langston hughes biography ppt

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes was a Black writer whose poems, columns, novels, and plays made him a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

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Harlem renaissance, poems, books, and other works, accusations of communism, death and legacy, who was langston hughes.

Poet and writer Langston Hughes became a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance after his first poem was published in 1921. His first book of poetry followed five years later, in 1926. One of the first Black Americans to earn a living as a writer, Hughes went on to compose many more works of poetry, prose, and plays that center the 20 th century African American experience and remain influential today. Some of his most famous poems are “Dreams,” “I, Too,” and “Harlem.” Additionally, he wrote a popular column for the Chicago Defender . In May 1967, Hughes died in his mid-60s from prostate cancer.

FULL NAME: James Mercer Langston Hughes BORN: c. February 1, 1901 DIED: May 22, 1967 BIRTHPLACE: Joplin, Missouri ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius

James Mercer Langston Hughes, better known as Langston Hughes, was born in Joplin, Missouri. His birth date—likely February 1, 1901—is the subject of some debate. For decades, scholars believed his birthday was February 1, 1902, but archived newspaper evidence found in 2018 suggests Hughes was born one year earlier.

Whatever the year, his parents, James Hughes and Carrie Langston, separated soon after his birth, and his father moved to Mexico.

While Carrie moved around during his youth, Hughes was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother, Mary, until she died when he was in his early teens. From that point, he went to live with his mother, and they moved to several cities before eventually settling in Cleveland.

It was during this time that Hughes first began to write poetry, and one of his teachers introduced him to the poetry of Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman , both of whom Hughes later cited as primary influences.

Hughes was also a regular contributor to his school’s literary magazine and frequently submitted to other poetry magazines, though they ultimately rejected his work.

Hughes graduated from high school in 1920 and spent the following year in Mexico with his father. In 1921, Hughes had his first poem published; “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” appeared in The Crisis magazine and was highly praised.

Also that year, Hughes returned to the United States and enrolled at Columbia University where he studied briefly. In New York City, he quickly became a part of Harlem’s burgeoning cultural movement, what is commonly known as the Harlem Renaissance .

The young poet dropped out of Columbia in 1922 and worked various odd jobs around New York for the following year, before signing on as a steward on a freighter that took him to Africa and Spain. He left the ship in 1924 and lived for a brief time in Paris, where he continued to develop and publish his poetry.

Hughes was one of the first Black Americans to earn a living as writer. Following his first published poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” in 1921, he wrote hundreds more. His poems appeared in 16 volumes of poetry during his lifetime, starting with The Weary Blues (1926). These poetry books account for roughly half of the more than 35 books Hughes published. He also wrote short story collections, novels, plays, two autobiographies, and even children’s books. His work centers the experiences of everyday African American in the 20 th century.

In 1923, the New York City magazine The World Tomorrow published Hughes’ poem “Dreams.”

“The Weary Blues”

By November 1924, Hughes had returned to the United States and worked various jobs. In 1925, he was working as a busboy in a Washington, D.C., hotel restaurant when he met American poet Vachel Lindsay. Hughes showed some of his poems to Lindsay, who was impressed enough to use his connections to promote Hughes’ poetry and ultimately bring it to a wider audience.

That same year, Hughes’ poem “The Weary Blues” won first prize in the Opportunity magazine literary competition, and Hughes also received a scholarship to attend Lincoln University, a historically Black institution in southeast Pennsylvania.

While studying at Lincoln, Hughes’ poetry came to the attention of novelist and critic Carl Van Vechten, who used his connections to help get Hughes’ first book of poetry, The Weary Blues , published by Knopf in 1926. The book had popular appeal and established both his poetic style and his commitment to Black themes and heritage.

One of the poems comprising The Weary Blues was “I, Too,” which examined the relationship of African Americans to the larger culture and society in the early 20 th century. Parts of the poem are now engraved on a wall of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

Hughes was also among the first to use jazz rhythms and dialect to depict the life of urban Black people in his work. He published a second volume of poetry, Fine Clothes to the Jew , in 1927.

Not Without Laughter

After his graduation from Lincoln in 1929, Hughes published his first novel, Not Without Laughter , the next year . The book was commercially successful enough to convince Hughes that he could make a living as a writer.

During the 1930s, Hughes frequently traveled the United States on lecture tours, as well as abroad to the Soviet Union, Japan, and Haiti. He continued to write and publish poetry and prose during this time, and in 1934, he published his first collection of short stories, The Ways of White Folks.

“Let America Be America Again”

In July 1936, the writer published one of his most celebrated poems, “Let America Be America Again” in Esquire magazine. The poem examines the unrealized hopes and dreams of the country’s lower class and disadvantaged, expressing a sense of hope that the American Dream will one day arrive.

Hughes later revised and republished “Let America Be America Again” in a small anthology of poems called A New Song .

In 1937, he served as a war correspondent for several American newspapers during the Spanish Civil War .

Simple Character and Stage Work

In 1940, Hughes’ autobiography up to age 28, The Big Sea , was published.

Also around this time, Hughes began contributing a column to the Chicago Defender , for which he created a comic character named Jesse B. Semple, better known as “Simple,” a Black Everyman that Hughes used to further explore urban, working-class Black themes and to address racial issues. The columns were highly successful, and “Simple” was later the focus of several of Hughes’ books and plays.

In the late 1940s, Hughes contributed the lyrics for a Broadway musical titled Street Scene , which featured music by Kurt Weill. The success of the musical earned Hughes enough money that he was finally able to buy a house in Harlem. Around this time, he also taught creative writing at Atlanta University (today Clark Atlanta University) and was a guest lecturer at a university in Chicago for several months.

