langston hughes biography in english

Biography of Langston Hughes, Poet, Key Figure in Harlem Renaissance

Hughes wrote about the African-American experience

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Langston Hughes was a singular voice in American poetry, writing with vivid imagery and jazz-influenced rhythms about the everyday Black experience in the United States. While best-known for his modern, free-form poetry with superficial simplicity masking deeper symbolism, Hughes worked in fiction, drama, and film as well.

Hughes purposefully mixed his own personal experiences into his work, setting him apart from other major Black poets of the era, and placing him at the forefront of the literary movement known as the Harlem Renaissance . From the early 1920s to the late 1930s, this explosion of poetry and other work by Black Americans profoundly changed the artistic landscape of the country and continues to influence writers to this day.

Fast Facts: Langston Hughes

• Full Name: James Mercer Langston Hughes
• Known For: Poet, novelist, journalist, activist
• Born: February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri
• Parents: James and Caroline Hughes (née Langston)
• Died: May 22, 1967 in New York, New York
• Education: Lincoln University of Pennsylvania
• Selected Works: The Weary Blues, The Ways of White Folks, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Montage of a Dream Deferred
•  Notable Quote: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers."

Early Years

Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1902. His father divorced his mother shortly thereafter and left them to travel. As a result of the split, he was primarily raised by his grandmother, Mary Langston, who had a strong influence on Hughes, educating him in the oral traditions of his people and impressing upon him a sense of pride; she was referred to often in his poems. After Mary Langston died, Hughes moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her new husband. He began writing poetry shortly after enrolling in high school.

Hughes moved to Mexico in 1919 to live with his father for a short time. In 1920, Hughes graduated high school and returned to Mexico. He wished to attend Columbia University in New York and lobbied his father for financial assistance; his father did not think writing was a good career, and offered to pay for college only if Hughes studied engineering. Hughes attended Columbia University in 1921 and did well, but found the racism he encountered there to be corrosive—though the surrounding Harlem neighborhood was inspiring to him. His affection for Harlem remained strong for the rest of his life. He left Columbia after one year, worked a series of odd jobs, and traveled to Africa working as a crewman on a boat, and from there on to Paris. There he became part of the Black expatriate community of artists.

The Crisis to Fine Clothes to the Jew (1921-1930)

• The Negro Speaks of Rivers (1921)
• The Weary Blues (1926)
• The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain (1926)
• Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927)
• Not Without Laughter (1930)

Hughes wrote his poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers while still in high school, and published it in The Crisis , the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The poem gained Hughes a great deal of attention; influenced by Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg, it is a tribute to Black people throughout history in a free verse format:

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.

Hughes began to publish poems on a regular basis, and in 1925 won the Poetry Prize from Opportunity Magazine . Fellow writer Carl Van Vechten, who Hughes had met on his overseas travels, sent Hughes’ work to Alfred A. Knopf, who enthusiastically published Hughes’ first collection of poetry, The Weary Blues in 1926.

Around the same time, Hughes took advantage of his job as a busboy in a Washington, D.C., hotel to give several poems to poet Vachel Lindsay, who began to champion Hughes in the mainstream media of the time, claiming to have discovered him. Based on these literary successes, Hughes received a scholarship to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and published The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain in The Nation . The piece was a manifesto calling for more Black artists to produce Black-centric art without worrying whether white audiences would appreciate it—or approve of it.

In 1927, Hughes published his second collection of poetry, Fine Clothes to the Jew. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1929. In 1930, Hughes published Not Without Laughter , which is sometimes described as a "prose poem" and sometimes as a novel, signaling his continued evolution and his impending experiments outside of poetry.

By this point, Hughes was firmly established as a leading light in what is known as the Harlem Renaissance. The literary movement celebrated Black art and culture as public interest in the subject soared.

Fiction, Film, and Theater Work (1931-1949)

• The Ways of White Folks (1934)
• Mulatto (1935)
• Way Down South (1935)
• The Big Sea (1940)

Hughes traveled through the American South in 1931 and his work became more forcefully political, as he became increasingly aware of the racial injustices of the time. Always sympathetic to communist political theory, seeing it as an alternative to the implicit racism of capitalism, he also traveled extensively through the Soviet Union during the 1930s.

