langston hughes biography essay

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Langston Hughes

By: History.com Editors

Updated: December 15, 2023 | Original: January 24, 2023

Langston Hughes was a defining figure of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance  as an influential poet, playwright, novelist, short story writer, essayist, political commentator and social activist. Known as a poet of the people, his work focused on the everyday lives of the Black working class, earning him renown as one of America’s most notable poets.

Hughes was born February 1, 1902 (although some evidence shows it may have been 1901 ), in Joplin, Missouri, to James and Caroline Hughes. When he was a young boy, his parents divorced, and, after his father moved to Mexico, and his mother, whose maiden name was Langston, sought work elsewhere, he was raised by his grandmother, Mary Langston, in Lawrence, Kansas. Mary Langston died when Hughes was around 12 years old, and he relocated to Illinois to live with his mother and stepfather. The family eventually landed in Cleveland.

According to the first volume of his 1940 autobiography, The Big Sea , which chronicled his life until the age of 28, Hughes said he often used reading to combat loneliness while growing up. “I began to believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world in books—where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas,” he wrote.

In his Ohio high school, he started writing poetry, focusing on what he called “low-down folks” and the Black American experience. He would later write that he was influenced at a young age by Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Upon graduating in 1920, he traveled to Mexico to live with his father for a year. It was during this period that, still a teenager, he wrote “ The Negro Speaks of Rivers ,” a free-verse poem that ran in the NAACP ’s The Crisis magazine and garnered him acclaim. It read, in part:

“I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”

Traveling the World

Hughes returned from Mexico and spent one year studying at Columbia University in New York City . He didn’t love the experience, citing racism, but he became immersed in the burgeoning Harlem cultural and intellectual scene, a period now known as the Harlem Renaissance.

Hughes worked several jobs over the next several years, including cook, elevator operator and laundry hand. He was employed as a steward on a ship, traveling to Africa and Europe, and lived in Paris, mingling with the expat artist community there, before returning to America and settling down in Washington, D.C. It was in the nation’s capital that, while working as a busboy, he slipped his poetry to the noted poet Vachel Lindsay, cited as the father of modern singing poetry, who helped connect Hughes to the literary world.

Hughes’ first book of poetry, The Weary Blues was published in 1926, and he received a scholarship to and, in 1929, graduated from, Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University. He soon published Not Without Laughter , his first novel, which was awarded the Harmon Gold Medal for literature.

Jazz Poetry

Called the “Poet Laureate of Harlem,” he is credited as the father of jazz poetry, a literary genre influenced by or sounding like jazz, with rhythms and phrases inspired by the music.

“But jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America; the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul—the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile,” he wrote in the 1926 essay, “ The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain .”

Writing for a general audience, his subject matter continued to focus on ordinary Black Americans. Hughes wrote that his 1927 work, “Fine Clothes to the Jew,” was about “workers, roustabouts, and singers, and job hunters on Lenox Avenue in New York, or Seventh Street in Washington or South State in Chicago—people up today and down tomorrow, working this week and fired the next, beaten and baffled, but determined not to be wholly beaten, buying furniture on the installment plan, filling the house with roomers to help pay the rent, hoping to get a new suit for Easter—and pawning that suit before the Fourth of July."

He also did not shy from writing about his experiences and observations.

“We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame,” he wrote in the The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain . “If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too.”

Ever the traveler, Hughes spent time in the South, chronicling racial injustices, and also the Soviet Union in the 1930s, showing an interest in communism . (He was called to testify before Congress during the McCarthy hearings in 1953.)

In 1930, Hughes wrote “Mule Bone” with Zora Neale Hurston , his first play, which would be the first of many. “Mulatto: A Tragedy of the Deep South,” about race issues, was Broadway’s longest-running play written by a Black author until Lorraine Hansberry’s 1958 play, “A Raisin in the Sun.” Hansberry based the name of her play on Hughes’ 1951 poem, “ Harlem ” in which he writes, 

"What happens to a dream deferred?

                Does it dry up

                like a raisin in the sun?...”

Hughes wrote the lyrics for “Street Scene,” a 1947 Broadway musical, and set up residence in a Harlem brownstone on East 127th Street. He co-founded the New York Suitcase Theater, as well as theater troupes in Los Angeles and Chicago. He attempted screenwriting in Hollywood, but found racism blocked his efforts.

He worked as a newspaper war correspondent in 1937 for the Baltimore Afro American , writing about Black American soldiers fighting for the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War . He also wrote a column from 1942-1962 for the Chicago Defender , a Black newspaper, focusing on Jim Crow laws and segregation , World War II and the treatment of Black people in America. The column often featured the fictitious Jesse B. Semple, known as Simple.

In the 1950s and ’60s, Hughes wrote a “First Book” series of children's books, patriotic stories about Black culture and achievements, including The First Book of Negroes (1952), The First Book of Jazz (1955), and The Book of Negro Folklore (1958). Among the stories in the 1958 volume is "Thank You, Ma'am," in which a young teenage boy learns a lesson about trust and respect when an older woman he tries to rob ends up taking him home and giving him a meal.

Hughes died in New York from complications during surgery to treat prostate cancer on May 22, 1967, at the age of 65. His ashes are interred in Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. His Harlem home was named a New York landmark in 1981, and a National Register of Places a year later. 

"I, too, am America," a quote from his 1926 poem, " I, too, " is engraved on the wall of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

“ Langston Hughes ,” The Library of Congress

“ Langston Hughes: The People's Poet ,” Smithsonian Magazine

“ The Blues and Langston Hughes ,” Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

“ Langston Hughes ,” Poets.org

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Langston Hughes

James Mercer Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1901, in Joplin, Missouri. Hughes’s birth year was revised from 1902 to 1901 after new research from 2018 uncovered that he had been born a year earlier. His parents, James Nathaniel Hughes and Carrie Langston Hughes, divorced when he was a young child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his maternal grandmother, Mary Sampson Patterson Leary Langston, who was nearly seventy when Hughes was born, until he was thirteen. He then moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland. It was in Lincoln that Hughes began writing poetry.

After graduating from high school, he spent a year in Mexico followed by a year at Columbia University. During this time, he worked as an assistant cook, a launderer, and a busboy. He also traveled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes’s first book of poetry, The Weary Blues , (Knopf, 1926) was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926 with an introduction by Harlem Renaissance arts patron Carl Van Vechten . Criticism of the book from the time varied, with some praising the arrival of a significant new voice in poetry, while others dismissed Hughes’s debut collection. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter (Knopf, 1930), won the Harmon gold medal for literature.

Hughes, who cited Paul Laurence Dunbar , Carl Sandburg , and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful portrayals of Black life in America from the 1920s to the 1960s. He wrote novels, short stories, plays, and poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in his book-length poem Montage of a Dream Deferred (Holt, 1951). His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Unlike other notable Black poets of the period, such as Claude McKay , Jean Toomer , and Countee Cullen , Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of Black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including their love of music, laughter, and language, alongside their suffering.

The critic Donald B. Gibson noted in the introduction to Modern Black Poets: A Collection of Critical Essays (Prentice Hall, 1973) that Hughes

differed from most of his predecessors among black poets… in that he addressed his poetry to the people, specifically to black people. During the twenties when most American poets were turning inward, writing obscure and esoteric poetry to an ever decreasing audience of readers, Hughes was turning outward, using language and themes, attitudes and ideas familiar to anyone who had the ability simply to read... Until the time of his death, he spread his message humorously—though always seriously—to audiences throughout the country, having read his poetry to more people (possibly) than any other American poet.

In addition to leaving us a large body of poetic work, Hughes wrote eleven plays and countless works of prose, including the well-known “Simple” books: Simple’s Uncle Sam (Hill and Wang, 1965);  Simple Stakes a Claim  (Rinehart, 1957);  Simple Takes a Wife  (Simon & Schuster, 1953);  Simple Speaks His Mind  (Simon & Schuster, 1950). He coedited the The Poetry of the Negro, 1746–1949  (Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1949) with Arna Bontemps , edited The Book of Negro Folklore (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1958), and wrote an acclaimed autobiography, The Big Sea (Knopf, 1940). Hughes also cowrote the play Mule Bone (HarperCollins, 1991) with Zora Neale Hurston.

Langston Hughes died of complications from prostate cancer on May 22, 1967, in New York City. In his memory, his residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem has been given landmark status by the New York City Preservation Commission, and East 127th Street has been renamed “Langston Hughes Place.”

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Biography of Langston Hughes, Poet, Key Figure in Harlem Renaissance

Hughes wrote about the African-American experience

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Langston Hughes was a singular voice in American poetry, writing with vivid imagery and jazz-influenced rhythms about the everyday Black experience in the United States. While best-known for his modern, free-form poetry with superficial simplicity masking deeper symbolism, Hughes worked in fiction, drama, and film as well.

Hughes purposefully mixed his own personal experiences into his work, setting him apart from other major Black poets of the era, and placing him at the forefront of the literary movement known as the Harlem Renaissance . From the early 1920s to the late 1930s, this explosion of poetry and other work by Black Americans profoundly changed the artistic landscape of the country and continues to influence writers to this day.

Fast Facts: Langston Hughes

• Full Name: James Mercer Langston Hughes
• Known For: Poet, novelist, journalist, activist
• Born: February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri
• Parents: James and Caroline Hughes (née Langston)
• Died: May 22, 1967 in New York, New York
• Education: Lincoln University of Pennsylvania
• Selected Works: The Weary Blues, The Ways of White Folks, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Montage of a Dream Deferred
•  Notable Quote: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers."

Early Years

Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1902. His father divorced his mother shortly thereafter and left them to travel. As a result of the split, he was primarily raised by his grandmother, Mary Langston, who had a strong influence on Hughes, educating him in the oral traditions of his people and impressing upon him a sense of pride; she was referred to often in his poems. After Mary Langston died, Hughes moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her new husband. He began writing poetry shortly after enrolling in high school.

Hughes moved to Mexico in 1919 to live with his father for a short time. In 1920, Hughes graduated high school and returned to Mexico. He wished to attend Columbia University in New York and lobbied his father for financial assistance; his father did not think writing was a good career, and offered to pay for college only if Hughes studied engineering. Hughes attended Columbia University in 1921 and did well, but found the racism he encountered there to be corrosive—though the surrounding Harlem neighborhood was inspiring to him. His affection for Harlem remained strong for the rest of his life. He left Columbia after one year, worked a series of odd jobs, and traveled to Africa working as a crewman on a boat, and from there on to Paris. There he became part of the Black expatriate community of artists.

The Crisis to Fine Clothes to the Jew (1921-1930)

• The Negro Speaks of Rivers (1921)
• The Weary Blues (1926)
• The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain (1926)
• Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927)
• Not Without Laughter (1930)

Hughes wrote his poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers while still in high school, and published it in The Crisis , the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The poem gained Hughes a great deal of attention; influenced by Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg, it is a tribute to Black people throughout history in a free verse format:

I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Hughes began to publish poems on a regular basis, and in 1925 won the Poetry Prize from Opportunity Magazine . Fellow writer Carl Van Vechten, who Hughes had met on his overseas travels, sent Hughes’ work to Alfred A. Knopf, who enthusiastically published Hughes’ first collection of poetry, The Weary Blues in 1926.

Around the same time, Hughes took advantage of his job as a busboy in a Washington, D.C., hotel to give several poems to poet Vachel Lindsay, who began to champion Hughes in the mainstream media of the time, claiming to have discovered him. Based on these literary successes, Hughes received a scholarship to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and published The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain in The Nation . The piece was a manifesto calling for more Black artists to produce Black-centric art without worrying whether white audiences would appreciate it—or approve of it.

In 1927, Hughes published his second collection of poetry, Fine Clothes to the Jew. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1929. In 1930, Hughes published Not Without Laughter , which is sometimes described as a "prose poem" and sometimes as a novel, signaling his continued evolution and his impending experiments outside of poetry.

By this point, Hughes was firmly established as a leading light in what is known as the Harlem Renaissance. The literary movement celebrated Black art and culture as public interest in the subject soared.

Fiction, Film, and Theater Work (1931-1949)

• The Ways of White Folks (1934)
• Mulatto (1935)
• Way Down South (1935)
• The Big Sea (1940)

Hughes traveled through the American South in 1931 and his work became more forcefully political, as he became increasingly aware of the racial injustices of the time. Always sympathetic to communist political theory, seeing it as an alternative to the implicit racism of capitalism, he also traveled extensively through the Soviet Union during the 1930s.

He published his first collection of short fiction, The Ways of White Folks , in 1934. The story cycle is marked by a certain pessimism in regards to race relations; Hughes seems to suggest in these stories that there will never be a time without racism in this country. His play Mulatto , first staged in 1935, deals with many of the same themes as the most famous story in the collection, Cora Unashamed , which tells the story of a Black servant who develops a close emotional bond with the young white daughter of her employers.

Hughes became increasingly interested in the theater, and founded the New York Suitcase Theater with Paul Peters in 1931. After receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935, he also co-founded a theater troupe in Los Angeles while co-writing the screenplay for the film Way Down South . Hughes imagined he would be an in-demand screenwriter in Hollywood; his failure to gain much success in the industry was put down to racism. He wrote and published his autobiography The Big Sea in 1940 despite being only 28 years old; the chapter titled Black Renaissance discussed the literary movement in Harlem and inspired the name "Harlem Renaissance."