Over the next two decades, Hughes continued his prolific output. In 1949, he wrote a play that inspired the opera Troubled Island and published yet another anthology of work titled The Poetry of the Negro.

In 1951, Hughes published another acclaimed poem titled “Harlem,” also known as “A Dream Deferred” based on its opening line. According to the Poetry Foundation , Hughes conceived “Harlem” as part of a book-length sequence of poems eventually titled Montage of a Dream Deferred . The collection also featured the poems “Theme for English B” and “Ballad of the Landlord.”

“Harlem” examines how the American Dream can fall short for African Americans. It opens:

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

The poem inspired the title of Lorraine Hansberry ’s play A Raisin in the Sun , and Martin Luther King Jr. referenced it in a number of his speeches.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Hughes published countless other works, including several books in his “Simple” series, English translations of the poetry of Federico García Lorca and Gabriela Mistral, another anthology of his own poetry, and the second installment of his autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander .

Tambourines to Glory

In 1956, Hughes began writing a play called Tambourines to Glory: A Play with Songs . Mixing story and song, Tambourines tells the story of two female street preachers in Harlem whose success allows them to open up a church.

Hughes told The New York Times he tried to sell the play to producers for a couple of years, eventually adapting the story into a novel—his second. It published in 1958 and received acclaim, garnering new interest in a stage production. The play debuted at the Little Theater in November 1963 with cast members including Louis Gossett Jr., Clara Ward, Hilda Simms, and Rosetta LeNoire.

Literary scholars have debated Hughes’ sexuality for years, with many claiming the writer was gay and had included a number of coded references to male lovers in his poems (as did Hughes’ major influence Walt Whitman .

Hughes never married, nor was he romantically linked to any of the women in his life. And several of Hughes’ friends and traveling companions were known or believed to be gay, including Zell Ingram, Gilbert Price, and Ferdinand Smith.

Others have refuted these claims, including Hughes’ primary biographer , who believed him to be likely asexual. But because of Hughes’ secrecy and the era’s homophobia surrounding openly gay men, there is no concrete evidence of Hughes’ sexuality.

According to The New York Times , the House Un-American Activities Committee accused Hughes of being affiliated at one time or another with 91 different communist organizations. In March 1953, the writer was called to testify in front of Senator Joseph McCarthy ’s Subcommittee on Investigations to answer questions about communist influences in his writings.

Although Hughes admitted his works might have been influenced by the ideology, he denied ever being a believer in or member of the communist party and didn’t implicate anyone else in his testimony. “My feeling, sir, is that I have believed in the entire philosophies of the left at one period in my life, including socialism, communism, Trotsky -ism. All -isms have influenced me one way or another, and I can not answer to any specific -ism, because I am not familiar with the details of them and have not read their literature,” Hughes told counsel Roy Cohn , according to transcripts.

On May 22, 1967, Hughes died from complications of prostate cancer at age 66.

A tribute to his poetry, his funeral contained little in the way of spoken eulogy but was filled with jazz and blues music. Hughes’ ashes were interred beneath the entrance of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. The inscription marking the spot features a line from Hughes’ poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” It reads: “My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”

Hughes’ Harlem home, on East 127 th Street, received New York City Landmark status in 1981 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Volumes of his work continue to be published and translated throughout the world.

Langston Hughes High School, completed in 2009 and located in Fairburn, Georgia, is named after the poet. The library at Hughes’ alma mater Lincoln University also bears his name.

• An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose.
• I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.
• We Negro writers, just by being Black, have been on the Blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.
• Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it.
• Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
• The first two or three days, on the way home from school, little white kids, kids my age, 6 and 7 years old, who would throw stones at me. There were other little white kids, 6 and 7 years old, who picked up stones and threw them back at their fellow classmates and defend me and saw that I got home safely. So, I learned very early in life that our race problem is not really of Black against white and white against Black. It’s a problem of people who are not very knowledgeable, or have small minds, or small spirits.
• Negroes—sweet and docile, meek, humble and kind: Beware the day—they change their mind.
• I swear to the Lord, I can’t see why democracy means everybody but me.
• Like welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.
• Negro blood is sure powerful, because just one drop of Black blood makes a colored man. One drop you are a Negro!... Black is powerful.
• Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.
• Life is a system of half-truths and lies, opportunistic, convenient evasion.
• No woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more that she can be witty by only the help of speech.
• Jessie Fauset at The Crisis , Charles Johnson at Opportunity , and Alain Locke in Washington were the three people who midwifed the so-called “New Negro Literature” into being. Kind and critical—but not too critical for the young—they nursed us along until our books were born .

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Langston Hughes

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Langston Hughes (born February 1, 1902?, Joplin , Missouri , U.S.—died May 22, 1967, New York , New York) was an American writer who was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance and made the African American experience the subject of his writings, which ranged from poetry and plays to novels and newspaper columns.

While it was long believed that Hughes was born in 1902, new research released in 2018 indicated that he might have been born the previous year. His parents separated soon after his birth, and he was raised by his mother and grandmother. After his grandmother’s death, he and his mother moved to half a dozen cities before reaching Cleveland, where they settled. He wrote the poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” the summer after his graduation from high school in Cleveland; it was published in The Crisis in 1921 and brought him considerable attention. After attending Columbia University in New York City in 1921–22, he explored Harlem , forming a permanent attachment to what he called the “great dark city,” and worked as a steward on a freighter bound for Africa. Back in New York City from seafaring and sojourning in Europe, he met in 1924 the writers Arna Bontemps and Carl Van Vechten , with whom he would have lifelong influential friendships. Hughes won an Opportunity magazine poetry prize in 1925. That same year, Van Vechten introduced Hughes’s poetry to the publisher Alfred A. Knopf , who accepted the collection that Knopf would publish as The Weary Blues in 1926.