He published his first collection of short fiction, The Ways of White Folks , in 1934. The story cycle is marked by a certain pessimism in regards to race relations; Hughes seems to suggest in these stories that there will never be a time without racism in this country. His play Mulatto , first staged in 1935, deals with many of the same themes as the most famous story in the collection, Cora Unashamed , which tells the story of a Black servant who develops a close emotional bond with the young white daughter of her employers.

Hughes became increasingly interested in the theater, and founded the New York Suitcase Theater with Paul Peters in 1931. After receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935, he also co-founded a theater troupe in Los Angeles while co-writing the screenplay for the film Way Down South . Hughes imagined he would be an in-demand screenwriter in Hollywood; his failure to gain much success in the industry was put down to racism. He wrote and published his autobiography The Big Sea in 1940 despite being only 28 years old; the chapter titled Black Renaissance discussed the literary movement in Harlem and inspired the name "Harlem Renaissance."

Continuing his interest in theater, Hughes founded the Skyloft Players in Chicago in 1941 and began writing a regular column for the Chicago Defender , which he would continue to write for two decades. After World War II and the Civil Rights Movement ’s rise and successes, Hughes found that the younger generation of Black artists, coming into a world where segregation was ending and real progress seemed possible in terms of race relations and the Black experience, saw him as a relic of the past. His style of writing and Black-centric subject matter seemed passé .

Children’s Books and Later Work (1950-1967)

• Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)
• The First Book of the Negroes (1952)
• I Wonder as I Wander (1956)
• A Pictorial History of the Negro in America (1956)
• The Book of Negro Folklore (1958)

Hughes attempted to interact with the new generation of Black artists by directly addressing them, but rejecting what he saw as their vulgarity and over-intellectual approach. His epic poem "suite," Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951) took inspiration from jazz music, collecting a series of related poems sharing the overarching theme of a "dream deferred" into something akin to a film montage—a series of images and short poems following quickly after each other in order to position references and symbolism together. The most famous section from the larger poem is the most direct and powerful statement of the theme, known as Harlem :

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like 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 sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode ?

In 1956, Hughes published his second autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander . He took a greater interest in documenting the cultural history of Black America, producing A Pictorial History of the Negro in America in 1956, and editing The Book of Negro Folklore in 1958.

Hughes continued to work throughout the 1960s and was considered by many to be the leading writer of Black America at the time, although none of his works after Montage of a Dream Deferred approached the power and clarity of his work during his prime.

Although Hughes had previously published a book for children in 1932 ( Popo and Fifina ), in the 1950s he began publishing books specifically for children regularly, including his First Book series, which was designed to instill a sense of pride in and respect for the cultural achievements of African Americans in its youth. The series included The First Book of the Negroes (1952), The First Book of Jazz (1954), The First Book of Rhythms (1954), The First Book of the West Indies (1956), and The First Book of Africa (1964).

The tone of these children’s books was perceived as very patriotic as well as focused on the appreciation of Black culture and history. Many people, aware of Hughes’ flirtations with communism and his run-in with Senator McCarthy , suspected he attempted to make his children’s books self-consciously patriotic in order to combat any perception that he might not be a loyal citizen.

Personal Life

While Hughes reportedly had several affairs with women during his life, he never married or had children. Theories concerning his sexual orientation abound; many believe that Hughes, known for strong affections for Black men in his life, seeded clues about his homosexuality throughout his poems (something Walt Whitman, one of his key influences, was known to do in his own work). However, there is no overt evidence to support this, and some argue that Hughes was, if anything, asexual and uninterested in sex.

Despite his early and long-term interest in socialism and his visit to the Soviet Union, Hughes denied being a communist when called to testify by Senator Joseph McCarthy. He then distanced himself from communism and socialism, and was thus estranged from the political left that had often supported him. His work dealt less and less with political considerations after the mid-1950s as a result, and when he compiled the poems for his 1959 collection Selected Poems, he excluded most of his more politically-focused work from his youth.

Hughes was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and entered the Stuyvesant Polyclinic in New York City on May 22, 1967 to undergo surgery to treat the disease. Complications arose during the procedure, and Hughes passed away at the age of 65. He was cremated, and his ashes interred in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, where the floor bears a design based on his poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers , including a line from the poem inscribed on the floor.