Continuing his interest in theater, Hughes founded the Skyloft Players in Chicago in 1941 and began writing a regular column for the Chicago Defender , which he would continue to write for two decades. After World War II and the Civil Rights Movement ’s rise and successes, Hughes found that the younger generation of Black artists, coming into a world where segregation was ending and real progress seemed possible in terms of race relations and the Black experience, saw him as a relic of the past. His style of writing and Black-centric subject matter seemed passé .

Children’s Books and Later Work (1950-1967)

• Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)
• The First Book of the Negroes (1952)
• I Wonder as I Wander (1956)
• A Pictorial History of the Negro in America (1956)
• The Book of Negro Folklore (1958)

Hughes attempted to interact with the new generation of Black artists by directly addressing them, but rejecting what he saw as their vulgarity and over-intellectual approach. His epic poem "suite," Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951) took inspiration from jazz music, collecting a series of related poems sharing the overarching theme of a "dream deferred" into something akin to a film montage—a series of images and short poems following quickly after each other in order to position references and symbolism together. The most famous section from the larger poem is the most direct and powerful statement of the theme, known as Harlem :

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode ?

In 1956, Hughes published his second autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander . He took a greater interest in documenting the cultural history of Black America, producing A Pictorial History of the Negro in America in 1956, and editing The Book of Negro Folklore in 1958.

Hughes continued to work throughout the 1960s and was considered by many to be the leading writer of Black America at the time, although none of his works after Montage of a Dream Deferred approached the power and clarity of his work during his prime.

Although Hughes had previously published a book for children in 1932 ( Popo and Fifina ), in the 1950s he began publishing books specifically for children regularly, including his First Book series, which was designed to instill a sense of pride in and respect for the cultural achievements of African Americans in its youth. The series included The First Book of the Negroes (1952), The First Book of Jazz (1954), The First Book of Rhythms (1954), The First Book of the West Indies (1956), and The First Book of Africa (1964).

The tone of these children’s books was perceived as very patriotic as well as focused on the appreciation of Black culture and history. Many people, aware of Hughes’ flirtations with communism and his run-in with Senator McCarthy , suspected he attempted to make his children’s books self-consciously patriotic in order to combat any perception that he might not be a loyal citizen.

Personal Life

While Hughes reportedly had several affairs with women during his life, he never married or had children. Theories concerning his sexual orientation abound; many believe that Hughes, known for strong affections for Black men in his life, seeded clues about his homosexuality throughout his poems (something Walt Whitman, one of his key influences, was known to do in his own work). However, there is no overt evidence to support this, and some argue that Hughes was, if anything, asexual and uninterested in sex.

Despite his early and long-term interest in socialism and his visit to the Soviet Union, Hughes denied being a communist when called to testify by Senator Joseph McCarthy. He then distanced himself from communism and socialism, and was thus estranged from the political left that had often supported him. His work dealt less and less with political considerations after the mid-1950s as a result, and when he compiled the poems for his 1959 collection Selected Poems, he excluded most of his more politically-focused work from his youth.

Hughes was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and entered the Stuyvesant Polyclinic in New York City on May 22, 1967 to undergo surgery to treat the disease. Complications arose during the procedure, and Hughes passed away at the age of 65. He was cremated, and his ashes interred in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, where the floor bears a design based on his poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers , including a line from the poem inscribed on the floor.

Hughes turned his poetry outward at a time in the early 20th century when Black artists were increasingly turning inward, writing for an insular audience. Hughes wrote about Black history and the Black experience, but he wrote for a general audience, seeking to convey his ideas in emotional, easily-understood motifs and phrases that nevertheless had power and subtlety behind them.

Hughes incorporated the rhythms of modern speech in Black neighborhoods and of jazz and blues music, and he included characters of "low" morals in his poems, including alcoholics, gamblers, and prostitutes, whereas most Black literature sought to disavow such characters because of a fear of proving some of the worst racist assumptions. Hughes felt strongly that showing all aspects of Black culture was part of reflecting life and refused to apologize for what he called the "indelicate" nature of his writing.

• Als, Hilton. “The Elusive Langston Hughes.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 9 July 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/sojourner.
• Ward, David C. “Why Langston Hughes Still Reigns as a Poet for the Unchampioned.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 22 May 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/why-langston-hughes-still-reigns-poet-unchampioned-180963405/.
• Johnson, Marisa, et al. “Women in the Life of Langston Hughes.” US History Scene, http://ushistoryscene.com/article/women-and-hughes/.
• McKinney, Kelsey. “Langston Hughes Wrote a Children's Book in 1955.” Vox, Vox, 2 Apr. 2015, https://www.vox.com/2015/4/2/8335251/langston-hughes-jazz-book.
• Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, https://poets.org/poet/langston-hughes.
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The Elusive Langston Hughes

By Hilton Als

By the time the British artist Isaac Julien’s iconic short essay-film “Looking for Langston” was released, in 1989, Julien’s ostensible subject, the enigmatic poet and race man Langston Hughes, had been dead for twenty-two years, but the search for his “real” story was still ongoing. There was a sense—particularly among gay men of color, like Julien, who had so few “out” ancestors and wanted to claim the prolific, uneven, but significant writer as one of their own—that some essential things about Hughes had been obscured or disfigured in his work and his memoirs. Born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1902, and transplanted to New York City as a strikingly handsome nineteen-year-old, Hughes became, with the publication of his first book of poems, “The Weary Blues” (1926), a prominent New Negro: modern, pluralistic in his beliefs, and a member of what the folklorist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston called “the niggerati,” a loosely formed alliance of black writers and intellectuals that included Hurston, the author and diplomat James Weldon Johnson, the openly gay poet and artist Richard Bruce Nugent, and the novelists Nella Larsen, Jessie Fauset, and Wallace Thurman (whose 1929 novel about color fixation among blacks, “The Blacker the Berry,” conveys some of the energy of the time).

In a 1926 essay for The Nation , “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” Hughes described the group, which came together during the Harlem Renaissance, when hanging out uptown was considered a lesson in cool:

We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are. If they are not, their displeasure doesn’t matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.

And yet, in his personal life, Hughes did not stand on top of the mountain, proclaiming who he was or what he thought. One of the architects of black political correctness, he saw as threatening any attempt to expose black difference or weakness in front of a white audience. In his approach to the work of other black artists, in particular, he was excessively inclusive, enthusiastic to the point of self-effacement, as if black creativity were a great wave that would wash away the psychic scars of discrimination. Hughes was uncomfortable when younger black writers, such as James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison (whom Hughes mentored from the day after he arrived in Harlem, in 1936, until it was no longer convenient for Ellison to be associated with the less careful craftsman), criticized other black writers. Hughes’s reluctance to reveal the cracks in the black world—which is to say, his own world—curtailed not only what he was able to achieve as an artist but what he was able to express as a man.

Instead of coming to grips with himself and his potential, he developed what he considered to be a palatable or marketable public persona. There he is, smiling, humble, industrious, and hidden, in Arnold Rampersad’s two-volume biography, “The Life of Langston Hughes” (1986 and 1988), not to mention in such important recent works about the period as Carla Kaplan’s “Miss Anne in Harlem” and Farah Jasmine Griffin’s “Harlem Nocturne” (both 2013). Even in much of his own correspondence—in the recently published “The Selected Letters of Langston Hughes,” edited by Rampersad and David Roessel, with Christa Fratantoro—one senses that Hughes is performing a version of himself that he feels is socially acceptable. (While “The Selected Letters” is a good place to start finding out about Hughes and his world, one sees more of his naughtiness and sense of play in some of the narrower collections, including “Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten,” which was edited with verve and insight by Emily Bernard.) The Hughes persona also appears in his most celebrated verses, which marry down-home Southern locutions with urban rhythms. From “The Weary Blues”:

I heard a Negro play. Down on Lenox Avenue the other night By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light He did a lazy sway. . . . He did a lazy sway. . . . To the tune o’ those Weary Blues. With his ebony hands on each ivory key He made that poor piano moan with melody. . . . In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan— “Ain’t got nobody in all this world, Ain’t got nobody but ma self. I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’ And put ma troubles on the shelf.”

Writing about Hughes’s “Selected Poems” in the Times in 1959, Baldwin—who chastised his elder for reducing blackness to a kind of pleasant Negro simplicity—began with a bang:

Every time I read Langston Hughes I am amazed all over again by his genuine gifts—and depressed that he has done so little with them. . . . Hughes, in his sermons, blues and prayers, has working for him the power and the beat of Negro speech and Negro music. Negro speech is vivid largely because it is private. It is a kind of emotional shorthand—or sleight of hand—by means of which Negroes express not only their relationship to each other but their judgment of the white world. . . . Hughes knows the bitter truth behind these hieroglyphics: what they are designed to protect, what they are designed to convey. But he has not forced them into the realm of art, where their meaning would become clear and overwhelming.

Possibly, Baldwin—the author of the landmark gay love story “Giovanni’s Room”—was upset less by Hughes’s failures as a poet than by his refusal to reveal the truth behind his own hieroglyphics: his sexuality, which appears only in glimpses in his work. (And in the work of others, including Richard Bruce Nugent’s 1926 story “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade,” which Hughes published in Fire!! , a literary magazine that Wallace Thurman edited, and in which a young man walking in Harlem bumps into “Langston,” who’s in the company of a striking boy.) Thurman, expressing his frustration at how little he knew about Hughes’s private self, wrote to him once, “You are in the final analysis the most consarned and diabolical creature, to say nothing of being either the most egregiously simple or excessively complex person I know.” Even Rampersad’s biography, which is as rich a study of a life as one could wish for, was criticized by gay readers for its emphatic I-don’t-know-anything-specific-about-his-romantic-life pronouncements. In Rampersad’s work, Hughes emerges as a constantly striving, almost asexual entity—which is pretty much the image that Hughes himself put forth.

Reading Hughes’s work, one is reminded of these lines by the black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, one of Hughes’s early enthusiasms:

We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties.

That mask was what kept Hughes from including such works as “Café: 3 A.M. ” in his “Selected Poems,” which he edited:

Detectives from the vice squad with weary sadistic eyes spotting fairies. Degenerates , some folks say. But God, Nature, or somebody made them that way. Police lady or Lesbian over there? Where?

And where was Langston? His tight-lippedness when it came to his own “degenerate” behavior kept him from identifying such people as “F.S.,” the dedicatee of another poem (who may have been Ferdinand Smith, a Jamaican merchant seaman Hughes met in Harlem) that appeared in “The Weary Blues”:

I loved my friend. He went away from me. There is nothing more to say. The poem ends, Soft as it began— I loved my friend.

Hughes’s genial, generous, and guarded persona was self-protective, certainly. It’s important to remember that he came of age in an era during which gay men—and blacks—were physically and mentally abused for being what they were. (He was self-preserving in other areas of his life as well. To protect his career, he testified at the House Un-American Activities Committee proceedings, which cost him his friendships with W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson.) Hughes’s mask was likely also a bulwark against his personal history, which he rarely discussed, even in his elusive autobiographies, “The Big Sea” (1940) and “I Wonder as I Wander” (1956), one of the most apt titles ever penned by Hughes: his memoir is littered with short sojourns and partings, a pattern he learned in a home where the laughter was often derisive and love was a form of humiliation.

Hughes’s mother, the impulsive and vibrant Carrie Langston, was born in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1873, of African, Native American, and French ancestry. Her father, Charles Langston, an enterprising farmer and grocer, was also a fierce abolitionist, whose youngest brother, John Mercer Langston, became a prominent figure in nineteenth-century black America—a professor of law, a dean, and then the acting president of Howard University. As a girl, Carrie Langston was known as “the Belle of Black Lawrence.” Hungry for attention, she aspired to a career on the stage, but her dreams were stymied by prejudice and by the limits of a nineteenth-century woman’s life. With few real options open to her, she completed a course in elementary-school education, and in 1898, already in love with travel, moved to Guthrie, in the Oklahoma Territory, some ten miles from Langston, a town named for her famous uncle. There the light-skinned Carrie met and married James Nathaniel Hughes, a handsome, hardworking man of color, with African, Native American, French, and Jewish blood. (His grandfathers were both slave traders.) But there was a crucial difference between the newlyweds: whereas Carrie had been brought up to be proud of her race, the color-struck James despised blackness, which he equated with poverty and powerlessness.

In 1899, the young, ambitious couple moved to Joplin, where Carrie gave birth to Langston in 1902. (Their first child, a boy, born in 1900, died in infancy.) A year later, when James secured a position in Mexico City, where he felt that he stood a better chance of success, Carrie dropped Langston off at her mother’s, and followed him south. The couple bickered, reconciled, parted, sometimes with Langston in tow, often not; for the most part, the boy was reared by his judicious but loving grandmother, Mary. By 1907, they had separated permanently.

There’s nothing like family to remind you of life’s essential loneliness. As a boy, Hughes absorbed his mother’s bitterness about her marriage and her thwarted career, as well as his father’s anxiety and rancor over racism in America and what he presumed to be its cause: blacks themselves. (Hughes recalled a train journey through Arkansas, during which his father, seeing some blacks at work in a cotton field, sneered, “Look at the niggers.”) Carrie never hesitated to tell her son that he resembled his father—“that devil”—and that he was as “evil as Jim Hughes.” His grandmother, angry about segregation—as a black person, she couldn’t join the church of her choice—forbade her grandson to go out after school: Why risk degradation in their sty?