(Read W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1926 Britannica essay on African American literature.)

While working as a busboy in a hotel in Washington, D.C. , in late 1925, Hughes put three of his own poems beside the plate of Vachel Lindsay in the dining room. The next day, newspapers around the country reported that Lindsay, among the most popular white poets of the day, had “discovered” an African American busboy poet, which earned Hughes broader notice. Hughes received a scholarship to, and began attending, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in early 1926. That same year, he received the Witter Bynner Undergraduate Poetry Award, and he published “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” in The Nation , a manifesto in which he called for a confident, uniquely Black literature:

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 glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn’t matter either.

By the time Hughes received his degree in 1929, he had helped launch the influential magazine Fire!! , in 1926, and he had also published a second collection of poetry, Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927), which was criticized by some for its title and for its frankness, though Hughes himself felt that it represented another step forward in his writing.

A few months after Hughes’s graduation, Not Without Laughter (1930), his first prose volume, had a cordial reception. In the 1930s he turned his poetry more forcefully toward racial justice and political radicalism. He traveled in the American South in 1931 and decried the Scottsboro case ; he then traveled widely in the Soviet Union , Haiti, Japan , and elsewhere and served as a newspaper correspondent (1937) during the Spanish Civil War . He published a collection of short stories, The Ways of White Folks (1934), and became deeply involved in theatre. His play Mulatto , adapted from one of his short stories, premiered on Broadway in 1935, and productions of several other plays followed in the late 1930s. He also founded theatre companies in Harlem (1937) and Los Angeles (1939). In 1940 Hughes published The Big Sea , his autobiography up to age 28. A second volume of autobiography, I Wonder As I Wander , was published in 1956.

(Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s Britannica essay on "Monuments of Hope.")

Hughes documented African American literature and culture in works such as A Pictorial History of the Negro in America (1956) and the anthologies The Poetry of the Negro (1949) and The Book of Negro Folklore (1958; with Bontemps). He continued to write numerous works for the stage, including the lyrics for Street Scene , an opera with music by Kurt Weill that premiered in 1947. Black Nativity (1961; film 2013) is a gospel play that uses Hughes’s poetry, along with gospel standards and scriptural passages, to retell the story of the birth of Jesus . It was an international success, and performances of the work—often diverging substantially from the original—became a Christmas tradition in many Black churches and cultural centres. He also wrote poetry until his death; The Panther and the Lash , published posthumously in 1967, reflected and engaged with the Black Power movement and, specifically, the Black Panther Party , which was founded the previous year.

Among his other writings, Hughes translated the poetry of Federico García Lorca and Gabriela Mistral . He was also widely known for his comic character Jesse B. Semple, familiarly called Simple, who appeared in Hughes’s columns in the Chicago Defender and the New York Post and later in book form and on the stage. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes , edited by Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel, appeared in 1994. Some of his political exchanges were collected as Letters from Langston: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Red Scare and Beyond (2016).

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Langston Hughes

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Langston Hughes was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance , the flowering of black intellectual, literary, and artistic life that took place in the 1920s in a number of American cities, particularly Harlem. A major poet, Hughes also wrote novels, short stories, essays, and plays. He sought to honestly portray the joys and hardships of working-class black lives, avoiding both sentimental idealization and negative stereotypes. As he wrote in his essay “ The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain ,” “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.”

This approach was not without its critics. Much of Hughes’s early work was roundly criticized by many black intellectuals for portraying what they thought to be an unattractive view of black life. In his autobiographical  The Big Sea,  Hughes commented:

Fine Clothes to the Jew [Hughes’s second book] was well received by the literary magazines and the white press, but the Negro critics did not like it at all. The Pittsburgh Courier ran a big headline across the top of the page, LANGSTON HUGHES’ BOOK OF POEMS TRASH. The headline in the New York Amsterdam News was LANGSTON HUGHES THE SEWER DWELLER. The Chicago Whip characterized me as ‘the poet low- rate of Harlem.’ Others called the book a disgrace to the race, a return to the dialect tradition, and a parading of all our racial defects before the public. … The Negro critics and many of the intellectuals were very sensitive about their race in books. (And still are.) In anything that white people were likely to read, they wanted to put their best foot forward, their politely polished and cultural foot—and only that foot.

In fact, the title  Fine Clothes to the Jew,  which was misunderstood and disliked by many people, was derived from the Harlemites Hughes saw pawning their own clothing; most of the pawn shops and other stores in Harlem at that time were owned by Jewish people. Lindsay Patterson, a novelist who served as Hughes’s assistant, believed that Hughes was

critically, the most abused poet in America. …  Serious white critics ignored him, less serious ones compared his poetry to Cassius Clay doggerel, and most black critics only grudgingly admired him. Some, like James Baldwin, were downright malicious about his poetic achievement. But long after Baldwin and the rest of us are gone, I suspect Hughes’ poetry will be blatantly around growing in stature until it is recognized for its genius. Hughes … was unashamedly black at a time when blackness was démodé. He had the wit and intelligence to explore the black human condition in a variety of depths, but his tastes and selectivity were not always accurate, and pressures to survive as a black writer in a white society (and it was a miracle that he did for so long) extracted an enormous creative toll.

