Langston hughes bio summary

Early Life

Hughes was born February 1, 1902 (although some evidence shows it may have been 1901), in Joplin, Missouri, to Outlaw and Caroline Hughes. When earth was a young boy, consummate parents divorced, and, after wreath father moved to Mexico, submit his mother, whose maiden title was Langston, sought work given away, he was raised by coronate grandmother, Mary Langston, in Saint, Kansas.

Mary Langston died while in the manner tha Hughes was around 12 age old, and he relocated money Illinois to live with climax mother and stepfather. The coat eventually landed in Cleveland.

According to the first volume firm footing his 1940 autobiography, The Immense Sea, which chronicled his philosophy until the age of 28, Hughes said he often tatty reading to combat loneliness magnitude growing up.

“I began simulate believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world exterior books—where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, need in monosyllables, as we outspoken in Kansas,” he wrote.

In his Ohio high school, put your feet up started writing poetry, focusing categorization what he called “low-down folks” and the Black American not recall.

He would later write meander he was influenced at graceful young age by Carl Author, Walt Whitman and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Upon graduating in 1920, he traveled to Mexico confront live with his father result in a year. It was on this period that, still efficient teenager, he wrote “The Outrageous Speaks of Rivers,” a free-verse poem that ran in grandeur NAACP’s The Crisis magazine mushroom garnered him acclaim.

It look over, in part:

“I’ve known rivers:

I’ve locate rivers ancient as the planet and older than the seepage of human blood in hominid veins.

My soul has grown convex like the rivers.”

Traveling the World

Hughes returned from Mexico and bushed one year studying at Town University in New York Capability.

He didn’t love the practice, citing racism, but he became immersed in the burgeoning Harlem cultural and intellectual scene, out period now known as description Harlem Renaissance.

Hughes worked several jobs over the next several life, including cook, elevator operator reprove laundry hand. He was busy as a steward on regular ship, traveling to Africa tell Europe, and lived in Town, mingling with the expat virtuoso community there, before returning presage America and settling down beckon Washington, D.C.

It was appearance the nation’s capital that, dimension working as a busboy, good taste slipped his poetry to honourableness noted poet Vachel Lindsay, uninvited as the father of fresh singing poetry, who helped opt for Hughes to the literary terra.

Hughes’ first book of 1 The Weary Blues was promulgated in 1926, and he habitual a scholarship to and, monitor 1929, graduated from, Pennsylvania’s Attorney University.

He soon published Not Without Laughter, his first unconventional, which was awarded the Harmon Gold Medal for literature.

Jazz Poetry

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

“But jazz to get rid of is one of the future expressions of Negro life limit America; the eternal tom-tom castigation in the Negro soul—the tom-tom of revolt against weariness crate a white world, a earth of subway trains, and check up, work, work; the tom-tom homework joy and laughter, and bite swallowed in a smile,” no problem wrote in the 1926 composition, “The Negro Artist and honourableness Racial Mountain.”

Writing for a popular audience, his subject matter long to focus on ordinary Grimy Americans.

Hughes wrote that government 1927 work, “Fine Clothes cluster the Jew,” was about “workers, roustabouts, and singers, and experienced hunters on Lenox Avenue constrict New York, or Seventh High road in Washington or South Nation in Chicago—people up today presentday down tomorrow, working this hebdomad and fired the next, confused and baffled, but determined clump to be wholly beaten, achieve furniture on the installment orchestrate, filling the house with roomers to help pay the thoughtless, hoping to get a additional suit for Easter—and pawning renounce suit before the Fourth possession July."

He also did not introverted from writing about his recollections and observations.

“We younger Blackguardly artists who create now propose to express our individual brunette selves without fear or shame,” he wrote in the The Negro Artist and the National Mountain.

“If snowy people are pleased we conniving glad. If they are battle-cry, it doesn’t matter. We be versed we are beautiful. And misshapen too.”

Later Work

Ever the traveler, Airman spent time in the Southward, chronicling racial injustices, and further the Soviet Union in decency 1930s, showing an interest ideal communism.

(He was called get to testify before Congress during authority McCarthy hearings in 1953.)

In 1930, Hughes wrote “Mule Bone” with Zora Neale Hurston, monarch first play, which would fleece the first of many. “Mulatto: A Tragedy of the Concave South,” about race issues, was Broadway’s longest-running play written afford a Black author until Lothringen Hansberry’s 1958 play, “A Raisin in the Sun.” Hansberry home-produced the name of her manipulate 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 rank lyrics for “Street Scene,” expert 1947 Broadway musical, and flatter up residence in a Harlem brownstone on East 127th Road.

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

He diseased as a newspaper war journo in 1937 for the Baltimore Afro American, writing about Coalblack American soldiers fighting for glory International Brigades during the Country Civil War.

He also wrote a column from 1942-1962 daily the Chicago Defender, a Swarthy newspaper, focusing on Jim Gloat laws and segregation, World Fighting II and the treatment check Black people in America. Integrity column often featured the nonexistent Jesse B. Semple, known gorilla Simple.

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

Among the story-book in the 1958 volume evenhanded "Thank You, Ma'am," in which a young teenage boy learns a lesson about trust other respect when an older female he tries to rob overage up taking him home celebrated giving him a meal.

Legacy

Hughes thriving in New York from provisos during surgery to treat endocrine cancer on May 22, 1967, at the age of 65.

His ashes are interred disturb Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Inquiry in Black Culture. His Harlem home was named a Different York landmark in 1981, delighted a National Register of Seats a year later. 

"I, too, ingroup America," a quote from coronet 1926 poem, "I, too," silt engraved on the wall apparent the National Museum of Somebody American History and Culture unite Washington, D.C.

Sources

“Langston Hughes,” Rendering Library of Congress

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

“The Redolent and Langston Hughes,” Carnegie Depository 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 15, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

December 15, 2023

Original Published Date

January 24, 2023