Hughes grew up in an atmosphere of hatred and small-mindedness. While he was in elementary school, a white teacher warned one of Hughes’s white classmates against eating licorice, for fear that he would end up looking like Langston. A bright, genial boy, Hughes also suffered for his talents. From his poem “Genius Child”:

Nobody loves a genius child. Can you love an eagle, Tame or wild? Can you love an eagle, Wild or tame? Can you love a monster Of frightening name? Nobody loves a genius child. Kill him —and let his soul run wild.

Still, there was solace. There were books by W. E. B. Du Bois, and the formality and strange wisdom of the Bible. (Hughes read widely and deeply in the black and white American canons. And, throughout his career, he excitedly read the writers of color who were published in Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa, including René Maran, Graziella Garbalosa, and Richard Rive.) There was black pride, too. In 1910, Mary and her grandson went to Osawatomie, Kansas, where former President Theodore Roosevelt honored her first husband, Lewis Sheridan Leary, who had died during the 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry.

Mary herself died in 1915, and the thirteen-year-old Hughes soon left Kansas for Lincoln, Illinois, where his mother now lived with her second husband, Homer Clark, a sometime “chef cook,” and his son. In Lincoln, a teacher asked Hughes’s eighth-grade class to appoint a class poet who understood rhythm. Hughes’s fellow-students unanimously nominated Hughes, the only black boy in the class. Hughes wrote his first poem for the class graduation, and was so impressed by the applause he received that he wondered whether he had found his vocation. As Homer sought better career opportunities that never seemed to materialize, Hughes followed his mother and her new family to Cleveland, where he began contributing poems and stories to his high-school magazine. When his mother and his stepfather moved on again, to Chicago, Hughes stayed behind to finish high school, which he did in 1920. Although he was pretty much on his own from then on, his parents exercised a pull over him for as long as they lived. (“My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes’s Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926-1938,” edited by Carmaletta M. Williams and John Edgar Tidwell, is valuable testimony to Carrie’s never-ending attempts to manipulate her son.)

Open to Hughes was the great wide world, the adventure of travel, and those writers—Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman—who not only freed the young writer from traditional literary forms but showed him that he could sing his America, too. In 1921, he moved to New York to study at Columbia University, but what he fell in love with was the “Negro city”: Harlem. (He eventually dropped out of Columbia, and graduated from Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania, in 1929.) Before coming to New York, he had spent more than a year in patriarchal purgatory in Mexico; now he was “hungry” to be with his people. Exiting the subway at 135th Street, he said, “I stood there, dropped my bags, took a deep breath and felt happy again.”

Harlem in the twenties offered up a cultural richness that made everything seem possible. Jervis Anderson, writing in this magazine in 1981, noted, “Harlem has never been more high-spirited and engaging than it was during the nineteen-twenties. Blacks from all over America and the Caribbean were pouring in, reviving the migration that had abated toward the end of the war—word having reached them about the ‘city,’ in the heart of Manhattan, that blacks were making their own.” The headquarters for Du Bois’s magazine Crisis , to which Hughes had been contributing from Mexico, was there; so was Messenger , co-edited by the activist A. Philip Randolph. Soon Hughes found a new source of the kind of support that his grandmother had given him as a boy: a wealthy white woman named Charlotte Osgood Mason, who provided Hughes and other black artists, including Hurston, with financial backing, as long as they promoted blackness. (Despite the awkwardness of the arrangement, Hughes remained loyal to Mason—“I want to be your spirit child forever,” he wrote to her—and when he ceased to be a favorite, in 1930, he was devastated. That pain shows in his forced 1933 short story “Slave on the Block,” which he included in his passionate but ill-considered collection “The Ways of White Folks,” the following year.)

The charming Hughes also managed to melt the heart of the glacial Du Bois, who had lost a son, and counted Jessie Fauset, an editor at Crisis , and the poet Countee Cullen as champions of a sort. In 1923, Cullen introduced Hughes to Alain Locke, a gay Harvard-educated thinker, who published the influential anthology “The New Negro” in 1925. As one can intuit from “The Selected Letters,” the two embarked on a kind of cat-and-mouse game: Hughes needed Locke’s patronage, and, sensing the older man’s attraction to him, kept him at arm’s length to increase the mystery. Soon Hughes was a citizen of a bright black world that included Paul Robeson, who, in 1924, would star downtown in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Emperor Jones.” Putting his ear to the concrete, he heard poems like “Aesthete in Harlem,” which combined, within a short, intense form, the sound of the laughing and crying tom-tom he described in his 1926 Nation essay:

Strange, That in this nigger place I should meet life face to face; When, for years, I had been seeking Life in places gentler speaking— Before I came to this vile street And found Life—stepping on my feet!

The poem, like many of Hughes’s early lyrics, is both interesting and uninspiring. We admire him for the pre-spoken-word cadences and the energy of the enterprise, but without ever knowing who his “I” is we have no anchor in the poem. The ungrounded first-person voice allows Hughes to be humanity, but not a specific human.

Once the Depression put an end to all the champagne and sexy miscegenation of the Harlem Renaissance, the “niggerati” scattered to other gigs, some in other countries. Hughes travelled in Russia during the thirties, finding in Communism, at least for a time, the political hope that was missing in his own country, but he always returned to Harlem, even as the neighborhood suffered through race riots and the drug and civic wars of the fifties and sixties. It was his home until he died, in 1967—his ashes are now entombed in the lobby of the Langston Hughes Auditorium at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, in Harlem—visible evidence of all that Hughes’s father despised and he embraced, in what may very well have been the most unresolvable relationship of his life.

In 1961, twenty-seven years after James Hughes died, his son wrote a brief, intense tale called “Blessed Assurance.” Published posthumously, it begins:

Unfortunately (and to John’s distrust of God) it seemed his son was turning out to be a queer. He was a brilliant queer, on the Honor Roll in high school, and likely to be graduated in the spring at the head of the class. But the boy was colored. Since colored parents always like to put their best foot forward, John was more disturbed about his son’s transition than if they had been white. Negroes have enough crosses to bear.

When the boy sings a solo in the church choir and his voice soars, a male organist faints, and the boy’s father pleads for him to shut up. But the song goes on. What is natural to John’s son is the music, a world of sound which he can both hide behind and expose himself through.

In the final years of his life, Hughes did seem to see the tide turning. His last, and best, collection of poems, “The Panther and the Lash” (1967), reflects, with a haiku-like flatness and lift, a Vietnam-era world that was changing and needed to change. His poem “Corner Meeting”:

Ladder, flag, and amplifier now are what the soapbox used to be.

The speaker catches fire, Looking at listeners’ faces.

His words jump down to stand in their places.

Here Hughes writes with the force of a good journalist; he is no longer an abstract Negro everyman but a reporter weighing in on the heat and confusion of the time, without too much self-conscious hipster jive.

The novelist Paule Marshall recalls, in her 2009 memoir, “Triangular Road,” a 1965 government-sponsored tour of Europe on which she accompanied Hughes. It was during the heady days of the civil-rights movement. In Paris, a city that Hughes loved—“There you can be whatever you want to be. Totally yourself,” he said—Marshall noticed that when the subject of the movement came up Hughes let others do the talking. He knew what his own struggles had been, and he knew that the present struggle would lead to if not a different day then a different kind of day, one in which erasing lines from one’s own story might make less sense than just saying them. ♦

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By Maya Binyam

By Lauren Michele Jackson

Langston Hughes' Impact on the Harlem Renaissance

Hughes not only made his mark in this artistic movement by breaking boundaries with his poetry, he drew on international experiences, found kindred spirits amongst his fellow artists, took a stand for the possibilities of Black art and influenced how the Harlem Renaissance would be remembered.

Hughes stood up for Black artists

George Schuyler, the editor of a Black paper in Pittsburgh, wrote the article "The Negro-Art Hokum" for an edition of The Nation in June 1926.

The article discounted the existence of "Negro art," arguing that African-American artists shared European influences with their white counterparts, and were, therefore, producing the same kind of work. Spirituals and jazz, with their clear links to Black performers, were dismissed as folk art.

Invited to make a response, Hughes penned "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain." In it, he described Black artists rejecting their racial identity as "the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America." But he declared that instead of ignoring their identity, "We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual, dark-skinned selves without fear or shame."

This clarion call for the importance of pursuing art from a Black perspective was not only the philosophy behind much of Hughes' work, but it was also reflected throughout the Harlem Renaissance.

Some critics called Hughes' poems "low-rate"

Hughes broke new ground in poetry when he began to write verse that incorporated how Black people talked and the jazz and blues music they played. He led the way in harnessing the blues form in poetry with "The Weary Blues," which was written in 1923 and appeared in his 1926 collection The Weary Blues .

Hughes' next poetry collection — published in February 1927 under the controversial title Fine Clothes to the Jew — featured Black lives outside the educated upper and middle classes, including drunks and prostitutes.

A preponderance of Black critics objected to what they felt were negative characterizations of African Americans — many Black characters created by whites already consisted of caricatures and stereotypes, and these critics wanted to see positive depictions instead. Some were so incensed that they attacked Hughes in print, with one calling him "the poet low-rate of Harlem."

But Hughes believed in the worthiness of all Black people to appear in art, no matter their social status. He argued, "My poems are indelicate. But so is life." And though many of his contemporaries might not have seen the merits, the collection came to be viewed as one of Hughes' best. (The poet did end up agreeing that the title — a reference to selling clothes to Jewish pawnbrokers in hard times — was a bad choice.)

Hughes' travels helped give him different perspectives

Hughes came to Harlem in 1921, but was soon traveling the world as a sailor and taking different jobs across the globe. In fact, he spent more time outside Harlem than in it during the Harlem Renaissance.

His journeys, along with the fact that he'd lived in several different places as a child and had visited his father in Mexico, allowed Hughes to bring varied perspectives and approaches to the work he created.

In 1923, when the ship he was working on visited the west coast of Africa, Hughes, who described himself as having "copper-brown skin and straight black hair," had a member of the Kru tribe tell him he was a White man, not a Black one.

Hughes lived in Paris for part of 1924, where he eked out a living as a doorman and met Black jazz musicians. And in the fall of 1924, Hughes saw many white sailors get hired instead of him when he was desperate for a ship to take him home from Genoa, Italy. This led to his plaintive, powerful poem "I, Too," a meditation on the day that such unequal treatment would end.

Hughes and other young Black artists formed a support group

By 1925 Hughes was back in the United States, where he was greeted with acclaim. He was soon attending Lincoln University in Pennsylvania but returned to Harlem in the summer of 1926.

There, he and other young Harlem Renaissance artists like novelist Wallace Thurman, writer Zora Neale Hurston , artist Gwendolyn Bennett and painter Aaron Douglas formed a support group together.

Hughes was part of the group's decision to collaborate on Fire!! , a magazine intended for young Black artists like themselves. Instead of the limits on content they faced at more staid publications like the NAACP 's Crisis magazine, they aimed to tackle a broader, uncensored range of topics, including sex and race.

Unfortunately, the group only managed to put out a single issue of Fire!! . (And Hughes and Hurston had a falling out after a failed collaboration on a play called Mule Bone .) But by creating the magazine, Hughes and the others had still taken a stand for the kind of ideas they wanted to pursue going forward.

He continued to spread the word of the Harlem Renaissance long after it was over

In addition to what he wrote during the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes helped make the movement itself more well known. In 1931, he embarked on a tour to read his poetry across the South. His fee was ostensibly $50, but he would lower the amount, or forego it entirely, at places that couldn't afford it.

His tour and willingness to deliver free programs when necessary helped many get acquainted with the Harlem Renaissance.

And in his autobiography The Big Sea (1940), Hughes provided a firsthand account of the Harlem Renaissance in a section titled "Black Renaissance." His descriptions of the people, art and goings-on would influence how the movement was understood and remembered.

Hughes even played a part in shifting the name for the era from "Negro Renaissance" to "Harlem Renaissance," as his book was one of the first to use the latter term.

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• Biographies

Langston Hughes Biography: Poet, Writer, and Harlem Renaissance Icon

Langston hughes: biography of a literary icon.

In the annals of American literature, few names shine as brightly as Langston Hughes. His life’s narrative weaves through the poetic tapestry of the Harlem Renaissance, his words resonating through generations and his actions echoing the call for social justice. This article takes you on a journey through the life and times of Langston Hughes, a prolific poet , a visionary novelist, and an unyielding advocate for change.

Langston Hughes emerged as a luminary of American literature, etching his name in the chronicles of creativity with an indelible pen. His profound contributions to poetry, fiction, and his unwavering commitment to social activism have left an indomitable mark on the American cultural landscape.

In the pages that follow, we delve into the early chapters of Hughes’ life, tracing the roots of his inspiration, his formative years, and the circumstances that birthed a literary genius. We navigate through the intricate web of his literary career, exploring his celebrated works and their enduring relevance. Moreover, we journey alongside Hughes as he actively engaged in the tumultuous tides of social change, carving his name as a harbinger of civil rights.

This biography strives to uncover the multifaceted layers of Langston Hughes – the poet who ignited imaginations, the novelist who painted vivid narratives, and the activist who championed equality. As we unravel the tapestry of his life, we uncover the profound impact of his words on the Harlem Renaissance and his enduring legacy as a trailblazer in American literature.

Join us in this exploration of Langston Hughes’ life, and be prepared to embark on a voyage through the pages of history, where literature meets activism, and brilliance knows no bounds.