Nevertheless, Hughes, more than any other black poet or writer, recorded faithfully the nuances of black life and its frustrations. In Hughes’s own words, his poetry is 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."

Hoyt W. Fuller commented that Hughes "chose to identify with plain black people … precisely because he saw more truth and profound significance in doing so. Perhaps in this he was inversely influenced by his father—who, frustrated by being the object of scorn in his native land, rejected his own people. Perhaps the poet’s reaction to his father’s flight from the American racial reality drove him to embrace it with extra fervor.” (Langston Hughes’s parents separated shortly after his birth and his father moved to Mexico. The elder Hughes came to feel a deep dislike and revulsion for other African-Americans.)

Although Hughes had trouble with both black and white critics, he was the first black American to earn his living solely from his writing and public lectures. Part of the reason he was able to do this was the phenomenal acceptance and love he received from average black people. A reviewer for  Black World  noted in 1970: "Those whose prerogative it is to determine the rank of writers have never rated him highly, but if the weight of public response is any gauge then Langston Hughes stands at the apex of literary relevance among Black  people. The poet occupies such a position in the memory of his people precisely because he recognized that ‘we possess within ourselves a great reservoir of physical and spiritual strength,’ and because he used his artistry to reflect this back to the people." Hughes brought a varied and colorful background to his writing. Before he was 12 years old he had lived in six different American cities. When his first book was published, he had already been a truck farmer, cook, waiter, college graduate, sailor, and doorman at a nightclub in Paris, and had visited Mexico, West Africa, the Azores, the Canary Islands, Holland, France, and Italy. As David Littlejohn observed in his  Black on White: A Critical Survey of Writing by American Negroes:  "On the whole, Hughes’ creative life [was] as full, as varied, and as original as Picasso’s, a joyful, honest  monument of a career. There [was] no noticeable sham in it, no pretension, no self-deceit; but a great, great deal of delight and smiling irresistible wit. If he seems for the moment upstaged by angrier men, by more complex  artists, if ‘different views engage’ us, necessarily, at this trying stage of the race war, he may well outlive them all, and still be there when it’s over. … Hughes’ [greatness] seems to derive from his anonymous unity with his people. He  seems  to speak for millions, which is a tricky thing to do. Hughes reached many people through his popular fictional character, Jesse B. Semple (shortened to Simple). Simple is a poor man who lives in Harlem, a kind of comic no-good, a stereotype Hughes turned to advantage. He tells his stories to Boyd, the foil in the stories who is a writer much like Hughes, in return for a drink. His tales of his troubles with work, women, money, and life in general often reveal, through their very simplicity, the problems of being a poor black man in a racist society. “White folks,” Simple once commented, “is the cause of a lot of inconvenience in my life.” Simple’s musings first appeared in 1942 in “From Here to Yonder,” a column Hughes wrote for the  Chicago Defender  and later for the  New York Post.  According to a reviewer for  Kirkus Reviews,  their original intent was “to convince black Americans to support the U.S. war effort.” They were later published in several volumes. A more recent collection, 1994’s  The Return of Simple,  contains previously unpublished material but remains current in its themes, according to a  Publishers Weekly  critic who noted Simple’s addressing of such issues as political correctness, children’s rights, and the racist undercurrent behind contraception and sterilization proposals. Donald C. Dickinson wrote in his  Bio-Bibliography of Langston Hughes  that "[the] charm of Simple lies in his uninhibited pursuit of those two universal goals, understanding and security. As with most other humans, he usually fails to achieve either of these goals and sometimes once achieved they disappoint him. … Simple has a tough resilience, however, that won’t allow him to brood over a failure very long. … Simple is a well-developed character, both believable and lovable. The situations he meets and discusses are so true to life everyone may enter the fun."

 A reviewer for  Black World commented on the popularity of Simple: “The people responded. Simple lived in a world they knew, suffered their pangs, experienced their joys, reasoned in their way, talked their talk, dreamed their dreams, laughed their laughs, voiced their fears—and all the while underneath, he affirmed the wisdom which anchored at the base of their lives.” Hoyt W. Fuller believed that, like Simple, "the key to Langston Hughes … was the poet’s deceptive and  profound  simplicity. Profound because it was both  willed and ineffable, because some intuitive sense even at the beginning of his adulthood taught him that humanity was of the essence and that it existed undiminished in all shapes, sizes, colors and conditions. Violations of that humanity offended his unshakable conviction that mankind is possessed of the divinity of God." It was Hughes’s belief in humanity and his hope for a world in which people could sanely and with understanding live together that led to his decline in popularity in the racially turbulent latter years of his life. Unlike younger and more militant writers, Hughes never lost his conviction that “ most  people are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have been.” Reviewing  The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times  in  Poetry,  Laurence Lieberman recognized that Hughes’s “sensibility [had] kept pace with the times,” but he criticized his lack of a personal political stance. “Regrettably, in different poems, he is fatally prone to sympathize with starkly antithetical politics of race,” Lieberman commented. “A reader can appreciate his catholicity, his tolerance of all the rival—and mutually hostile—views of his outspoken compatriots, from Martin Luther King to Stokely Carmichael, but we are tempted to ask, what are Hughes’ politics? And if he has none, why not? The age demands intellectual commitment from its spokesmen. A poetry whose chief claim on our attention is moral, rather than aesthetic, must take sides politically.” Hughes’s position in the American literary scene seems to be secure. David Littlejohn wrote that Hughes is "the one sure Negro classic, more certain of permanence than even Baldwin or Ellison or Wright. … His voice is as sure, his manner as original, his position as secure as, say Edwin Arlington Robinson’s or Robinson Jeffers’. … By molding his verse always on the sounds of Negro talk, the rhythms of Negro music, by retaining his own keen honesty and directness, his poetic sense and ironic intelligence, he maintained through four decades a readable newness distinctly his own."

