet's lifelong struggle against lynching culture is the focus of Jason Miller's "Langston's Hughes's 'The Bitter River.'" In an argument that emphasizes post-WWII U.S. culture, Miller's meditation on a national trauma offers a historically detailed perspective on the painful relationship between the regular failure of anti-lynching legislature and the related failure of democracy for black soldiers and patriots at home. An extended and thoughtful interpretation of the long poem "The Bitter River" repositions that text near the center of Hughes's later political writing while making claims for its excellence as literary art. John Lowney's "Langston Hughes's Cold War Audiences" proposes a revisionist account of Hughes's engagements with the political left within the framework of internationalist cultural production. ...since Hughes eventually proved too radical even for the New Deal venue Common Ground (which had welcomed many Popular Front writers), his writings on race and class relations in the U.S. became of necessity increasingly international, which in turn fostered his desire to develop new modes and avenues of intercultural dialogue.