A Bone to Pick with the Writing and Fallout of Mule Bone
The play Mule Bone was the brainchild of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, two literary giants of the Harlem Renaissance. They sought to bring authentic Black stories to the American theatre through this collaborative piece. Instead, the project turned their friendship into a bitter feud.
Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, 1991. / THF278631
Langston Hughes (1901 or 1902-1967), one of the most well-known writers in American history, was a celebrated poet, novelist, essayist, and social activist. Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) is mostly remembered as a fiction writer today, but she was a multi-genre writer, anthropologist, and pioneer of ethnography — an anthropological practice that focuses on the studied culture's perspective. Hughes and Hurston met in 1926 at the Opportunity Magazine literary awards, where they both received prizes for their first published works. As two budding creators with new-found success, Hughes and Hurston formed a close bond immediately. They traveled together, holding lectures and readings throughout the American South. They co-founded Fire!! literary magazine with a cohort of other emerging Black writers and artists. Hughes introduced Hurston to their mutual benefactress, Charlotte Osgood Mason. Hurston addressed Hughes as "pal" and "bambino" in her letters and even confided in him about her failing marriage. This friendship sparked creative camaraderie, too. As early as 1927, Hurston envisioned writing together. She discussed ideas with Hughes based on her anthropological research and even proposed a collaborative opera to Charlotte Osgood Mason for monetary sponsorship.
Hughes (center) and Hurston (right) pose with an unidentified friend in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1927 / Via Langston Hughes paper at the Yale Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. You can find more of the Langston Hughes papers here.
Hurston and Hughes began writing their play, Mule Bone, in the spring of 1930. To facilitate the work, they hired Louise Thompson as the typist for the project. Thompson's presence eventually divided the two writers. Hughes advocated for Thompson to receive a percentage of future royalties, which Hurston objected to. Hughes later claimed Hurston was jealous of his friendship with Thompson. After working on Mule Bone, Thompson went on to become a prominent civil rights activist from the 1930s until her death in 1999.
"Free Angela Davis" Poster, 1970. Thompson (later known as Louise Thompson Patterson) led the New York Committee to Free Angela Davis. You can learn more about the Free Angela Movement here / THF721969
Additionally, Hughes and Charlotte Osgood Mason had recently cut ties on bad terms. The fallout likely amplified tensions. Hurston remained loyal to Mason whose patronage was her sole source of income, and Hughes regarded Hurston as Mason's lackey according to letters to friends.
Jonah's Gourd Vine, 1990 edition. Jonah's Gourd Vine, Zora Neale Hurston's first novel, was conceived during a 1929 anthropological trip that Charlotte Osgood Mason sponsored. Mason's patronage provided Hurston with financial stability in her early writing and research career. / THF278620
Regardless, Hughes and Hurston finished the first draft of Mule Bone in the fall of 1930. Hurston returned to her anthropology fieldwork at this time and put the project on hiatus. Promising to return and finish Mule Bone, Hurston took a copy of the script and their drafting notes with her. Hughes did not hear from her for months.
In November of 1930, Hurston sent a new version of Mule Bone to Carl Van Vechten--a photographer, writer, and tastemaker in the arts and literary world during the Harlem Renaissance. She claimed that the play was loosely based on ideas she and Hughes had workshopped, but that the script was her own. She hoped Van Vechten would use his connections to get the play produced. Van Vechten, unaware of a possible authorship dispute, sent Mule Bone to his theatre contacts. Rowena Jelliffe, the director of the oldest Black American theater troupe in the country — the Gilpin Players — received the script in mid-January of 1931. She loved the work and planned to produce Mule Bone at the Theater of Nations in Cleveland, Ohio. Coincidentally, Langston Hughes contracted tonsillitis in mid-January of 1931 and was recovering at his mother's home in Cleveland. Hughes was well connected in the literary arts scene in Cleveland, so when Rowena Jelliffe showed him the new script she was producing, he was shocked. This "new work" was his and Hurston's original play, Mule Bone, with a new ending.
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, 1995. Hughes lived in Cleveland as a teenager, when he wrote his earliest poems. He also attended art classes at the settlement house Rowena Jelliffe founded. / THF278643
Hughes reached out to Hurston about the impending production. She did not return his calls, telegrams, and letters for nearly a week. When Hurston finally contacted Hughes, she said that she was the sole author of Mule Bone and accused him of manipulating her. Hughes said that the new draft undermined their work, calling it "all tangled up." Once this initial fight ended, however, Hurston agreed to name Hughes the co-author of Mule Bone. Hurston traveled to Cleveland, and the two completed a second collaborative draft of the script. Tensions rose again as they worked.
According to Hughes, the project and friendship ended at a dramatic luncheon on February 3, 1931. Allegedly, Hurston came to Hughes's mother's home for a meeting with Rowena Jelliffe and Hughes. Hurston accused Hughes of using Mule Bone to court Louise Thompson, reiterated that she alone wrote Mule Bone, and insulted the Gilpin Players, Jelliffe, and Hughes's mother. After Hurston left Cleveland that day, the two never spoke in person again. Hughes left a handwritten note on his copy of Mule Bone: "This play was never done because the authors fell out." In his autobiography, The Big Sea, Langston Hughes correlates this fight with the end of the Harlem Renaissance itself. Both Hughes and Hurston went on to great success in their respective careers after this, but Mule Bone remained unfulfilled work and was not produced until 1991, well after both authors' deaths.
Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1990 edition. Most of Hurston’s famous works, including all four of her novels, were written and published after the Mule Bone controversy. / THF278625
The heart of this conflict is a question of authorship. The exact truth of who wrote what parts of Mule Bone is muddied. In Hughes's version of events, he created the main plot of the play about two friends fighting over the same woman. He claimed Hurston provided the play's Southern dialect. In Hurston's version, she wrote all of Mule Bone, and Hughes came up with a couple of ideas that she later cut from the script. To Hurston's credit, Mule Bone has many hallmarks of her work, demonstrating her sizeable contribution to the play. For example, Hurston often utilized Black American traditions such as children's games and signifying--mocking someone close to you — in her work, and these elements are present throughout Mule Bone. The subplot about a man on trial for beating someone with a mule's bone is based on one of Hurston's then-unpublished short stories. To Hughes's credit, he had mimeographs, handwritten notes, and a witness in Louise Thompson proving his involvement with the work. The reality is that Mule Bone was the work of two writers, and how much each one contributed remains debatable. We are left with a work of art whose creation fundamentally changed its authors' relationship.
Kayla Chenault is an associate curator at The Henry Ford.