The Block  and  The Sweet and Sour Animal Book  are posthumously published collections of Hughes’s poetry for children that position his words against a backdrop of visual art.  The Block  pairs Hughes’s poems with a series of six collages by Romare Bearden that bear the book’s title.  The Sweet and Sour Animal Book  contains previously unpublished and repeatedly rejected poetry of Hughes from the 1930s. Here, the editors have combined it with the artwork of elementary school children at the Harlem School of the Arts. The results, noted Veronica Chambers in the  New York Times Book Review,  “reflect Hughes’s childlike wonder as well as his sense of humor.” Chambers also commented on the rhythms of Hughes’s words, noting that “children love a good rhyme” and that Hughes gave them “just a simple but seductive taste of the blues.” Hughes’s poems have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Russian, Yiddish, and Czech; many of them have been set to music. Donald B. Gibson noted in the introduction to  Modern Black Poets: A Collection of Critical Essays  that Hughes

has perhaps the greatest reputation (worldwide) that any black writer has ever had. Hughes differed from most of his predecessors among black poets, and (until recently) from those who followed him as well, 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. He has been, unlike most nonblack poets other than  Walt Whitman , Vachel Lindsay, and Carl Sandburg, a poet of the people. …  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.

Hughes died on May 22, 1967, due to complications from prostate cancer.

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Bibliography

Black maria, blues in stereo, blues on a box, boogie: 1 a.m., brass spittoons, crossing jordan, crowing hen blues, daybreak in alabama, dream boogie, dream boogie: variation, dying beast, easy boogie, flatted fifths  , folks who knock at madam's door, harlem sweeties, i look at the world, lady’s boogie  , let america be america again, lincoln theatre, love again blues, lover's return, madam’s past history, morning after, mother to son, the negro speaks of rivers, out of work, po' boy blues, seashore through dark glasses, southern mammy sings, suicide's note, sylvester’s dying bed, theme for english b, the weary blues, who but the lord, winter moon, yesterday and today, you and your whole race., 200 years of afro-american poetry, jazz as communication, the negro artist and the racial mountain, too long, too cute, two good.

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POETRY (Published by Knopf, except as indicated)

• The Weary Blues, 1926.
• Fine Clothes to the Jew, 1927.
• The Negro Mother and Other Dramatic Recitations, Golden Stair Press, 1931.
• Dear Lovely Death, Troutbeck Press, 1931.
• The Dream Keeper and Other Poems, 1932.
• Scottsboro Limited: Four Poems and a Play, Golden Stair Press, 1932.
• A New Song, International Workers Order, 1938.
• (With Robert Glenn) Shakespeare in Harlem, 1942.
• Jim Crow's Last Stand, Negro Publication Society of America, 1943.
• Freedom's Plow, Musette Publishers, 1943.
• Lament for Dark Peoples and Other Poems, Holland, 1944.
• Fields of Wonder, 1947.
• One-Way Ticket, 1949.
• Montage of a Dream Deferred, Holt, 1951.
• Ask Your Mama: Twelve Moods for Jazz, 1961.
• The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times, 1967, reprinted, Vintage Books, 1992.
• The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Knopf (New York, NY), 1994.
• The Block: Poems, Viking (New York, NY), 1995.
• Carol of the Brown King: Poems, Atheneum Books (New York, NY), 1997.
• The Pasteboard Bandit, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1997.
• Not Without Laughter, Knopf, 1930.
• Tambourines to Glory, John Day, 1958.

SHORT STORIES

• The Ways of White Folks, Knopf, 1934.
• Simple Speaks His Mind, Simon & Schuster, 1950.
• Laughing to Keep from Crying, Holt, 1952.
• Simple Takes a Wife, Simon & Schuster, 1953.
• Simple Stakes a Claim, Rinehart, 1957.
• Something in Common and Other Stories, Hill & Wang, 1963.
• Simple's Uncle Sam, Hill & Wang, 1965.
• The Return of Simple Hill & Wang, 1994.
• Short Stories of Langston Hughes, Hill & Wang (New York, NY), 1996.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