What is the name of Langston Hughes most famous short story?

Langston Hughes is renowned for his impactful contributions to American literature,

particularly in the realm of poetry and prose. While he is widely celebrated for his poetry, his most famous short story is arguably “Salvation.” This poignant narrative is found within his autobiographical essay titled “Salvation” from his collection “The Big Sea,” published in 1940.

In “Salvation,” Hughes recounts a transformative childhood experience he had during a church revival. At the age of twelve, he attended a revivalist meeting with the anticipation of a profound spiritual encounter. The pressure to conform to the congregation’s expectations, particularly from his family, weighed heavily on young Hughes. As the revival reached its climax, Hughes described feeling immense pressure to have a religious experience and see Jesus.

However, when he didn’t experience the anticipated spiritual epiphany, Hughes felt profound disappointment, guilt, and even shame. He explained his predicament as a clash between his own authentic feelings and the external expectations placed upon him. Hughes vividly portrayed the internal struggle of a young boy who grapples with his faith, the influence of society, and the weight of expectations.

“Salvation” remains significant not only for its literary merits but also for its exploration of themes such as identity, societal pressures, and the complexities of faith. Hughes’ ability to depict the inner turmoil of a child in a deeply religious and racially segregated society offers readers a powerful insight into the struggles of African Americans during that era.

This short story stands as a testament to Hughes’ skill in capturing the nuances of the human experience and remains an enduring piece of American literature.

What is unique about Langston Hughes style of writing?

Langston Hughes is celebrated for his unique and influential style of writing, which distinguishes him as a prominent figure in American literature. Several aspects make his writing style distinctive and noteworthy:

• Incorporation of Jazz and Blues: Hughes’ poetry often reflects the rhythms, improvisation, and emotional depth of jazz and blues music. He was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement that embraced the vibrancy of African American culture, and his writing echoed the musical traditions of the time. Hughes’ use of syncopated rhythms, repetition, and colloquial language in his poems created a sense of musicality that resonated with readers.
• Authentic Voice of Black America: Hughes’ work authentically captured the voices and experiences of African Americans, particularly those living in urban environments. His poems and stories addressed the challenges, dreams, and aspirations of black people, making his writing a powerful representation of the African American experience during the early 20th century.
• Simple and Accessible Language: Hughes believed in making literature accessible to a broad audience. He used straightforward and everyday language in his works, avoiding overly complex or abstract writing. This accessibility allowed readers from diverse backgrounds to engage with his poetry and prose.
• Social and Political Themes: Hughes’ writing was deeply rooted in social and political issues, especially themes of racial equality, social justice, and the struggles of African Americans. He used his writing as a means of advocacy and empowerment, shedding light on the inequities and prejudices faced by black individuals in America.
• Use of Imagery and Symbolism: Hughes’ poetry often employed vivid imagery and symbolism drawn from both everyday life and African American cultural traditions. He used these elements to convey powerful messages and evoke emotions in his readers. For example, his poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” uses the symbolism of rivers to connect the history and heritage of black people.
• Versatility: Hughes demonstrated versatility in his writing, producing poetry, short stories, essays, plays, and even children’s literature. This wide range of genres allowed him to address a variety of themes and issues, making his work accessible to diverse audiences.
• Celebration of Black Identity: Throughout his writing, Hughes celebrated black identity and culture, countering prevailing stereotypes and negative portrayals of African Americans. His works often emphasized the beauty, resilience, and contributions of black individuals to American society.

In summary, Langston Hughes’ unique writing style is characterized by its musicality, accessibility, authenticity, and its unwavering commitment to addressing social and racial issues. His contributions to American literature continue to be celebrated for their impact and relevance in both literary and cultural contexts.

Personal and Professional Details

Nurturing brilliance: langston hughes’ early life and background.

Langston Hughes, a literary luminary, was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri, a town etched into the tapestry of his life. His birthplace, though rooted in the American Midwest, played a pivotal role in shaping his identity as a prominent figure of the Harlem Renaissance.

The young Langston experienced a childhood marked by turbulence and familial challenges. His parents, James Nathaniel Hughes and Carrie Mercer Langston, separated when he was just a young child. This rupture in his family life cast a shadow, and his mother’s decision to move to Lawrence, Kansas, further compounded the complexity of his early years.

In Lawrence, Langston Hughes was nurtured by his maternal grandmother, Mary Langston, a formidable figure who instilled in him a love for literature and art. It was within the walls of her home that he was first introduced to the world of books, an introduction that would fuel his insatiable appetite for reading and writing. These early encounters with literature, combined with the rich oral storytelling traditions of African American culture, laid the foundation for his future literary endeavors.

As Hughes grew, he encountered the harsh realities of racial prejudice and discrimination, experiences that would profoundly impact his worldview and his literary works. His educational journey took him to several schools, including a brief stay at Columbia University. However, he struggled to find his academic footing, and the siren call of Harlem beckoned him to a vibrant world of artistic expression.

Langston Hughes’ early life and background, marked by a potent mix of familial challenges, literary inspiration, and racial awareness, set the stage for his remarkable journey as a writer, poet, and social advocate. It was a journey that would ultimately transform him into an icon of American literature and civil rights.

Resonating Words: Langston Hughes’ Literary Career and Iconic Works

Langston Hughes’ journey into the realm of literature and poetry was an odyssey sparked by the fiery spirit of the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural and artistic movement that ignited like a beacon during the 1920s. Embracing the vivid pulse of Harlem, Hughes became one of its most prominent voices, leaving an indelible mark on American literature.

In the hallowed streets of New York’s Harlem, Hughes found a canvas for his artistic expression. His initial foray into writing came in the form of poems and essays that captured the essence of African American life, infusing it with a blend of realism and hope. His debut collection, “The Weary Blues” (1926), was a poetic masterpiece that melded the rhythms of blues and jazz with the everyday experiences of Black individuals.

Hughes’ writing was marked by its accessibility and its ability to speak directly to the hearts of his readers. His words painted pictures of resilience, pride, and the longing for a better tomorrow. In works like “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and “Harlem,” he delved into the rich history and aspirations of his people, weaving together their struggles and dreams with eloquent verse.

Apart from his poetry, Hughes penned poignant short stories and essays that continued to amplify the themes of identity, race, and social justice. “Not Without Laughter” (1930), his first novel, was a literary gem that explored the challenges faced by a young African American boy in a racially divided society.

Hughes’ ability to capture the soul of the African American experience was not limited to his pen alone; he was a prolific essayist and playwright, using these platforms to advocate for social change and challenge the status quo. His impact was not confined to literature; it extended to the broader struggle for civil rights and equality.

As a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes’ contributions to American literature and culture were immeasurable. Through his evocative words, he became a beacon of hope, resilience, and pride for generations of African Americans and readers worldwide.

Sowing the Seeds of Justice: Langston Hughes’ Social Activism

Langston Hughes’ impact extended far beyond the written word; it resonated through his unrelenting commitment to social and political activism. As a passionate advocate for civil rights and social justice, Hughes was not content to merely observe the struggles of his time; he actively engaged in the fight for equality and justice.

Hughes’ involvement in social activism began at an early age. Growing up in a racially segregated America, he witnessed firsthand the injustices suffered by African Americans. These experiences lit a fire within him, sparking a lifelong dedication to addressing these inequities through his art and activism.

During the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes used his literary platform to amplify the voices of African Americans and shed light on the issues they faced. His poetry, essays, and articles tackled subjects such as racial discrimination, segregation, and the socioeconomic challenges of Black communities. One of his most iconic poems, “Let America Be America Again,” resonated with its call for equality and justice, echoing the aspirations of marginalized communities.

Hughes’ commitment to social justice went beyond his pen; he was an active participant in the Civil Rights Movement. He used his influence to support the cause, attending rallies, marches, and protests alongside other civil rights leaders. His powerful poem “Ballad of Roosevelt” was a direct response to the racism faced by African American soldiers during World War II, shedding light on the hypocrisy of fighting for freedom abroad while facing discrimination at home.

Furthermore, Hughes’ involvement in international activism was notable. He traveled extensively, using his experiences to draw parallels between the struggles of African Americans and oppressed people worldwide. His work as a journalist during the Spanish Civil War and his visits to the Soviet Union allowed him to witness various forms of societal change and inspired his commitment to social justice.

Langston Hughes’ legacy is a testament to the power of art and activism to effect change. Through his relentless pursuit of civil rights and social justice, he paved the way for future generations of activists, leaving an enduring mark on the fight for equality and human rights. His life’s work stands as a reminder that words, when wielded with purpose, can be a catalyst for transformative change.

Langston Hughes: An Enduring Literary Legacy

Langston Hughes’ impact on American literature is immeasurable, and his legacy continues to thrive long after his passing. As one of the most influential figures of the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes left an indelible mark on the literary landscape, inspiring countless writers, poets, and activists to follow in his footsteps.

One of Hughes’ most significant contributions was his ability to capture the essence of Black life in America. Through his poetry, short stories, and essays, he painted vivid pictures of the African American experience, shedding light on both the joys and struggles of Black communities. His work resonated deeply with readers of all backgrounds, forging connections and fostering understanding during a time of racial tension and segregation.

Hughes’ poetry, in particular, is celebrated for its accessibility and emotional depth. His poems often addressed universal themes such as dreams, aspirations, and the human condition, making them relatable to a wide audience. His collection “The Weary Blues” earned him critical acclaim and marked the beginning of a prolific career that would span decades.

The impact of Langston Hughes extends far beyond his writing. His unwavering commitment to civil rights and social justice laid the foundation for future generations of activists. He used his literary prowess to advocate for equality, making him a beacon of hope during the Civil Rights Movement. His poems, such as “I, Too, Sing America,” served as anthems of resistance, inspiring change and challenging the status quo.

Hughes’ influence can be seen in the work of numerous writers and poets who followed in his footsteps. His commitment to representing the African American experience authentically paved the way for writers like Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker, who continued to amplify Black voices in literature.

Throughout his lifetime, Hughes received numerous awards and honors, including the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for lifetime achievement. These accolades recognized not only his literary excellence but also his tireless efforts to champion civil rights and social justice.

Langston Hughes’ legacy as a literary luminary and social activist remains undeniably significant. His words continue to resonate with readers of all backgrounds, and his impact on American literature and the fight for equality endures as a testament to the power of art to effect change. Hughes’ work reminds us that literature has the capacity to illuminate the human experience and serve as a catalyst for social progress.

Langston Hughes: The Man Behind the Words

Langston Hughes, celebrated poet and activist, led a life as rich and diverse as the themes he explored in his works. Beyond the ink and paper, his personal life was marked by fascinating relationships, unique experiences, and a tireless commitment to his craft and ideals.

Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1902. His parents’ separation when he was a child had a profound impact on him, sparking a sense of displacement that would become a recurring theme in his writing. Raised primarily by his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas, Hughes found solace in literature and began to develop his passion for poetry.

As he pursued higher education, Hughes encountered both discrimination and encouragement. He attended Columbia University briefly but left due to racial prejudice. His experiences there and his travels to various countries, including Mexico and France, broadened his horizons and deepened his appreciation for the global Black experience.

Hughes’ personal life was characterized by a network of relationships that fueled his creativity. His close friendship with Zora Neale Hurston, another prominent figure of the Harlem Renaissance, resulted in collaborative works that celebrated African American culture. He also formed a lifelong bond with Carl Van Vechten, a white photographer and patron of the arts, who supported his career and introduced him to influential figures in the literary world.

Throughout his life, Hughes maintained both romantic and platonic relationships with people of various backgrounds. His exploration of love, identity, and desire can be seen in his poetry and fiction. However, Hughes was discreet about his private life, and the specifics of his romantic relationships remain a subject of historical curiosity and speculation.

Langston Hughes’ extensive travels, including his years living in Harlem during the cultural and artistic explosion of the Harlem Renaissance, profoundly influenced his work. The vibrancy of this era, coupled with his interactions with fellow writers, musicians, and intellectuals, informed his poetry and prose, creating a body of work that continues to resonate with readers today.

In conclusion, Langston Hughes’ personal life was marked by the same dynamism and diversity that characterized his literary contributions. His relationships, travels, and unique experiences all played a role in shaping his perspective and enriching his creative endeavors. Langston Hughes, the man behind the words, remains an enduring figure in American literature and history.

In the tapestry of American literature and civil rights, Langston Hughes emerges as a luminary figure whose brilliance continues to shine through the corridors of history. His life was a symphony of words and actions, a testament to the power of poetry and social activism. As we trace the contours of his remarkable journey, we find a man whose legacy transcends the confines of time.

Langston Hughes’ early life, shaped by the intricacies of racial identity and a relentless passion for literature, sowed the seeds of his groundbreaking work. Born in Joplin, Missouri, his odyssey through different places and experiences enriched his perspective, painting the canvas of his words with vibrant strokes of universal truth.

Throughout his career, Hughes wore many hats – poet, essayist, novelist, playwright – each one adding a layer of depth to his literary tapestry. His words were a clarion call for equality and justice, resonating with the rhythm of a generation’s hopes and aspirations. His connection with the Harlem Renaissance marked a pivotal moment in his life, and his collaborations with other luminaries such as Zora Neale Hurston and Carl Van Vechten bore testament to the synergy of artistic souls.

