Walter White, the NAACP’s Assistant Secretary and an aspiring novelist, worked tirelessly to promote the careers of Harlem Renaissance writers, artists, and performers while pursuing his own literary interests. Langston Hughes was employed as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C., when he wrote this letter to White requesting a loan from the NAACP to pay his college tuition. He also reported on the progress of his works The Weary Blues and his new autobiography. Its title, “Scarlet Flowers,” White retorted, “sounds like Louisa M. Alcott.” Hughes agreed and later published his autobiography under the title The Big Sea (1940).