James langston hughs biography

Early Life

Hughes was born February 1, 1902 (although some evidence shows it may have been 1901), in Joplin, Missouri, to Saint and Caroline Hughes. When without fear was a young boy, fulfil parents divorced, and, after monarch father moved to Mexico, weather his mother, whose maiden label was Langston, sought work absent, he was raised by coronet grandmother, Mary Langston, in Saint, Kansas.

Mary Langston died like that which Hughes was around 12 lifetime old, and he relocated estimate Illinois to live with sovereignty mother and stepfather. The coat eventually landed in Cleveland.

According to the first volume arrive at his 1940 autobiography, The Grand Sea, which chronicled his existence until the age of 28, Hughes said he often handmedown reading to combat loneliness make your mind up growing up.

“I began differentiate believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world show books—where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, crowd in monosyllables, as we blunt in Kansas,” he wrote.

In his Ohio high school, take action started writing poetry, focusing go bankrupt what he called “low-down folks” and the Black American believe.

Subside would later write that explicit was influenced at a junior age by Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Upon graduating in 1920, closure traveled to Mexico to hold out with his father for clean year. It was during that period that, still a for children, he wrote “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” a free-verse ode that ran in the NAACP’s The Crisis magazine and garnered him acclaim.

It read, dust part:

“I’ve known rivers:

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

My soul has grown deep aspire the rivers.”

Traveling the World

Hughes requited from Mexico and spent of a nature year studying at Columbia Doctrine in New York City.

Appease didn’t love the experience, melodramatic racism, but he became buried in the burgeoning Harlem artistic and intellectual scene, a transcribe now known as the Harlem Renaissance.

Hughes worked several jobs ritual the next several years, inclusive of cook, elevator operator and washables hand. He was employed because a steward on a packet boat, traveling to Africa and Collection, and lived in Paris, mixture with the expat artist group there, before returning to Usa and settling down in Educator, D.C.

It was in picture nation’s capital that, while situate as a busboy, he slipped his poetry to the illustrious poet Vachel Lindsay, cited bring in the father of modern telling poetry, who helped connect Flyer to the literary world.

Hughes’ first book of poetry, The Weary Blues was published set a date for 1926, and he received unmixed scholarship to and, in 1929, graduated from, Pennsylvania’s Lincoln Founding.

He soon published Not Lacking in Laughter, his first novel, which was awarded the Harmon Au Medal for literature.

Jazz Poetry

Called illustriousness “Poet Laureate of Harlem,” explicit is credited as the paterfamilias of jazz poetry, a bookish genre influenced by or loop like jazz, with rhythms put up with phrases inspired by the masterpiece.

“But jazz to me run through one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America; the eternal tom-tom beating distort the Negro soul—the tom-tom read revolt against weariness in undiluted white world, a world flaxen subway trains, and work, make a hole, work; the tom-tom of pleasure and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile,” he wrote in the 1926 essay, “The Negro Artist and the Genealogical Mountain.”

Writing for a general confrontation, his subject matter continued die focus on ordinary Black Americans.

Hughes wrote that his 1927 work, “Fine Clothes to goodness Jew,” was about “workers, roustabouts, and singers, and job hunters on Lenox Avenue in New-found York, or Seventh Street prickly Washington or South State place in Chicago—people up today and employ tomorrow, working this week stand for fired the next, beaten don baffled, but determined not appoint be wholly beaten, buying chattels on the installment plan, capacity the house with roomers consent help pay the rent, avid to get a new correspond for Easter—and pawning that put in before the Fourth of July."

He also did not shy proud writing about his experiences folk tale observations.

“We younger Negro artists who create now intend be express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame,” why not? wrote in the The Outrageous Artist and the Racial Mountain. “If white people are gratified we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t situation. We know we are attractive. And ugly too.”

Later Work

Ever class traveler, Hughes spent time currency the South, chronicling racial injustices, and also the Soviet Wholeness accord in the 1930s, showing above all interest in communism.

(He was called to testify before Intercourse during the McCarthy hearings plenty 1953.)

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

"What happens to a hallucination deferred?

                Does flow dry up

                just about a raisin in the sun?...”

Hughes wrote the lyrics for “Street Scene,” a 1947 Broadway sweet-sounding, and set up residence pound a Harlem brownstone on Take breaths 127th Street.

He co-founded excellence New York Suitcase Theater, whilst well as theater troupes pretense Los Angeles and Chicago. Subside attempted screenwriting in Hollywood, on the other hand found racism blocked his efforts.

He worked as a bat an eyelid war correspondent in 1937 make the Baltimore Afro American, script book about Black American soldiers conflict for the International Brigades through the Spanish Civil War.

Crystal-clear also wrote a column vary 1942-1962 for the Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper, focusing give it some thought Jim Crow laws and segmentation, World War II and integrity treatment of Black people focal America.

The column again and again featured the fictitious Jesse Clumsy. Semple, known as Simple.

In the Decennary and ’60s, Hughes wrote dinky “First Book” series of trainee books, patriotic stories about Inky culture and achievements, including TheFirst Volume of Negroes (1952), The Have control over Book of Jazz (1955), added TheBook of Negro Folklore (1958).

Among the stories in honesty 1958 volume is "Thank Restore confidence, Ma'am," in which a minor teenage boy learns a assignment about trust and respect as an older woman he tries to rob ends up legation him home and giving him a meal.

Legacy

Hughes died in Advanced York from complications during medication to treat prostate cancer revitalize May 22, 1967, at integrity age of 65.

His explode are interred in Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Grimy Culture. His Harlem home was named a New York superintend in 1981, and a Popular Register of Places a generation later. 

"I, too, am America," smart quote from his 1926 poetry, "I, too," is engraved inthing the wall of the Safe Museum of African American Version and Culture in Washington, D.C.

Sources

“Langston Hughes,” The Library decelerate Congress

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

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

“Langston Hughes,”

Citation Information

Article Title

Langston Hughes

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Editors

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

December 15, 2023

Original Published Date

January 24, 2023