But Hughes was not just a poet of words; he was a poet of the people. His commitment to civil rights was unwavering, and his writings became a powerful tool in the fight for racial equality. His travels, friendships, and loves all found expression in his verses, adding a human dimension to his work that endeared him to countless readers.

Today, Langston Hughes’ legacy lives on, an eternal flame illuminating the path of those who dare to dream and hope for a better world. His words continue to inspire, challenging us to confront the inequities of our time and champion the cause of justice. In the annals of American culture, Langston Hughes stands as an indomitable force, reminding us that literature, when infused with purpose, can change the world.

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Langston Hughes FAQs

Who was langston hughes.

Langston Hughes was a prominent American poet, writer, and social activist known for his contributions to the Harlem Renaissance and his impactful writings on racial and social issues.

What is Langston Hughes most famous for?

Langston Hughes is most famous for his poetry and essays, particularly for poems like "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and his role in the Harlem Renaissance.

What is the Harlem Renaissance, and how was Langston Hughes involved?

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement celebrating African American culture in the 1920s. Langston Hughes was a central figure, known for his poetry and writings that captured the spirit of this movement.

What is Langston Hughes' writing style characterized by?

Langston Hughes' writing style is characterized by the use of jazz and blues rhythms in his poetry, accessible language, and a focus on social and racial themes.

What are some of Langston Hughes' famous works?

Some of his famous works include "The Weary Blues" (a poetry collection), "The Ways of White Folks" (a short story collection), and "Montage of a Dream Deferred" (a poetry collection).

Was Langston Hughes involved in the Civil Rights Movement?

Yes, Langston Hughes was actively involved in the Civil Rights Movement, using his writing to advocate for racial equality and social justice.

What awards and honors did Langston Hughes receive during his lifetime?

Langston Hughes received the NAACP Spingarn Medal in 1960 for his outstanding achievements as a writer and his contributions to civil rights.

Where did Langston Hughes grow up?

He grew up in various locations, including Joplin, Missouri, and Cleveland, Ohio.

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Langston Hughes papers

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Scope and Contents

The career of James Langston Hughes spanned five decades. He wrote poetry, short stories, plays, newspaper columns, children's books, and pictorial histories. He also edited several volumes of prose and fiction by Afro-American and African writers. Through his writing and through his extensive travels and lecture tours he came into direct contact with an amazing array of writers, artists, activists, and performers. The papers span the years 1862-1980. The papers are housed in 643 boxes and are arranged in 22 series: Personal Correspondence , Professional Correspondence , Family Correspondence , Third Party Correspondence , General Writings , Poems , Song Lyrics , Newspaper Columns , Translations by Langston Hughes , Printed Appearances of Hughes's Writings , Writings of Others , Photographs , Public Appearances , Personal Papers , Family Papers , Financial and Legal Papers , Printed Ephemera , Clippings , Periodicals and Pamphlets collected by Hughes , Materials Removed from Printed Items , World Festival of Negro Arts [Dakar] , and Graphic Materials , Oversize materials are stored in boxes 588-638. Series I-IV list the varied types of correspondence in the Hughes papers: Personal Correspondence , Professional Correspondence , Family Correspondence , and Third Party Correspondence . Though these subdivisions indicate the broad nature of the material, there are several characteristics germane to the correspondence as a whole. Because the letters were sorted in Hughes's possession before coming to Yale, and then rearranged several times during the 1970s, it is difficult to trace any true "original arrangement". However, certain categories of letters seem to have been created by Hughes and were respected by earlier Yale catalogers. During the current processing project, efforts were made to keep like items together (if any sense of original order was present), and at the same time, archival principles were applied to make the material fit an intellectual arrangement that would aid researchers. Names have been checked against Library of Congress authority records (while some variants have been kept in parentheses); unidentified letters have been checked against obvious possible matches; some groups of letters have been kept together because they were determined to be most valuable kept that way (instead of being broken up and filed individually); groups of letters listed by genre have appended notes indicating significant correspondents present. Drafts of letters by Hughes, formerly segregated into a subsection (under "Hughes") have been interfiled into the folders of the party addressed. Several folders of original letters from Hughes which were acquired over the years from other parties have been removed and will be cataloged in a separate Hughes collection, per standard library practice. Researchers familiar with older versions of this finding aid will find that many names have been added, as letters were taken from "letter general" folders and listed separately. A few names may be missing, due to efforts to regularize authoritative names of correspondents. (These should match Library of Congress forms, which provide cross-references.) Series I, Personal Correspondence , contains the bulk of the letters received by Hughes during his lifetime. They include early items, from childhood friends and classmates, and continue to the end of his life, including letters postmarked the day he died, May 22, 1967. A wide variety of people is represented here, fellow writers; artists; editors; musicians and composers; politicians, and activists such as: Arna Bontemps; Gwendolyn Brooks; Margaret Bonds; Owen Dodson; Jessie Fauset; Dorothy Peterson; Amy Spingarn; and Carl Van Vechten. Hughes took much interest in the careers of younger African-American, African, Caribbean, and Central American writers such as: Leroi Jones; Ted Joans, and Alice Walker. His involvement with writers' groups, civil rights committees, and church organizations is also evident. Publishers and publications with which Hughes had long-term relationships are listed here. (Other publishers are listed in Series II.) Correspondence with colleges and universities is present here. Schools with which Hughes had a long-term or more involved relationship are listed in individual folders, while briefer, or uncompleted arrangements are housed within "letter general" folders. The same rule applies to civic groups for which Hughes lectured; many are listed individually, while others are to be found in "letter general" folders. While the majority of fan mail is listed in Series II, groups of letters from fans who became friends of Hughes over time are listed here. The other sections of this series are: Groups, which comprises letters concerning Hughes' 1931-32 lecture tour and letters of introduction for his 1931 trip to Haiti; Drafts, which consists of letters written in shorthand by a secretary, drafts of telegrams, templates for form letters sent by Hughes (such as answers to aspiring writers); and Christmas cards made by or for Hughes. The final materials in Series I are boxes of greeting cards and invitations, which provide snapshots of Hughes's social life and circle from the 1930s through the 1960s. Series II, Professional Correspondence , contains four subseries of correspondence. Letters in the first subseries, Minor Publishers, Publications, and Agents share the characteristic of being from entities that either courted Hughes to no avail, or only published one or two items by him. Fan Mail relates to published works by Hughes (including many in response to his syndicated columns), general letters from fans, or from special categories of readers, such as members of the armed forces, prisoners, and students. The Foreign Mail subsection is a mixture of many things, in part because it was categorized as such when it was received by the library. The meaning of "foreign" can be: from a foreign writer living in a foreign country; from an American writer living in a foreign country; letters in a non-English language (no matter where they were posted); or concerning a foreign subject (such as a translation of a work by Hughes). This subseries was analyzed and any significant letters have been moved to Series I, where they have been filed individually (such as with several prominent African writers). What remains, then, is a mixture of fan mail and minor publisher correspondence. The final subseries contains Form Letters. These are generic mailings of informative flyers, solicitations, or newsletters. Many of the organizations listed in Series I can also be found here. The difference between the two, to use an example, is this: letters to and from Hughes as a member of The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) concerning particular issues and business are found in Series I; newsletters and general announcements of events are found in Form Letters in Series II. Series III, Family Correspondence , contains letters to and from Hughes to his relatives as well as exchanges between other family members. Letters are present from his mother, Carolyn Clark, his brother, Gwyn Clark, and his father, James Hughes. One other group of materials present is several folders of sympathy letters sent to his family following Hughes's death. (Letters from Toy and Emerson Harper, who were not in reality his biological "aunt" and "uncle" are filed in Series I.) Series IV, Third Party Correspondence , consists of various letters between Hughes's friends and acquaintances. The majority of these were likely pulled from incoming letters to Hughes during an earlier processing project. Groups of letters, probably given to Hughes by the recipients, include letters relating to "The Poetry of the Negro", addressed to Arna Bontemps; letters to Hughes's agent, Maxim Lieber; and letters to his speaking tour arranger, W. Colston Leigh. Series V, General Writings , contains works by Hughes exclusive of poems and song lyrics, which are organized in Series VI and VII. (However, manuscripts of book-length collections of poems are found here.) This series is organized into two subseries. The first, Works by Title, is an alphabetical listing of the major works by Hughes, spanning plays, short stories, autobiographical writings, criticism, reportage, stage shows, anthologies, collection of black folklore, humor, and radio and television skits. There is material intended for a wide audience; children and adults; black and white. Some of Hughes's most well known works are present in several draft stages. The second subseries, Short Works by Subject, gathers together various works around themes. Among the items found here are reviews (of books, films, film scenarios, and plays), introductions to books, record album liner notes, short story notes, short pieces (recommendations, statements and tributes about books, events and topics, and people). At the end of this subsection are several folders of notes and fragments. It should be noted that some early writings by Hughes are not present in manuscript form (such as drafts of most of the stories that comprise "Ways of White Folks") in Series V. These were most likely not saved, or given to friends or other libraries with manuscript collections of African-American authors. As well, many typescripts have generally been described as "drafts" though they may well simply be copies made at a later date for presentation to readers. Series VI, Poems , contains a great number of verses written by Hughes and is organized into Single Poems and Groups, which are both arranged alphabetically by title. Groups of poems are gatherings done either by Hughes under a title (e.g. "Blues and Dixieland Poems") or for a specific project (e.g. "Poems read by Langston Hughes at Carver Program"). (Book-length collections of poems are found in Series V. General Writings ). The last section of Groups is made up of translations, arranged alphabetically by language. Versions of most of Hughes best-known poems are included here, many in holograph and typewritten versions. Series VII, Song Lyrics , contains texts which Hughes intended to be set to music. (Many items, however, began life as poems, but were later revised to be set to music. Therefore, there is a certain amount of duplication of titles between this series and Series VI, Poems.) Hughes wrote in a wide range of idioms: Jazz, Blues, Gospel, and Popular Song. A few of his songs gained wide popularity, mainly those written for stageshows, which got the widest exposure, and remained in repertoire. The first section of this series consists of Single Lyrics, which are arranged alphabetically by title. The second section is made up of Groups of lyrics, which were gathered together by title (e.g. Tambourines to Glory) and by theme (e.g. Life is Fine (Four Bawling Ballads)). Where known, the name of the musical composer has been listed. Descriptions of musical settings have been written in accordance to musical cataloging standards in use at the Yale Music Library. Many titles, then, appear in parallel listings, with separate entries for song lyrics and for musical settings (indicated by the addition of the qualifier "music" after the title). In this latter category, there also exist several pieces which appear as music only (i.e. no extant lyrics). The Beinecke Library also owns printed sheet music for many of Hughes's songs (many donated by Hughes). These have been cataloged separately as printed items. Many of Hughes musical projects were for complete shows. The most well-known venture was with Kurt Weill, for the 1947 musical "Street Scene", from which came the hit parade song "Moon-faced, Starry-eyed" and the jazz standard, "Lonely House" (also known as "Lonely Home"). Hughes had two more musicals on Broadway: "Simply Heavenly" (based on his Simple stories) in 1957; and "Tambourines to Glory" in 1963, both of which included original songs. While the songs for these shows are found here, manuscripts of the books for these are in Series V, General Writings . (Texts for longer classical works, such as the cantata "The Glory Around His Head," are also found in Series V, as are all materials for "Black Nativity," since Hughes used traditional spirituals and created a play around them.) Series VIII, Newspaper Columns , contains drafts and printed versions of the majority of the weekly columns Hughes wrote for the Chicago Defender and the New York Post between 1942-1966. Reprints in several other newspapers are also included. While the columns are best known for the ongoing tale of Jesse B. Semple (i.e. "Simple"), they also comment on social and political issues of the period. Several original clippings from the late 1940s were docketed as evidence in a Chicago court case concerning the origin of the term "Daddy-o". Examples of these can be found in folder 9200a. NOTE: Due to their highly embrittled condition, printed columns have been photocopied onto acid-free paper for research use. Originals have been stored separately. Series IX, Translations by Langston Hughes , gathers various works translated by Hughes from works by other authors. Many of these are Spanish and French language writers, including: Federico Garcia Lorca ("Fate at the Wedding" and "Gypsy Ballads"); Nicolas Guillèn ("Cuba Libre"); Gabriela Mistral ("Selected Poems"); and Jacques Roumain ("Masters of the Dew"). Series X, Printed Appearances of Hughes's Writings , compiles various published works by Hughes. While printed books are cataloged separately, it is general Beinecke practice to include items clipped from magazines as part of general writings series. However, because these materials from Hughes's papers had been stored separately for years, a decision was made not to interfile them. They have been arranged to mirror the organization of preceding series. This series represents a fair example of printed appearances of Hughes's works, but is, by no means, complete. Series XI, Writings of Others , is organized into two subseries. The first contains Writings of Others about Langston Hughes, such as critical essays, poems in homage, biographical sketches, and drafts of theses. The second subseries contains General Writings by a wide range of writers, including friends of Hughes, fans, and students. Most materials in this subseries have been identified only by material type [e.g. "poem" or "play"]. Titles of works have been given for well-known writers [e.g. Alice Walker]. Series XII, Photographs , consists of 12 subseries. The first subseries contains Candid Portraits and Snapshots of Langston Hughes, The following subseries, Photographers' Portraits of Langston Hughes, features works by such artists as James Allen, Richard Avedon, Gordon Parks, Irving Penn, and Edward Weston. The third subseries is a folder of photographs showing Langston Hughes in Paintings and Sculpture. Images of Hughes's family can be found in the next subseries. The bulk of material in this series is found in the fifth subseries, Langston Hughes Chronology, which traces Hughes's life from 1902 through 1967, recording friends, school years, trips, lectures, and appearances. These images were received from Hughes's estate, but were originally filed among general images in the James Weldon Johnson Collection. They were reunited with Hughes's papers and arranged chronologically. Among the best-documented periods are Hughes's trips to Cuba and Haiti in 1931, his trip to the Soviet Union in 1932-33 (which includes many official news agency photos), the Spanish Civil War, and his European trips of the 1960s. A wide selection of photographs of People and Groups of People follow in the next subseries. Next are Productions of Works by Hughes, such as "Black Nativity," "Don't You Want to Be Free," and "Prodigal Son". Art Photographs contains works by Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Griffith Davis, Roy De Carava, and Marian Palfi, among others. The remaining subseries are: Artworks (photographs documenting art in other media); Places; and Other Subjects (such as exhibitions about Hughes). Series XIII, Public Appearances , is a chronological gathering of materials that document Hughes's frequent lectures and speaking engagements. As noted in Processing Notes, this series was arranged sometime in the past and contains materials that might otherwise have been classed in other series, but was kept in the existing order becasue of its value to researchers. This series, then, is not complete and many other items documenting Hughes's public appearances can also be found in most of the other series. Series XIV, Personal Papers , is organized into 17 subseries which provide an eclectic view into Hughes's life. The subseries are arranged alphabetically and are: Addresses (on cards, in books and on lists); Bibliographical Material (which serve to document Hughes's publishing history); Engagement Books and Calendars; Journals (mostly from his early life, ca. 1920s-30s); Lists of Miscellaneous Subjects; Memos (which are principally jotted notes and desk reminders, but also include some other types of items, mainly from the 1920s and 1930s); Music Material; Notebooks; Notes (which appear to not be related directly to any specific work by Hughes); Objects (including a fraternity hat, a cigarette case from Carl Van Vechten, and a tambourine used in "Tambourines to Glory"); Project Files (mainly concerning committees and organizations); School Materials (documenting Hughes's education); Scrapbooks; Teaching Materials (Hughes as instructor); Transcripts of Interviews and Roundtables; Travel Documents; and Other Papers (such as an advertisement of Hughes for Smirnoff Vodka, membership and identity cards, rent party cards, and Hughes's will). Series XV, Family Papers , is divided into 15 subseries, for members of Hughes's family, including Clark, Hughes, Langston, Miller and some general items. Material documenting his mother, Carolyn Clark, and father, James N. Hughes, include a marriage certificate, diaries, passports, and a will. Included here is a "baby letter" written by Langston Hughes to his aunt Carolyn Battle, ca. 1907, and a note regarding genealogy. Series XVI, Financial and Legal Papers , is organized into 14 subseries for types of records: Checking accounts; Contracts; Copyright and Publication Registrations; Employee Records (persons working for Hughes); Expense Records (for shipping archives to Yale University); Financial Memos; Income Statements; Income Tax; Insurance; Invoices and Royalty Statements; Legal Documents; Loans; Receipts; and Stock. Series XVII, Printed Ephemera , gathers together items such as theater programs, advertising cards, and flyers and is organized into 3 subseries. The first two are: About Langston Hughes (separated into general mentions and appearances); and About Hughes's Works. The last subseries concerns General Subjects, such as African topics, black subjects, humanitarian committees, newsletters and bulletins, performances (works not by Hughes), and publication announcements (also works not by Hughes). Series XVIII, Clippings , follows the arrangement of Printed Ephemera , but includes several more subseries, totaling seven. In the subseries About Langston Hughes, general mentions and appearances are interfiled. A small group of Specific Topics involving Hughes follows. The next subseries is About Hughes's Works. The fourth subseries is about People, followed by General Arts ands General Subjects. The final subseries consists of Clippings from Isabella Brown. Brown, a long-time fan, whose many letters can be found in Series I, Personal Correspondence , sent Hughes hundreds of clippings and collages between 1950 and 1967, incorporating advertising and comic book images. Series XIX, Periodicals and Pamphlets collected by Hughes , consists of issues of magazines which were not cataloged separately. These were retained in the archive to provide a snapshot of some of Hughes's reading interests. Series XX, Materials Removed from Printed Items , is made up of items (such as publishers' cards) that were formerly inserted into printed works that have been cataloged separately. Series XXI, World Festival of Negro Arts [Dakar] , is an assortment of printed material collected by Hughes concerning this event, including official committee records and transcripts of speeches. Series XXII, Graphic Materials , gathers together in nine subseries various image materials collected by Hughes. Among the Artwork Originals are works by such artists as Roy De Carava, Ted Joans, and Prentiss Taylor. Artworks by Langston Hughes are mainly pencil sketches and block cut prints. Images of Langston Hughes contains a painting by Amy Spingarn as well as various printed images of Hughes. Following a group of correspondence cards from the Spanish Civil War is a collection of Images of Famous Figures in African-American History, which were likely used in either Famous American Negroes or Pictorial History of the Negro in America . Two boxes of postcards record Hughes's travels around the world and also contain a group of humorous images of African Americans collected by Hughes. Many of the Posters are for productions of plays by Hughes or for appearances by Hughes, but also include boxing and bullfighting posters from Mexico and a series of posters for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, among others. The final two subseries are groups of printed images, mainly of people, and several printing blocks. Oversize material is housed in boxes 588-638 and contains items from Series V, VI, VII, X, XII, XIV, XV, XVII, XVIII, and XXII. Restricted Fragile Papers (boxes x-xx) contains fragile originals for which preservation photocopies have been made for reference use and filed in the regular series run.