• The Big Sea: An Autobiography, Knopf, 1940.
• I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey, Rinehart, 1956.
• A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia, Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR, 1934.
• (With Roy De Carava) The Sweet Flypaper of Life, Simon & Schuster, 1955.
• (With Milton Meltzer) A Pictorial History of the Negro in America, Crown, 1956, 4th edition published as A Pictorial History of Black Americans, 1973, 6th edition published as A Pictorial History of African Americans, 1995.
• Fight for Freedom: The Story of the NAACP, Norton, 1962.
• (With Meltzer) Black Magic: A Pictorial History of the Negro in American Entertainment, Prentice-Hall, 1967.
• Black Misery, Paul S. Erickson, 1969.
• (With Arna Bontemps) Popo and Fifina: Children of Haiti, Macmillan, 1932.
• The First Book of Negroes, F. Watts, 1952.
• The First Book of Rhythms, F. Watts, 1954, also published as The Book of Rhythms, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1995.
• Famous American Negroes, Dodd, 1954.
• Famous Negro Music Makers, Dodd, 1955.
• The First Book of Jazz, F. Watts, 1955, revised edition, 1976.
• The First Book of the West Indies, F. Watts, 1956 (published in England as The First Book of the Caribbean, E. Ward, 1965).
• Famous Negro Heroes of America, Dodd, 1958.
• The First Book of Africa, F. Watts, 1960, revised edition, 1964.
• The Sweet and Sour Animal Book, Oxford University Press (New York City), 1994.
• Four Lincoln University Poets, Lincoln University, 1930.
• (With Bontemps) The Poetry of the Negro, 1746-1949, Doubleday, 1949, revised edition published as The Poetry of the Negro, 1746-1970, 1970.
• (With Waring Cuney and Bruce M. Wright) Lincoln University Poets, Fine Editions, 1954.
• (With Bontemps) The Book of Negro Folklore, Dodd, 1958.
• An African Treasury: Articles, Essays, Stories, Poems by Black Africans, Crown, 1960.
• Poems from Black Africa, Indiana University Press, 1963.
• New Negro Poets: U.S., foreword by Gwendolyn Brooks, Indiana University Press, 1964.
• The Book of Negro Humor, Dodd, 1966.
• The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers: An Anthology from 1899 to the Present, Little, Brown, 1967.
• (With Mercer Cook) Jacques Roumain, Masters of Dew, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947, second edition, Liberty Book Club, 1957.
• (With Frederic Carruthers) Nicolas Guillen, Cuba Libre, Ward Ritchie, 1948.
• Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral, Indiana University Press, 1957.

OMNIBUS VOLUMES

• Selected Poems, Knopf, 1959.
• The Best of Simple, Hill & Wang, 1961.
• Five Plays by Langston Hughes, edited by Webster Smalley, Indiana University Press, 1963.
• The Langston Hughes Reader, Braziller, 1968.
• Don't You Turn Back (poems), edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins, Knopf, 1969.
• Good Morning Revolution: The Uncollected Social Protest Writing of Langston Hughes, edited by Faith Berry, Lawrence Hill, 1973.
• The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Knopf, 1994.
• The Collected Works of Langston Hughes (18 volumes), University of Missouri Press, 2001, 2002.
• (With Bontemps) Arna Bontemps-Langston Hughes Letters: 1925-1967, edited by Charles H. Nichols, Dodd, 1980.
• (With Zora Neale Hurston) Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life (play), HarperCollins, 1991.
• Langston Hughes and the Chicago Defender: Essays on Race, Politics, and Culture, 1942-62, edited by Christopher C. De Santis, University of Illinois Press, 1995.
• Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964, edited by Emily Bernard, Knopf, 2001.

Author of numerous plays (most have been produced), including Little Ham, 1935, Mulatto, 1935, Emperor of Haiti, 1936, Troubled Island, 1936, When the Jack Hollers, 1936, Front Porch, 1937, Joy to My Soul, 1937, Soul Gone Home, 1937, Little Eva's End, 1938, Limitations of Life, 1938, The Em-Fuehrer Jones, 1938, Don't You Want to Be Free, 1938, The Organizer, 1939, The Sun Do Move, 1942, For This We Fight, 1943, The Barrier, 1950, The Glory round His Head, 1953, Simply Heavenly, 1957, Esther, 1957, The Ballad of the Brown King, 1960, Black Nativity, 1961, Gospel Glow, 1962, Jericho-Jim Crow, 1963, Tambourines to Glory, 1963, The Prodigal Son, 1965, Soul Yesterday and Today, Angelo Herndon Jones, Mother and Child, Trouble with the Angels, and Outshines the Sun. Also author of screenplay, Way Down South, 1942. Author of libretto for operas, The Barrier, 1950, and Troubled Island. Lyricist for Just around the Corner, and for Kurt Weill's Street Scene, 1948. Columnist for Chicago Defender and New York Post. Poetry, short stories, criticism, and plays have been included in numerous anthologies. Contributor to periodicals, including Nation, African Forum, Black Drama, Players Magazine, Negro Digest, Black World, Freedomways, Harlem Quarterly, Phylon, Challenge, Negro Quarterly, and Negro Story. Some of Hughes's letters, manuscripts, lecture notes, periodical clippings, and pamphlets are included in the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University. Additional materials are in the Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library, the library of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and the Fisk University library.

