Langston Hughes

LANGSTON HUGHES

Born: February 1, 1902

Died: May 22, 1967

Langston Hughes was one of the most important writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance, which was the African American artistic movement in the 1920s that celebrated black life and culture. Hughes's creative genius was influenced by his life in New York City's Harlem, a primarily African American neighborhood. His literary works helped shape American literature and politics. Hughes, like others active in the Harlem Renaissance, had a strong sense of racial pride. Through his poetry, novels, plays, essays, and children's books, he promoted equality, condemned racism and injustice, and celebrated African American culture, humor, and spirituality;

1) “from busboy to poet”

Langston's Early Years

Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri to two bookkeepers. His parents separated when he was very young. His father moved to Mexico, and his mother left him for long periods of time in search of steady employment. Hughes's grandmother raised him in Lawrence, Kansas, until he was 12, when he moved to Illinois to live with his mother and stepfather. The family later moved to Ohio. From these humble origins, Langston developed a deep admiration for those he called "low-down folks," poor people who had a strong sense of emotion and pride. How do you think Hughes expressed these feelings? Hughes began writing poetry in high school. He gained some early recognition and support among important black intellectuals such as James Weldon Johnson and W.E.B DuBois (also an "Amazing American"). While working as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C., Hughes gave three of his poems to Vachel Lindsay, a famous critic. Lindsay's enthusiastic praise won Hughes an even wider audience.

Have you ever written a poem? What was its subject? Many people write poems about experiences or feelings they've had. Hughes spent the summers of 1919 and 1920 with his father in Mexico. While on a train on his second trip, he wrote his first great poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." The poem was published in The Crisis, a magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. You may ask your librarian how to find this poem so that you can read it. Here's how it begins: I've known rivers:/I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

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