• Hughes, Langston, 1902-1967

Conditions Governing Access

The materials are open for research. Boxes 639-667 and items in cold storage (including box 669): Restricted fragile material. Reference surrogates have been substituted in the main files. For further information consult the appropriate curator.

Existence and Location of Copies

Microfilm for several items available. Consult Public Services desk.

Conditions Governing Use

The Langston Hughes Papers are the physical property of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns. For further information, consult the appropriate curator.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift of Langston Hughes and bequest of the estate of Langston Hughes, ca. 1940-1967, with additions from other sources, ca. 1940-1980.

305 Linear Feet ((673 boxes) + 1 art, 11 broadside)

Language of Materials

Catalog record.

A record for this collection is available in Orbis, the Yale University Library catalog

Persistent URL

https://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/beinecke.hughes

Additional Description

The Langston Hughes Papers contain letters, manuscripts, personal items, photographs, clippings, artworks, and objects that document the life of the well-known African-American poet.

LANGSTON HUGHES (1902-1967)

The Life of Langston Hughes has been written about in a wide range of biographies, which are available at many libraries. What follows is a brief timeline of important dates in his life. 1902: James Langston Hughes born February 1, in Joplin, Missouri, to Carrie Langston Hughes and James Nathaniel Hughes. 1902-1914: Lived in Mexico, Missouri, and Kansas for short periods with his mother and father, then, after they separated, with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas. 1914: Moved from Lawrence to join his mother and stepfather in Lincoln, Illinois. 1916: Elected class poet for grammar school graduation at Lincoln. Moved from Lincoln to Cleveland, Ohio. 1920: Chosen editor of Central High School Yearbook, Cleveland. Graduated from Central High School. Spent the year after graduation in Mexico with his father. 1921: Published juvenile poetry in The Brownie's Book. "A Negro Speaks of Rivers" published in The Crisis. Entered Columbia University in New York. 1922: Left Columbia to take assorted jobs in New York area. 1923-24: Employed as cook's helper on tramp steamer to Africa, Holland, and Europe. Employed as cook in Paris night club; stranded as a beachcomber in Genoa. Returned from Europe to live with his mother in Washington, D.C. 1925: Lived in Washington, D.C. Won first prize for poetry in Opportunity contest. Won second prize for essay and third prize for poetry in The Crisis contest. Carl Van Vechten introduced his poetry to Alfred Knopf. 1926: Entered Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Weary Blues published. Fire published. Won first prize in Witter Bynner Undergraduate Poetry Contest. 1927: Fine Clothes to the Jew published. Traveled in South. 1929: Graduated from Lincoln University. 1930: Not Without Laughter published. Won Harmon award for literature. 1931: Dear Lovely Death and The Negro Mother published. Traveled to Haiti and Cuba. Conducted poetry reading tour in the South and West. 1932: The Dream Keeper , Scottsboro Limited , and Popo and Fifina published. 1933: Returned to California from Russia by way of Japan. Spent year writing at Carmel by the Sea. 1934: Ways of White Folks published. Death of father in Mexico. 1935: Received Guggenheim Fellowship. Lived and worked in Mexico. 1937: Traveled to Spain as correspondent for Baltimore Afro- American . Death of mother. 1938: A New Song published. Founded Harlem Suitcase Theatre. 1939: Founded The New Negro Theater in Los Angeles. 1940: The Big Sea published. 1941: Received Rosenwald Fellowship. 1942: Shakespeare in Harlem published. Founded Skyloft P1ayers in Chicago. 1943: Freedom's Plow and Jim Crow's Last Stand published. Began Chicago Defender columns. Granted Hon. Litt. D. from Lincoln University. 1946: Elected to membership in National Institute of Arts and Letters. 1947: Fields of Wonder and translation of Jacques Roumain's Masters of the Dew published. Appointed Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Atlanta University. 1948: Translation of Nicolas Guillen's Cuba Libre published. 1949: Appointed Poet in Residence at the Laboratory School, University of Chicago. Troubled Island presented in New York. 1950: Simple Speaks His Mind and The Poetry of the Negro published. The Barrier presented in New York. 1951: Montage on a Dream Deferred and translation of Garcia Lorca's Romancero Gitano published. 1952: Laughing to Keep From Crying and First Book of Negroes published. 1953: Received Ainsfeld-Wolfe Award (Best book of year on race relations). Simple Takes a Wife published. 1954: Famous American Negroes and First Book of Rhythms published. 1955: Sweet Flypaper of Life , Famous Negro Music Makers , and First Book of Jazz published. 1956: I Wonder As I Wander , A Pictorial History of the Negro In America , and The First Book of the West Indies , published. 1957: Simple Stakes a Claim and Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral published. Simply Heavenly presented on Broadway. 1958: Famous Negro Heroes of America and The Book of Negro Folklore published. 1959: Selected Poems and Tambourines to Glory published. 1960: Received Spingarn Medal. African Treasury and The First Book of Africa published. 1961: Ask Your Mama and The Best of Simple published. Black Nativity presented in New York. 1962: Fight for Freedom published. Attended literary conference in Uganda and Nigeria. Began New York Post columns. 1963: Something in Common and Other Stories . Poems from Black Africa . Tambourines to Glory (play based on novel) presented on Broadway. Received Doctor of Letters degree from Howard University. 1964: New Negro Poets : U.S.A. edited. Jerico-Jim Crow presented in New York. Helped prepare BBC's The Negro in America series. Granted Hon. Litt. D. from Western Reserve. 1965: Simple's Uncle Sam published. The Prodigal Son presented in New York. Wrote script for WCBS-TV's Easter program. "It's a Mighty World". Lectured in America Houses in Europe for United States Information Agency. 1966: La Poesie Negro-Americaine , and The Book of Negro Humor edited. 1967: The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers , edited. The Panther and the Lash , Black Magic: A Pictorial History of the Negro in American Entertainment , with Milton Meltzer. Hughes died May 22, 1967. [from Donald C. Dickinson's A Bio-Bibliography of Langston Hughes and James A. Emanuel's Langston Hughes ]

Processing Information

This collection has undergone processing at several points over the past three decades. The processing project in 2000-2002 was intended to clarify problematic listings of materials and incorporate previously unprocessed materials, including some groups formerly classified as "printed" (such as newspaper clippings, postcards, and photographs). Due to the number of times the papers were rearranged, much of the original identification and arrangement of materials was lost, making it difficult to recreate associations (such as photographs that were once enclosed in letters to Hughes). Several of the series included in this finding aid were inherited from these earlier processing projects. Therefore, a series such as "Personal Appearances", which would have been more logically broken into individual components (writings, printed ephemera, clippings, etc.) has been kept intact. Readers should be aware, however, that many other items that document Hughes' personal appearances can, indeed, be found in other series, such as Series XVII. Printed Ephemera. Some other materials, which may have been grouped together before by subject have been placed in appropriate series, so that, for example, one may find material documenting "Tambourines to Glory" in Series II, Professional Correspondence , Series II., Writings , Series XII, Photographs , and Series XXII, Graphic Materials . Some small groups of materials, primarily letters, that were formerly included here, but which did not come from Langston Hughes' estate, have been cataloged separately. Some other materials from non-Hughes sources have been kept with the papers, since they would be extremely difficult to segregate. One other specific exception to provenance is the presence of items donated by Carl Van Vechten, since many of these were clearly intended for the Hughes papers by Hughes and arrived at Yale by way of Van Vechten.

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Langston Hughes Papers. James Weldon Johnson Collection in the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/resources/969 Accessed April 07, 2024.

The Life of Langston Hughes Essay (Biography)

The course of life of the outstanding American poet, writer, historian, and publicist Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was hard and difficult. He was born in a mixed-race family carrying African American, European American, and Native American roots. Langston Hughes had to work since his childhood applying for different jobs. He was a driver, a sailor on a steamship, a cook, an attendant, a doorkeeper in a night tavern in Montmartre, and a kitchen worker in a restaurant. Hughes attended Columbia University in New York, but due to the lack of money, he could not graduate. Only in 1929, he managed to finish his B.A. degree from Lincoln University in Philadelphia. By that time he was already a known poet.