Further Readings

• Baker, Houston A., Jr., Black Literature in America, McGraw, 1971.
• Berry, Faith, Langston Hughes, Before and Beyond Harlem, Wings Books (New York, NY), 1995.
• Berry, S. L., Langston Hughes, Creative Education (Mankato, MN), 1994.
• Black Literature Criticism, Gale, 1992.
• Bone, Robert A., The Negro Novel in America, Yale University Press, 1965.
• Bonner, Pat E., Sassy Jazz and Slo' Draggin' Blues: Music in the Poetry of Langston Hughes, P. Lang (New York, NY), 1996.
• Children's Literature Review, Volume 17, Gale, 1989.
• Concise Dictionary of Literary Biography: The Age of Maturity, 1929-1941, Gale, 1989.
• Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale, Volume 1, 1973, Volume 5, 1976, Volume 10, 1979, Volume 15, 1980, Volume 35, 1985, Volume 44, 1987.
• Cooper, Floyd, Coming Home: From the Life of Langston Hughes, Philomel Books (New York, NY), 1994.
• (Dace, Tish, editor) Langston Hughes: The Contemporary Reviews, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1997.
• Davis, Arthur P., and Saunders Redding, editors, Cavalcade, Houghton, 1971.
• Dekle, Bernard, Profiles of Modern American Authors, Charles E. Tuttle, 1969.
• Dickinson, Donald C., A Bio-Bibliography of Langston Hughes, 1902-1967, Archon Books, 1967.
• Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale, Volume 4: American Writers in Paris, 1920-1939, 1980, Volume 7: Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, 1981, Volume 48: American Poets, 1880-1945, Second Series, 1986, Volume 51: Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940, 1987.
• Dunham, Montrew, Langston Hughes: Young Black Poet, Aladdin (New York City), 1995.
• Emanuel, James, Langston Hughes, Twayne, 1967.
• Gibson, Donald B., editor, Five Black Writers, New York University Press, 1970.
• Gibson, Donald B., editor and author of introduction, Modern Black Poets: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall, 1973.
• Harper, Donna Sullivan, Not So Simple: The "Simple" Stories by Langston Hughes, University of Missouri Press (Columbia), 1995.
• Hart, W., editor, American Writers' Congress, International, 1935.
• Hill, Christine, H., Langston Hughes: Poet of the Harlem Renaissance, Hanslow Pub. (Springfield, NJ), 1997.
• Hughes, Langston, The Big Sea: An Autobiography, Knopf, 1940.
• Hughes, Langston, I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey, Rinehart, 1956.
• Jackson, Blyden, and Louis D. Rubin Jr., Black Poetry in America: Two Essays in Historical Interpretation, Louisiana State University, 1974.
• Jahn, Janheinz, A Bibliography of Neo-African Literature from Africa, America and the Caribbean, Praeger, 1965.
• Littlejohn, David, Black on White: A Critical Survey of Writing by American Negroes, Viking, 1966.
• McLaren, Joseph, Langston Hughes, Folk Dramatist in the Protest Tradition, 1921-1943, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1996.
• Meltzer, Milton, Langston Hughes: A Biography, Crowell, 1968.
• Myers, Elizabeth P., Langston Hughes: Poet of His People, Garrard, 1970.
• Nazel, Joseph, Langston Hughes, Melrose Square (Los Angeles), 1994.
• Neilson, Kenneth, To Langston Hughes, with Love, All Seasons Art (Hollis, NY), 1996.
• O'Daniel, Thermon B., editor, Langston Hughes: Black Genius, a Critical Evaluation, Morrow, 1971.
• Osofsky, Audrey, Free to Dream: The Making of a Poet, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books (New York, NY), 1996.
• Rollins, Charlamae H., Black Troubador: Langston Hughes, Rand McNally, 1970.
• Trotman, C. James, Langston Hughes: The Man, His Art, and His Continuing Influence, Garland (New York, NY), 1995.
• Walker, Alice, Langston Hughes, American Poet, HarperCollins (New York City), 1988.

PERIODICALS

• African American Review, fall, 1994, p. 333.
• American Mercury, January, 1959.
• Black Scholar, June, 1971; July, 1976.
• Black World, June, 1970; September, 1972; September, 1973.
• Booklist, November 15, 1976; January 1, 1991, p. 889.
• Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, January, 1995, p. 168; January, 1996, p. 162.
• CLA Journal, June, 1972.
• Choice, February 1996, p. 951.
• Crisis, August-September, 1960; June, 1967; February, 1969.
• Ebony, October, 1946.
• Emerge, May, 1995, p. 58.
• English Journal, March, 1977.
• Horn Book, September-October, 1994, p. 603; January-February, 1996, p. 86.
• Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 1994, p. 578.
• Library Journal, February 1, 1991, p. 78.
• Life, February 4, 1966.
• Los Angeles Times Book Review, February 26, 1995, p. 1.
• Nation, December 4, 1967.
• Negro American Literature Forum, winter, 1971.
• Negro Digest, September, 1967; November, 1967; April, 1969.
• New Leader, April 10, 1967.
• New Republic, January 14, 1974; March 6, 1995, p. 37.
• New Yorker, December 30, 1967.
• New York Herald Tribune, August 1, 1926.
• New York Herald Tribune Books, November 26, 1961.
• New York Times, May 24, 1967; June 1, 1968; June 29, 1969; December 13, 1970; February 8, 1995, p. C17.
• New York Times Book Review, November 3, 1968; December 25, 1994, p. 15; February 12, 1995, p. 18; November 12, 1995, p. 38.
• Philadelphia Tribune, February 5, 1927.
• Poetry, August, 1968.
• Publishers Weekly, May 9, 1994, p. 62; October 3, 1994, p. 30; October 31, 1994, p.54; November 13, 1995, p. 60.
• San Francisco Chronicle, April 5, 1959.
• Saturday Review, November 22, 1958; September 29, 1962.
• School Library Journal, February, 1995, p. 92.
• Smithsonian, August, 1994, p. 49.
• Tribune Book's (Chicago), April 13, 1980.
• Washington Post, November 13, 1978.
• Washington Post Book World, February 2, 1969; December 8, 1985.
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Langston Hughes 1902-1967.

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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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Langston Hughes - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Langston Hughes

Tone - the poet's attitude toward the subject of the poem (this may be different ... but she had a twelve-room. house to clean. had to get breakfast, dinner, ... – powerpoint ppt presentation.

