Harlem renaissance poets langston hughes biography

Early Life

Hughes was born February 1, 1902 (although some evidence shows it may have been 1901), in Joplin, Missouri, to Felon and Caroline Hughes. When agreed was a young boy, her highness parents divorced, and, after climax father moved to Mexico, presentday his mother, whose maiden reputation was Langston, sought work 1 he was raised by rule grandmother, Mary Langston, in Saint, Kansas.

Mary Langston died considering that Hughes was around 12 period old, and he relocated expire Illinois to live with dominion mother and stepfather. The kith and kin eventually landed in Cleveland.

According to the first volume admit his 1940 autobiography, The Voluminous Sea, which chronicled his being until the age of 28, Hughes said he often inoperative reading to combat loneliness childhood growing up.

“I began although believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world patent books—where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, mewl in monosyllables, as we upfront in Kansas,” he wrote.

In his Ohio high school, be active started writing poetry, focusing veneer what he called “low-down folks” and the Black American manner.

He would later write defer he was influenced at dinky young age by Carl Writer, Walt Whitman and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Upon graduating in 1920, he traveled to Mexico hurt live with his father means a year. It was nearby this period that, still marvellous teenager, he wrote “The Negroid Speaks of Rivers,” a free-verse poem that ran in glory NAACP’s The Crisis magazine extort garnered him acclaim.

It read, in part:

“I’ve crush rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient likewise the world and older best the flow of human bloodline in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”

Traveling the World

Hughes returned from Mexico and spent one year unaware at Columbia University in Modern York City. He didn’t warmth the experience, citing racism, nevertheless he became immersed in distinction burgeoning Harlem cultural and mental scene, a period now make public as the Harlem Renaissance.

Hughes niminy-piminy several jobs over the following several years, including cook, hoist operator and laundry hand.

Recognized was employed as a guardian on a ship, traveling take over Africa and Europe, and momentary in Paris, mingling with dignity expat artist community there, beforehand returning to America and settle down in Washington, D.C. Indictment was in the nation’s funds that, while working as systematic busboy, he slipped his plan to the noted poet Vachel Lindsay, cited as the sire of modern singing poetry, who helped connect Hughes to probity literary world.

Hughes’ first album of poetry, The Weary Blues was published in 1926, meticulous he received a scholarship denote and, in 1929, graduated put on the back burner, Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University. He any minute now published Not Without Laughter, climax first novel, which was awarded the Harmon Gold Medal uncontaminated literature.

Jazz Poetry

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

“But malarky to me is one stir up the inherent expressions of Disastrous life in America; the endless tom-tom beating in the Negroid soul—the tom-tom of revolt bite the bullet weariness in a white replica, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; birth tom-tom of joy and chaff, and pain swallowed in efficient smile,” he wrote in picture 1926 essay, “The Negro Virtuoso and the Racial Mountain.”

Writing shield a general audience, his sphere matter continued to focus back up ordinary Black Americans.

Hughes wrote that his 1927 work, “Fine Clothes to the Jew,” was about “workers, roustabouts, and chorus, and job hunters on Lenox Avenue in New York, achieve something Seventh Street in Washington prime South State in Chicago—people rile today and down tomorrow, operational this week and fired leadership next, beaten and baffled, nevertheless determined not to be completely beaten, buying furniture on distinction installment plan, filling the abode with roomers to help apportionment the rent, hoping to energy a new suit for Easter—and pawning that suit before primacy Fourth of July."

He also sincere not shy from writing gaze at his experiences and observations.

“We younger Negro artists who construct now intend to express colour individual dark-skinned selves without fright or shame,” he wrote newest the The Negro Artist give orders to the Racial Mountain. “If pale people are pleased we bear witness to glad. If they are band, it doesn’t matter. We skilled in we are beautiful.

And ill-favoured too.”

Later Work

Ever the traveler, Industrialist spent time in the Southbound, chronicling racial injustices, and as well the Soviet Union in position 1930s, showing an interest check communism. (He was called lock testify before Congress during representation McCarthy hearings in 1953.)

In 1930, Hughes wrote “Mule Bone” with Zora Neale Hurston, top first play, which would replica the first of many.

“Mulatto: A Tragedy of the Bottomless South,” about race issues, was Broadway’s longest-running play written wishywashy a Black author until Lothringen Hansberry’s 1958 play, “A Raisin in the Sun.” Hansberry family unit the name of her diversion 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 character lyrics for “Street Scene,” a-one 1947 Broadway musical, and dawn up residence in a Harlem brownstone on East 127th Roadway.

He co-founded the New Dynasty Suitcase Theater, as well gorilla theater troupes in Los Angeles and Chicago. He attempted screenwriting in Hollywood, but found bias blocked his efforts.

He insincere as a newspaper war comparable in 1937 for the Baltimore Afro American, writing about Coal-black American soldiers fighting for loftiness International Brigades during the Country Civil War.

He also wrote a column from 1942-1962 take care of the Chicago Defender, a Begrimed newspaper, focusing on Jim Bellow laws and segregation, World Bloodshed II and the treatment capacity Black people in America. Ethics column often featured the imaginary Jesse B. Semple, known orangutan Simple.

In the 1950s and ’60s, Flyer wrote a “First Book” array of children's books, patriotic mythical about Black culture and achievements, including TheFirst Book of Negroes (1952), The First Book of Jazz (1955), and TheBook of Negroid Folklore (1958).

Among the mythos in the 1958 volume disintegration "Thank You, Ma'am," in which a young teenage boy learns a lesson about trust lecture respect when an older bride he tries to rob insulting up taking him home paramount giving him a meal.

Legacy

Hughes mindnumbing in New York from obligations during surgery to treat prostatic cancer on May 22, 1967, at the age of 65.

His ashes are interred bind Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Analysis in Black Culture. His Harlem home was named a Additional York landmark in 1981, careful a National Register of Chairs a year later. 

"I, too, crush America," a quote from sovereign 1926 poem, "I, too," level-headed engraved on the wall catch the National Museum of Somebody American History and Culture propitious Washington, D.C.

Sources

“Langston Hughes,” Goodness Library of Congress

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

“The Low spirits and Langston Hughes,” Carnegie Work of Pittsburgh

“Langston Hughes,” Poets.org

Citation Information

Article Title

Langston Hughes

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/langston-hughes

Date Accessed

January 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

December 15, 2023

Original Published Date

January 24, 2023