All this uneasy mosaic of the life of Langston Hughes, combined with the historical events of that time, specifically concerned with the life of the black population in America, found its reflection in his different works. This paper analyzes the life and the poetry of Langston Hughes in terms of the ways his works were affected by different historical periods and the social attitudes of that time.

Assessing the works of Langston Hughes, it could be said that his popularity reached its peak in the twenties of the last century where “between 1926-1930Hughes’s literary activities were intimately connected with the social-cultural phenomenon known as the Harlem Renaissance or the New Negro Movement.” (Dickinson, 1967, p. 32)

The development of the Harlem Renaissance has led to the recognition of a considerable influence of the Negro culture on American culture. America for the first time saw not the humiliating stereotype of black people, which was spread for decades in the American culture, but a new image – educated, highly cultured member of rather decent society. Harlem Renaissance became the first step to such recognition.

In the literature, Harlem Renaissance has received a diverse embodiment – from Zora Neale Hurston with her book “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” (1928) to the topic of this paper, Langston Hughes, with poems such as «I, Too» in which the author designates his place in America.

I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, but I laugh, and eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table when the company comes. Nobody’ll dare Say to me, “Eat in the kitchen,” Then. Besides, they’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed-I, too, am America. (Hughes, 2009)

In addition to the decade of the twenties—one into which his innovative poetry of blues and jazz emerged—the thirties provided him with lasting insight into the class inequities of the United States. (Miller, 2004, p. 24) If the twenties could be described as dominated by romantic and amusing personal themes, the thirties were concentrated on economic problems. In the same manner if in the twenties Hughes’ works were mainly poems, in the thirties he wrote mainly prose. Describing Hughes’ style of protest in that decade, in regards to the trial of Scottsboro boys, “Hughes’s pamphlet questioned the whole system of southern law, the handling of the boys, and the morality of the girls. One poem, “Justice” is in the best tradition of the protest literature of the 1930s:

Justice is a blind goddess To this we blacks are wise Her bandage hides two festering sores That once perhaps were eyes. (Dickinson, 1967, p. 64)

Although Hughes already matured as an author in the twenties writing about the position of the black man in the American society, the work of that time was more distinguished with the conflict with society unlike his later work, where “Hughes’ work since 1940 has concentrated on lighter themes and life within the Negro group, not on conflict with outside groups.” (Dickinson, 1967, p. 81) Exemplary of the post-war works, “Shakespeare in Harlem” is especially characteristic, where it was filled with jazz rhythm and light mood.

This can be described as another point of influence that can be named after the music in general and the blues culture in particular. “The music known as the blues was expanded and exercised to a remarkable breadth of diversity for its humble form, as evidenced by the dissimilar styles of the fellow Mississippi blues performers House and James and by the stylistic differences between their music and that of Atlanta’s Barbecue Bob, the cabaret singer Viola Wells, and Peetie Wheatstraw, of St. Louis.”

(Tracy, 2004, p. 86) In that expansion, it could be seen that the majority of Hughes’ poems in his first book “The Weary Blues” and the subsequent – “Fine Clothes to the Jew,” The Dream Keeper”,” Shakespeare in Harlem”, “Fields of Wonder”, “One-way ticket”, and “The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times” were all written in the form of blues.

Blues, as well as spirituals, was a traditional black song form, but more compact and having a more accurate structure. Besides, blues, unlike the spirituals, were not related to church music. Blues frequently run through Hughes’s recent poetry but the subjects are lighter in mood than those in his early blues. A poem like “Early Evening Quarrel” is typical of Hughes’s post-war production.

Where is that sugar, Hammond, Did I send you this morning to buy? I say, where is that sugar Did I send you this morning to buy? Coffee without sugar Makes a good woman cry. (Dickinson, 1967, p. 82)

In the works of the forties and the fifties, a special place is occupied by books about his major literary figure, Jessie B. Semple – the carrier of folk common sense which is wittily and critically made comments on various aspects of American life. In writing about Semple, Hughes’s inspiration as in his recent late years came from Harlem. Living that period in New York, his poems were reflected from the street life in which he stayed close to his favorite people “the urban Negroes”. “No one can match Hughes’s ability to transcribe the speech and emotions of the average Harlemite.” (Dickinson, 1967, p. 82)

Although slavery in America was officially abolished in 1863, the struggle for racial equality and the cancellation of segregation laws continued in America for another century. As it is possible to see from the numerous collections and works of Langston Hughes, the theme of inequality, oppression, and humiliation remained one of the central themes in American black poetry. Nevertheless, throughout his life, the tone of such works varied substantially. Despite the variations, such as the humor, the style, and the forms of the poems, that might have influenced the works of Hughes throughout the decades, American poetry would not have been the same without the influence of Langston Hughes whose works distinguished by synthesis of pleasure and grief, sarcasm and optimism.

Dickinson, D. C. (1967). A Bio-Bibliography of Langston Hughes, 1902-1967. Hamden, Conn: Archon Books.

Hughes, L. (2009). Web.

Miller, R. B. (2004). Langston Hughes, 1902–1967 A Brief Biography. In A Historical Guide to Langston Hughes, Tracy, S. C. (Ed.) (pp. 23-61). New York: Oxford University Press.

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Life of Langston Hughes." June 2, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/life-of-the-langston-hughes/.

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Biography of Langston Hughes Essay

• 6 Works Cited

The well known poet Langston Hughes was an inspiring character during the Harlem Renaissance to provide a push for the black communities to fight for the rights they deserved. Hughes wrote his poetry to deliver important messages and provide support to the movements. When he was at a young age a teacher introduced him to poets Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman, and they inspired him to start his own. Being a “darker brother,” as he called blacks, he experienced and wanted his rights, and that inspired him. Although literary critics felt that Langston Hughes portrayed an unattractive view of black life, the poems demonstrate reality. Hughes used the Blues and Jazz to add effect to his work as well as his extravagant word use and literary …show more content…

He signed up to be a steward for cargo ships which would take him to Africa and Spain. Then in 1924 he went to live in Paris where he continued his works. A bit after he got back to America he met poet Vachel Lindsay. After meeting Lindsay, Hughes career as a poet truly took off because when Hughes showed Lindsay his work he was intrigued greatly. Vachel massively broadened Hughes audiences, and in this event his work displayed his purpose to fight segregation and show the ugliness of black life widely. One of Hughes most famous poems, “Harlem(Dream Deferred)” had a great impact by posing lots of questioning. According to critic Tom Hanson, this poem is just that simple because it gives a bunch of undesirable answers to the same question, “What happens to a dream deferred?” Hanson also says how this poem refers almost completely to an unsolved problem (Hanson, Harlem). The poem gives four rather unpleasant interrogatives and one declarative answer followed by the sixth possibility, “Or does it explode?” which is supposed to be a question to make a reader really think. There are several ways to interpret the meaning of the final line, and the most sensible explanation is, the African American community is “deferring dreams” and in doing so their dreams explode in terms of the chance to act is gone. Some may say Hughes presented an unattractive view

The Harlem Renaissance Essay

     Langston Hughes was one of the most important writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes creative intellect was influenced by his life in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood. Hughes had a very strong sense of racial pride. Through his works he promoted racial equality and celebrated the African American culture. It was in Lincoln, Illinois that Hughes started to write his poetry. In November 1924, he moved to Washington D.C. where he published his first book of poetry. Hughes is known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America. Langston is also known for his commitment to jazz. Hughes refused to distinguish between his personal and common understandings of black America. He

Racism In Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes was the leading voice of African American people in his time, speaking through his poetry to represent blacks. His Influence through his poems are seen widely not just by blacks but by those who enjoy poetry in other races and social classes. Hughes poems, Harlem, The Negro speaks of rivers, Theme for English B, and Negro are great examples of his output for the racial inequality between the blacks and whites. The relationship between whites and blacks are rooted in America's history for the good and the bad. Hughes poems bring the history at large and present them in a proud manner. The injustice that blacks face because of their history of once being in bondage is something they are constantly reminded and ridiculed for but must overcome and bring to light that the thoughts of slavery and inequality will be a lesson and something to remember for a different future where that kind of prejudice is not found so widely.

Essay on Langston Hughes? Influence on American Literature

• 4 Works Cited

Langston Hughes was one of the great writers of his time. He was named the “most renowned African American poet of the 20th century” (McLaren). Through his writing he made many contributions to following generations by writing about African American issues in creative ways including the use of blues and jazz. Langston Hughes captured the scene of Harlem life in the early 20th century significantly influencing American Literature. He once explained that his writing was an attempt to “explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America” (Daniel 760). To fulfill this task, he wrote 15 volumes of poetry, six novels, three books, 11 plays, and a variety of non-fiction work (Daniel 760). He also edited over 50 books in his time (McKay).

Essay on Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes was one of the first black men to express the spirit of blues and jazz

Langston Hughes Contribution

Hughes' parents split up soon after his birth. His father left for Mexico and Hughes was primarily raised by his grandmother until her death. This situation of Hughes being separated from his parents, then the death of his grandmother in his late teens influenced his writing. After the death of his grandmother, Hughes moved with his mother to Cleveland, Ohio. There, he was introduced to poetry.

Synthesis Essay: The Life And Works Of Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes was someone who never gave up on his dream. He was an African-American born in Missouri in 1902. He received his education at Columbia University and later went on to go to Lincoln University. Although he is most well known for being a poet, he held a variety of other jobs ranging from a busboy to a columnist in his early years. In the 1920s America entered the Harlem Renaissance, a time of appreciation for black heritage. It was at this point in history that he became an important writer. The reason he was so important to this time in history is because his writing, “offers a transcription of urban life through a portrayals of the speech habits attitudes and feelings of an oppressed people. The poems do more, however, than

Langston Hughes Research Paper

Here, according to Hughes, he wrote his first verse and was named class poet of his eighth grade class. Hughes lived in Lincoln for only a year, and then had to move to Toledo, Ohio because of a new job his stepfather found. Shortly after his move to Toledo, his stepfather and mother moved on, this time to Chicago, but Hughes stayed in Cleveland in order to finish high school. In Ohio, his high school teachers and classmates recognized his writing talent, and Hughes had his first pieces of verse published in the Central High Monthly, a sophisticated school magazine. Soon he was on the staff of the Monthly, and publishing in the magazine regularly. An English teacher introduced him to poets such as Carl Sandburg and Walk Whitman, and these became Hughes' earliest influences. the summer after Hughes's junior year in high school, his father reentered his life. James Hughes was living in Toluca, Mexico, and wanted his son to join him there. Hughes lived in Mexico for the summer but he did not get along with his father. This conflict, though painful, apparently contributed to Hughes's maturity. When Hughes returned to Cleveland to finish high school, his writing had also matured. Consequently, during his senior year of high school, Langston Hughes began writing poetry of distinction.

Langston Hughes Biography Essay

Langston Hughes is regarded as one of the most significant American authors of the twentieth century. Foremost a poet, he was the first African-American to earn a living solely from his writings after he became established. Over a forty-year career beginning in the 1920s until his death in 1967, Hughes produced poetry, plays, novels, and a variety of nonfiction. He is perhaps best known for his creation of the fictional character, Jesse B. Semple, which first appeared in a Chicago Defender newspaper column in 1943. Hughes’ writings focused mainly on the lives of plain black people and show their beauty, wisdom, and strength to overcome social and economic injustice.

Reoccurring Themes in the Work of Langston Hughes Essay

• 7 Works Cited

Langston Hughes is an extremely successful and well known black writer who emerged from the Harlem Renaissance (“Langston Hughes” 792). He is recognized for his poetry and like many other writers from the Harlem Renaissance, lived most of his life outside of Harlem (“Langston Hughes” 792). His personal experiences and opinions inspire his writing intricately. Unlike other writers of his time, Hughes expresses his discontent with black oppression and focuses on the hardships of his people. Hughes’ heartfelt concern for his people’s struggle evokes the reader’s emotion. His appreciation for black music and culture is evident in his work as well. Langston Hughes is a complex poet whose profound works provide insight into all aspects of black

Essay on Langston Hughes: American Poet and Social Activist

• 3 Works Cited

Langston Hughes inspired others to reach their true potential in their work by using their own life as a catalyst:

Langston Hughes Biography

• 1 Works Cited

“James Mercer Langston Hughes, known as Langston Hughes was born February 2, 1902 in Missouri, to Carrie Hughes and James Hughes.” Years later his parents separated. Langston’s father moved to Mexico and became very successful, as his for mother, she moved frequently to find better jobs. As a child growing up Langston spent most of his childhood living with his grandmother named Mary Langston in Lawrence, Kansas. Mary Langston was a learned women and a participant in the civil rights Movement. When Langston Hughes was 12 years old his grandmother passed away. Langston then moved in with his mother and stepfather Homer Clark. A few months later, Langston’s mother sent him to live with her mother’s friend “Auntie” and Mr. Reed. In 1915

Langston Hughes Life During The Harlem Renaissance

“The Harlem Renaissance was a time where the Afro-American came of age; he became self-assertive and racially conscious… he proclaimed himself to be a man and deserving respect. Those Afro-Americans who were part of that time period saw themselves as principals in that moment of transformation from old to new” (Huggins 3). African Americans migrated to the North in great numbers to seek better lives than in the South as the northern economy was booming and industrial jobs were numerous. This movement brought new ideas and talents that shifted the culture forever. Black writers, such as Langston Hughes, used their work to claim a place for themselves and to demand self-respect in society. Poems that Langston Hughes wrote captured the essence of the complexity of a life that mixes joy and frustration of black American life through the incorporation of jazz and blues in order to examine the paradox of being black in mostly white America, the land of the not quite free.