Hughes turned his poetry outward at a time in the early 20th century when Black artists were increasingly turning inward, writing for an insular audience. Hughes wrote about Black history and the Black experience, but he wrote for a general audience, seeking to convey his ideas in emotional, easily-understood motifs and phrases that nevertheless had power and subtlety behind them.

Hughes incorporated the rhythms of modern speech in Black neighborhoods and of jazz and blues music, and he included characters of "low" morals in his poems, including alcoholics, gamblers, and prostitutes, whereas most Black literature sought to disavow such characters because of a fear of proving some of the worst racist assumptions. Hughes felt strongly that showing all aspects of Black culture was part of reflecting life and refused to apologize for what he called the "indelicate" nature of his writing.

• Als, Hilton. “The Elusive Langston Hughes.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 9 July 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/sojourner.
• Ward, David C. “Why Langston Hughes Still Reigns as a Poet for the Unchampioned.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 22 May 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/why-langston-hughes-still-reigns-poet-unchampioned-180963405/.
• Johnson, Marisa, et al. “Women in the Life of Langston Hughes.” US History Scene, http://ushistoryscene.com/article/women-and-hughes/.
• McKinney, Kelsey. “Langston Hughes Wrote a Children's Book in 1955.” Vox, Vox, 2 Apr. 2015, https://www.vox.com/2015/4/2/8335251/langston-hughes-jazz-book.
• Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, https://poets.org/poet/langston-hughes.
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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

By: History.com Editors

Updated: December 15, 2023 | Original: January 24, 2023

Langston Hughes was a defining figure of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance  as an influential poet, playwright, novelist, short story writer, essayist, political commentator and social activist. Known as a poet of the people, his work focused on the everyday lives of the Black working class, earning him renown as one of America’s most notable poets.

Hughes was born February 1, 1902 (although some evidence shows it may have been 1901 ), in Joplin, Missouri, to James and Caroline Hughes. When he was a young boy, his parents divorced, and, after his father moved to Mexico, and his mother, whose maiden name was Langston, sought work elsewhere, he was raised by his grandmother, Mary Langston, in Lawrence, Kansas. Mary Langston died when Hughes was around 12 years old, and he relocated to Illinois to live with his mother and stepfather. The family eventually landed in Cleveland.

According to the first volume of his 1940 autobiography, The Big Sea , which chronicled his life until the age of 28, Hughes said he often used reading to combat loneliness while growing up. “I began to believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world in books—where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas,” he wrote.

In his Ohio high school, he started writing poetry, focusing on what he called “low-down folks” and the Black American experience. He would later write that he was influenced at a young age by Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Upon graduating in 1920, he traveled to Mexico to live with his father for a year. It was during this period that, still a teenager, he wrote “ The Negro Speaks of Rivers ,” a free-verse poem that ran in the NAACP ’s The Crisis magazine and garnered him acclaim. It read, in part:

“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.”

Traveling the World

Hughes returned from Mexico and spent one year studying at Columbia University in New York City . He didn’t love the experience, citing racism, but he became immersed in the burgeoning Harlem cultural and intellectual scene, a period now known as the Harlem Renaissance.

Hughes worked several jobs over the next several years, including cook, elevator operator and laundry hand. He was employed as a steward on a ship, traveling to Africa and Europe, and lived in Paris, mingling with the expat artist community there, before returning to America and settling down in Washington, D.C. It was in the nation’s capital that, while working as a busboy, he slipped his poetry to the noted poet Vachel Lindsay, cited as the father of modern singing poetry, who helped connect Hughes to the literary world.

Hughes’ first book of poetry, The Weary Blues was published in 1926, and he received a scholarship to and, in 1929, graduated from, Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University. He soon published Not Without Laughter , his first novel, which was awarded the Harmon Gold Medal for literature.

Jazz Poetry

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

“But jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America; the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul—the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile,” he wrote in the 1926 essay, “ The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain .”

Writing for a general audience, his subject matter continued to focus on ordinary Black Americans. Hughes wrote that his 1927 work, “Fine Clothes to the Jew,” was 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."

He also did not shy from writing about his experiences and observations.

“We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame,” he wrote in the The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain . “If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too.”

Ever the traveler, Hughes spent time in the South, chronicling racial injustices, and also the Soviet Union in the 1930s, showing an interest in communism . (He was called to testify before Congress during the McCarthy hearings in 1953.)