• Born 1902- Grew up mainly in Lawrence, Kansas
• As child, his mother (a teacher) sued to allow him to go to a white school- succeeded, but Hughes was an outcast
• Dad left U.S. because of racism- mother had to work, so Hughes strongly by grandmother, whose husband died with John Brown
• 1921- Went to Colombia (in NYC) but dropped out due to discrimination
• 1922- Worked series of menial jobs- including working on a ship that eventually brought him to Paris- travelled in Europe for a year- part of black expatriate community
• 1924- Returned to U.S.- was discovered as poet, and finished college at Lincoln, PA- a historically black college
• Late 1920s- Returned to Harlem- lived there for rest of life
• Died in 1968
• subject - the general or specific topic of the poem (what the poem is about).
• tone - the poet's attitude toward the subject of the poem (this may be different from the speaker's attitude). We can identify the tone of the poem by noting the author's use of poetic devices.
• theme - The statement the poem/poet makes about its subject. 
• Hughes clashed early with DuBois and others due to his celebration of low black culture
• Also challenged superiority of white culture
• "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... If colored people are pleased we are glad. 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."
• Emphasized humor, wit, and strength of common people
• Poems Madam and Her Madam, Brass Spittoons, Share Croppers
• I worked for a woman,
• She wasn't mean
• But she had a twelve-room
• House to cleanHad to get breakfast,
• Dinner, and supper, too
• Then take care of her children
• When I got through.Wash, iron, and scrub,
• Walk the dog around
• It was too much,
• Nearly broke me down.I said, Madam,
• Can it beYou
• trying to make
• A Pack-horse out of me?She opened her mouth
• .She cried, Oh, no! You know,
• Alberta,I love you so!I said, Madam,
• That may be true
• But I'll be dogged if I love you!
• Fascinated by Jazz and Blues
• Used rhythms and patterns of this music in his poetry
• Also tied into his desire to portray life of common people
• Poems Dream Variations, Same in Blues, The Weary Blues
• Good morning,daddy!
• Aint you heard
• The boogie-woogie rumble
• Of a dream deferred?
• Listen closely
• Youll hear their feet
• Beating out and beating out a ?
• Its a happy beat?
• Listen to it closely
• Aintt you heard
• Something underneath
• What did I say?
• Hughes essentially optimistic, in that he believes in possibility of racial equality
• At same time, incredibly bitter about the hypocrisy of white liberals who talk one thing and act another way.
• Repeated phrase- a dream deferred
• Poems Democracy, I Too, Harlem, Merry- Go-Round
• What happens to a dream deferred?
• Does it dry uplike 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 sagslike a heavy load.
• Or does it explode?
• Hughes had a lot of abandonment issues
• Also spent childhood in white culture, but never accepted as part of it.
• Thus, many poems about what it is to be black, white, somewhere in between
• Poems Negro Mother, Negro Speaks of Rivers, The Bitter River, Cross, Mother to Son, Theme for English B.
• 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.I bathed in the Euphrates
• when dawns were young.
• I built my hut near the Congo
• and it lulled me to sleep.I looked upon the Nile
• and raised the pyramids above it.
• I heard the singing of the Mississippi
• when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans,
• and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.I've known riversAncient, dusky rivers.My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

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Langston Hughes Introduction PowerPoint & Student Guide

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Description

This 17-slide PowerPoint introduces the poet Langston Hughes to students. See the preview for more information of what is contained in the presentation.

Topics include the following: Vital Statistics, Early Years, High School, After High School, Writing, College, Harlem Renaissance, Major Influences, Not Just Poetry, Historical First, and In His Own Words.

This unit is a great way to study the Harlem Renaissance, Modern Literature, and/or Langston Hughes.

In addition to the PPT, there is a 4-page fill-in-the-blank and open-answers lecture guide for the students. This helps keeps students focused on the presentation as you deliver it. The guide comes in Word and in PDF, making for 8 pages total.

A 4-page answer key for the student guide is included if you decide to make that an assignment. The answer key also comes in Word and in PDF, making for 8 pages total.

Depending on how in-depth you get with your lecture, this presentation could take 30 to 60 minutes. If you develop the lecture and include class discussion, it could take 1 to 2 days.

It's meant to introduce Hughes to students before they study his work. If you are looking for works to study, see the Langston Hughes products in my store.

Links to All Langston Hughes Products in My Store

Langston Hughes Author Study Bundle: Intro PPT, "Harlem," "I, Too," & "The Weary Blues"

Langston Hughes Intro PPT with "Harlem," "I, Too," & "The Weary Blues": Bundle

3-Poem Author Study: Langston Hughes' "I, Too," "Harlem," & "The Weary Blues"

"Harlem" by Langston Hughes: Poem, Questions, & Key

"I, Too" by Langston Hughes: Poem, Questions, & Key

"The Weary Blues" by Langston Hughes: Poem, Questions, & Key

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Langston Hughes

Jul 20, 2014

70 likes | 227 Views

Langston Hughes. 1902 - 1967. Born in Joplin, Missouri Raised by his grandma until he was 13 Moved in with his mother and attended high school in Cleveland. Attended Columbia University (New York) for one year His father wanted him to be an engineer.

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Presentation Transcript

Langston Hughes 1902 - 1967

Born in Joplin, Missouri • Raised by his grandma until he was 13 • Moved in with his mother and attended high school in Cleveland

Attended Columbia University (New York) for one year • His father wanted him to be an engineer

Held a variety of jobs: cook, launderer, & busboy • Traveled to Europe and Africa working on freighters • Finished college at Lincoln University (PA) • Settled in Harlem, New York • Wrote mostly poetry and short stories

Was a key player in the Harlem Renaissance • Movement in the 20’s which promoted African American culture • Literary, musical, theatrical, and visual arts achievements • Died in 1967 of cancer

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