Essay about Literary Critique of Langston Hughes

     Langston Hughes’s writing showcases a variety of themes and moods, and his distinguished career led his biographer, Arnold Rampersad, to describe him as “perhaps the most representative black American writer.” Many of his poems illustrate his role as a spokesman for African American society and the working poor. In others, he relates his ideas on the importance of heritage and the past. Hughes accomplishes this with a straightforward, easily understandable writing style that clearly conveys his thoughts and opinions, although he has frequently been criticized for the slightly negative tone to his works.

Langston Hughes : A Modernist

Credited as being the most recognizable figure of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes played a vital role in the Modernist literary movement and the movement to revitalize African American culture in the early 20th century. Hughes’s poems reflect his personal struggle and the collective struggle of African Americans during this cultural revival.

Analysis Of Harlem By Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes, a gentleman of color was a leader in the African American community. He is a poet, who according to an editor of “Harlem Renaissance” portrayed the truth rather than a sugar-coated version of how life was in Harlem, the hub of the black community. Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem” describes how colored people live in poverty, in the poem “Dream Variations” Hughes’ dream was symbolized by nature, and in the short story “Slave on the Block,” racism and life of a domestic slave are shown from his point of view. The time when these pieces of work were created was an era when black artistry was opening the eyes of white America to how poorly Afro Americans were treated; this movement was called the Harlem Renaissance, as said in “Harlem Renaissance”. In this movement, Hughes was a force of nature that pursued equality among all races, yet still maintaining integrity and pride. White America was not a welcoming place for people of color, because white people were not sentimental or generous with them so people say it was more described as, “The cold, uncaring atmosphere of the United States were for blacks discrimination, racism, and often brutal treatment were a feature of everyday life” (“Dream”). Not only did Hughes have to endure the pain of this treatment but so did all colored people.

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• Langston Hughes
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Langston Hughes Essay

James Langston Hughes was born in Joplin on Feb. 1, 1902. Although he did not live there for long, he was always proud of his connection to the state. Until 1915 he lived in Lawrence, Kansas, close to the Missouri border. He had close relatives who lived in Kansas City, Missouri. But his link to Missouri ran deep into history. From his maternal grandmother, Mary Langston, he learned much about the Kansas-Missouri border wars and their historic consequences for blacks especially. Her first husband had died fighting alongside John Brown at Harpers Ferry, and her second, Hughes’s grandfather, had also been a militant abolitionist. Such events cast a long shadow over Hughes as he grew up in increasingly segregated Lawrence. His rich career should be seen as his calculated response to the challenges of this history, but by the time of his death he clearly had made peace with Missouri. Elected a trustee of the Missouri Society of New York in 1963, he was proud to be part of a great literary tradition that includes Mark Twain, T.S. Eliot, and Hughes’s good friend the poet Marianne Moore. Hughes’s parents, James Nathaniel and Carrie Mercer Langston Hughes, met in Oklahoma. She was an aspiring actress and writer; his great goal was to be a lawyer and successful businessman. They were married in Guthrie, Oklahoma, but soon moved to Joplin when he found a promising job there. Being black, however, he found it virtually impossible to gain admission to the bar. When Langston was born, James was probably far away. His ambition took him first to Cuba and then to Mexico, where he found jobs commensurate with his talents and training. He lived in Mexico for the rest of his life. (He and his family barely missed the horror that struck Joplin in April 1903. A white mob stormed the city jail, lynched a black man accused of killing a policeman, and violently expelled many blacks from the town.) Hughes saw little of his father after that. Materialistic and cold, as Langston saw him, James disapproved of his son’s passion for poetry and his sympathy for the black masses. Attempts at reconciliation in Mexico failed. They did not see one another after 1921. Mainly Langston grew up in Lawrence, Kansas with Mary Langston. After her second husband’s death, the family fell into poverty. Langston’s mother was often away, searching for work. Hughes grew up a lonely child who came to believe less in people than in fiction and poetry. In 1915, when his grandmother died, he joined his mother and her second husband in Lincoln, Illinois. There he wrote his first poem. They moved next to Cleveland. He lived there from 1916 to 1920. Sometimes he lived alone, as his stepfather scrambled to find work. However, at the progressive Central High School he received a first-rate education. In the school magazine he published several poems and stories. In 1921, funded reluctantly by his father, he entered Columbia University in New York, but left after a disillusioning year in search of freedom and literary inspiration. In 1921 he published in The Crisis his signature poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” in his first appearance as a writer in a national magazine. Its opening line (“I’ve known rivers”) had come to him just as he was crossing the Mississippi at sunset on a train from Kansas into Missouri, going to join his father in Mexico. The four years after Columbia found him roaming the coast of Africa as a seaman, or working in Paris and in Washington–but always writing. In 1926, his first book, The Weary Blues, confirmed his status as a star of the Harlem Renaissance. That month, January, he also entered Lincoln University in Pennsylvania (his B.A. came in 1929). Also in 1926 The Nation magazine published his manifesto for younger black writers, the essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” In 1930 he published his first novel, Not Without Laughter. Politically, Hughes moved in the 1930s to the far left, as did many other Americans also pushed by the Great Depression. In 1931-1932 he toured the South and the West by car, taking his poetry to the people. In 1932 he joined a group of young blacks invited to the Soviet Union to make a movie about American race relations. The project collapsed, but he spent many months living in Moscow and also touring the Asian republics of the USSR. Returning to the US in 1933 via Japan and China, he lived in California for a year. In 1934, he published a hard hitting collection of stories, The Ways of White Folks (1934). Also in the 1930s he worked hard at writing plays. His tragedy about miscegenation, Mulatto, opened on Broadway in 1935. In 1936, still haunted by the Depression, he published his memorable political anthem “Let America Be America Again.” Often broke, he tried to work in Hollywood but found it demeaning to blacks. In 1940 came an autobiography, The Big Sea. About this time Hughes found himself hunted because of radical poems he had published in the early 1930s, especially one (“Goodbye Christ”) about charlatans who exploit religious faith. Retreating, he turned to safer themes, including the nascent modern civil rights struggle. Attacks on him continued, however, culminating in a somewhat humiliating appearance in 1953 before Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communistic subcommittee. But by this time, by dint of hard work and his versatility, he had also enjoyed some success. In 1947, his work on the Broadway opera Street Scene enabled him to buy a modest townhouse in Harlem. He lived there for the rest of his life. Hughes continued to publish books. They included more poetry but also another autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander; books for children, such as The First Book of Jazz and The First Book of Africa; histories such as Fight for Freedom, the story of the NAACP; various plays; and anthologies of African American and African writing. He pioneered the development of the gospel musical, notably his Black Nativity. In 1960, the NAACP awarded him its highest honor, the Spingarn Medal. He toured Africa on behalf of the U.S. State Department. He was still an active force when complications after surgery ended his life in a New York hospital on May 22, 1967. Langston Hughes was arguably the premier poet of the black American experience, the most versatile of black writers, and one of the finest authors in American literature. Widespread academic attention to him began, fittingly, at a conference in 1983 organized in Joplin at Missouri Southern University, when Joplin reclaimed and celebrated him as a favorite son. Arnold Rampersad Stanford University

Langston Hughes Essay

Langston Hughes was an African-American writer best known for “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and poetry chronicling the struggle of African Americans. Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, on February 1, 1902. His father moved to Mexico when Langston was only two years old because he didn’t think black people were treated fairly in the United States. Langston Hughes never saw his father again because of this, but he did keep in touch with him through letters. Langston Hughes was raised by his mother and grandmother after his father left. Langston’s early life consisted of moving around a lot throughout the Midwest.

Langston Hughes was an African-American poet, novelist, playwright, and social activist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then new literary art form jazz poetry. Langston Hughes was also a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

Hughes is mostly remembered for his work during the Harlem Renaissance along with contemporaries Zora Neale Hurston , Countee Cullen , Wallace Thurman , Claude McKay , Jean Toomer, Richard Bruce Nugent , and Aaron Douglas . He famously wrote about the period that “the negro was in vogue” – which was later paraphrased as “when Harlem was in vogue”.

The second youngest of seven children, Langston Hughes grew up in Lawrence, Kansas but spent much of his childhood in a series of Midwestern and Eastern boarding houses following the breakup of his parents’ marriage and subsequent move of his mother, Carrie Langston Hughes, to Cleveland, Ohio.

Hughes excelled academically early in life; he was admitted into Columbia University at the age of 20 and published his first collection of poetry . He received a M.A. from Columbia University and later studied at the Sorbonne as well as the Institut des Hautes Études Internationales in Geneva, Switzerland.

His first book was “The Weary Blues” (1926), which was well-received by critics such as Van Wyck Brooks , but sales were poor because many bookstores refused to stock it due to the subject matter of black culture . His follow-up poems, “The Dream Keeper” and “Fine Clothes to the Jew”, brought him commercial success. Langston Hughes’s fame rose as he continued to produce poetry, plays, short stories , essays, humor pieces, and novels throughout his lifetime.

After traveling extensively through Europe and Africa as well as organizing countless literary events for the Associated Negro Press (ANP) in various cities around America, Langston Hughes embarked on a career as a screenwriter with the film based on his novel Not Without Laughter in 1930. He moved to Hollywood briefly after its release but soon returned to New York where he worked until the outbreak of World War II when he enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps as a gunner. Langston Hughes was discharged from the army due to medical reasons but continued to write prolifically, even producing one of his most famous poems ” Dream Variations “.

After World War II Langston Hughes wrote his column “Here to Yonder” for the Chicago Defender newspaper and published another novel Not without laughter . In 1950 he moved with his family to Harlem where he lived until his death in 1967 from complications of hypertension. Langston Hughes’ ashes are interred beneath a floor medallion at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. The center is now home to almost a half-million Langston Hughes papers and memorabilia.

Langston attended Central High School in Cleveland where he wrote for the school newspaper. It was during this time that Langston decided to become a writer. He went on to attend Columbia University from 1920-1921, but he dropped out after only one semester because he wanted to experience more of the world before settling down at college (Langguth 409). This desire led Hughes to travel throughout Mexico, Europe, and Africa (O’Meally, “Biography” Langston Hughes 3). Langston also spent several years doing manual labor such as working on a freighter and in factories to support himself.

Langston returned to the United States and attended Langston University for about a year before moving back to New York City (Langguth 411). Hughes’ first poems were published in 1921 and by 1926 he had his first book of poetry accepted for publication. Some of Langston’s most famous poems include “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “I’ve Known Rivers,” “Let America Be America Again” and many others (“Langston Hughes Biography”). Langston also wrote novels including Not Without Laughter , The Ways of White Folks , and The Langston Hughes Reader .

Langston Hughes’ experiences with racism and the struggles of African Americans for equality are evident in his poetry. Langston Hughes died of complications from prostate cancer on May 22, 1967. Langston was an educated man who did not allow himself to be affected by ignorance or hatred. Langston did what he wanted because he did not want to break any rules that did not benefit himself. Langston’s poems reflect his love for life, love for people, and determination to make a difference in this world despite hardships that are often out of his control.

Langston Hughes used writing to get across the struggles of black Americans at the time when many white Americans refused to acknowledge them as equals deserving of the same rights. Langston used poetry to show humanity, kindness, passion, and love in the midst of racism that often led to violence against black people at the time. Langston Hughes is remembered as a writer who was not afraid to tell it like it was with his words. Langston’s poems are still relevant today because they reflect the problems we face as humans throughout history.

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Langston Hughes Research Paper

Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1901. Langston’s birthplace was Joplin, Missouri. A couple of years later he died May 22nd, 1967 Langston died at the age of 66 years old. He had no children; his mom and dad got divorced, his father moved to Mexico and his mother traveled to work so his grandmother could raise him. He was best known for being a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes went to Lincoln University, Columbia University, and Central High School for his education. Langston Hughes's jobs include being a poet, actor, novelist, lyricist, and more. He was known for his famous quote “Hold fast to your dreams for without them life is a broken wing bird that can not fly.’’ That's Langston's most famous quote. Langston’s …show more content…

Some interesting facts about Langston Hughes are that he studied Engineering and Chemistry because his father wanted him to study a subject more lucrative than writing; another interesting fact is that Langston Hughes was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance in New York in the 1920s. In the poetry that he wrote, he took his inspiration from Walt Whitman, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Carl Sandburg. That's why I picked Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1901. Langston’s birthplace was Joplin, Missouri. A couple of years later he died May 22nd, 1967 Langston died at the age of 66 years old. He had no children; his mom and dad got divorced, his father moved to Mexico and his mother traveled to work so his grandmother could raise him. He was best known for being a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes went to Lincoln University, Columbia University, and Central High School for his education. Langston Hughes's jobs include being a poet, actor, novelist, lyricist, and more. He was known for his famous quote “Hold fast to your dreams for without them life is a broken wing bird that can not fly.’’ That's Langston's most famous quote. Langston’s accomplishments began in

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