In 1930, Hughes wrote “Mule Bone” with Zora Neale Hurston , his first play, which would be the first of many. “Mulatto: A Tragedy of the Deep South,” about race issues, was Broadway’s longest-running play written by a Black author until Lorraine Hansberry’s 1958 play, “A Raisin in the Sun.” Hansberry based the name of her play 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 the lyrics for “Street Scene,” a 1947 Broadway musical, and set up residence in a Harlem brownstone on East 127th Street. He co-founded the New York Suitcase Theater, as well as theater troupes in Los Angeles and Chicago. He attempted screenwriting in Hollywood, but found racism blocked his efforts.

He worked as a newspaper war correspondent in 1937 for the Baltimore Afro American , writing about Black American soldiers fighting for the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War . He also wrote a column from 1942-1962 for the Chicago Defender , a Black newspaper, focusing on Jim Crow laws and segregation , World War II and the treatment of Black people in America. The column often featured the fictitious Jesse B. Semple, known as Simple.

In the 1950s and ’60s, Hughes wrote a “First Book” series of children's books, patriotic stories about Black culture and achievements, including The First Book of Negroes (1952), The First Book of Jazz (1955), and The Book of Negro Folklore (1958). Among the stories in the 1958 volume is "Thank You, Ma'am," in which a young teenage boy learns a lesson about trust and respect when an older woman he tries to rob ends up taking him home and giving him a meal.

Hughes died in New York from complications during surgery to treat prostate cancer on May 22, 1967, at the age of 65. His ashes are interred in Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. His Harlem home was named a New York landmark in 1981, and a National Register of Places a year later. 

"I, too, am America," a quote from his 1926 poem, " I, too, " is engraved on the wall of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

“ Langston Hughes ,” The Library of Congress

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

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

“ Langston Hughes ,” Poets.org

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Biography: langston hughes.

James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri.

He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry. Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that “the negro was in vogue”, which was later paraphrased as “when Harlem was in vogue.”

First published in The Crisis in 1921, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” which became Hughes’s signature poem, was collected in his first book of poetry The Weary Blues (1926). Hughes’s first and last published poems appeared in The Crisis ; more of his poems were published in The Crisis than in any other journal. Hughes’s life and work were enormously influential during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, alongside those of his contemporaries, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Aaron Douglas.

Hughes and his contemporaries had different goals and aspirations than the black middle class. They criticized the men known as the midwives of the Harlem Renaissance: W. E. B. Du Bois, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and Alain LeRoy Locke, as being overly accommodating and assimilating eurocentric values and culture to achieve social equality.

Hughes and his fellows tried to depict the “low-life” in their art: that is, the real lives of blacks in the lower social-economic strata. They criticized the divisions and prejudices based on skin color within the black community.   Hughes wrote what would be considered their manifesto, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” published in  The Nation in 1926:

The 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. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain free within ourselves.

His poetry and fiction portrayed the lives of the working-class blacks in America, lives he portrayed as full of struggle, joy, laughter, and music. Permeating his work is pride in the African-American identity and its diverse culture. “My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind,”   Hughes is quoted as saying. He confronted racial stereotypes, protested social conditions, and expanded African America’s image of itself–a “people’s poet” who sought to reeducate both audience and artist by lifting the theory of the black aesthetic into reality.

Hughes stressed a racial consciousness and cultural nationalism devoid of self-hate. His thought united people of African descent and Africa across the globe to encourage pride in their diverse black folk culture and black aesthetic. Hughes was one of the few prominent black writers to champion racial consciousness as a source of inspiration for black artists. In addition to his example in social attitudes, Hughes had an important technical influence by his emphasis on folk and jazz rhythms as the basis of his poetry of racial pride.

View Upton Sinclair’s full biography on Wikipedia.

• Langston Hughes. Provided by : Wikipedia. Located at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langston_Hughes . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Image of Langston Hughes. Authored by : Carl van Vechten. Located at : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Langston_Hughes_by_Carl_Van_Vechten_1936.jpg . License : Public Domain: No Known Copyright

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Langston Hughes: The People's Poet

Sitting at his typewriter, a pencil in hand, Langston Hughes looks out just beyond the frame as though poised to capture and crystallize a verse still forming. The portrait, photographed by Louis H. Draper, gives only a glimpse of the writer who “simply liked people,” as Arnold Rampersad writes in the introduction to “Selected Letters of Langston Hughes.” “If he was lonely in essential ways, his main response to his pain was to create a body of art that others could admire and applaud.” 

Born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1902, it was the writer's many years in Harlem that would come to characterize his work. There he focused squarely on the lives of working-class black Americans, delicately dismantling clichés and, in doing so, arriving at a genuine portrayal of the people he knew best. 

But Hughes’s body of work, steeped as it was in stories of everyday life, was not without its critics. Hughes's writing, especially his use of the fictional character Jesse B. Semple (a.k.a. “Simple”) portrayed what critics saw as an unattractive view of black American life. Commenting on the writer's poetry collection, “Fine Clothes to the Jew,”​ EstaceGay asserted that “our aim ought to be [to] present to the general public, already misinformed both by well meaning and malicious writers, our higher aims and aspirations, and our better selves.”​ What such criticisms miss, however, is that Hughes's eloquently spare and humble verse was never disparaging. In telling stories of those he encountered, Hughes brought to light not only the drudgery but also the determination alive in Harlem.

Writing in Black World, one reviewer captured the popularity of Simple - a character who “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.” Hughes's beloved poem “I, Too” underlines both the empathy the writer showed for the working class and the quiet resistance these figures had come to represent. “Tomorrow, / I'll be at the table / When company comes … They'll see how beautiful I am / And be ashamed” Hughes’s unnamed first person is far from a passive observer of racism and its ruptures. Here is an individual sure of him or herself and confident in a justice still unrealized.

Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, The Estate of Louis H. Draper

Indeed, the subtleties and singularities of Hughes’s characters set apart the writer’s work. Angela Flournoy echoes this sentiment in her review of “Not Without Laughter,” Hughes's debut novel .  “Hughes accesses the universal - how all of us love and dream and laugh and cry - by staying faithful to the particulars of his characters and their way of life.” In the novel, themes of migration have particular resonance. It is the fascinating, intimate character studies Hughes offers which anchor an otherwise mercurial world. So, too, are the characters in his work resoundingly robust. By Hughes's own account, Simple “tells me his tales, mostly in high humor, but sometimes with a pain in his soul as sharp as the occasional hurt of that bunion on his right foot. Sometimes, as the old blues says, Simple might be ‘laughing to keep from crying.”

Here, then, are characters endowed with a depth akin to the river Hughes references in the much-beloved poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” In the poem's opening stanza the still unknown narrator recounts “I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in veins. / My soul has grown deep like the rivers.” One imagines from these lines that Simple, and other working-class Americans like him, knew comparable depths and, in finding their strength, realized the broader continuities between past and present trials.

Winold Reiss, "Langston Hughes," National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of W. Tjark Reiss, in memory of his father, Winold Reiss

What is inspiring about Hughes’s work, is that despite the hardship and hopelessness that colored his poetry and prose, he maintained a striking, confident assurance that a brighter future awaits. Typifying that impulse is Hughes’s poem “Let America Be America Again.” In one of the final stanzas, Hughes writes, “O, let America be America again - / The land that never has been yet - / And yet must be - the land where every man is free.”

Hughes knew the struggle of the working class intimately, indeed, he devoted much of the poem to it, while assuring readers that the future is a just one. This counterfactual history seems, at times, to be at odds with the stories of bigotry that emerge in Hughes's work in ways big and small. This hope, though, appears to derive less from mere idealism and more from the purview of a writer who, more than anything else, loved people and hoped - believed, even - that their work would not be in vain.

Indeed, it was Hughes's realistic idealism that made him the celebrated writer he is today. As raw as racism once was and as traumatizing as it still is, bringing to light the stories of the oppressed seems an enduring antidote - a phenomenon Hughes knew well. The writer was resolute in listening to the stories of the working class and telling those stories in a language they understood. By so doing, he reflected the beauty and boundlessness of the Harlem he experienced every day.

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Langston Hughes: Poems, Biography, and Timeline of his early career

Contents of this path:.

• 1 2022-01-05T15:17:55-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "The Weary Blues" (full text) (1926) 12 plain 2024-02-10T07:34:48-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2023-05-07T09:35:02-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "Fine Clothes to the Jew" (1927) (Full Text) 4 plain 2024-02-01T15:15:31-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-01-09T13:48:19-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Poems by Langston Hughes in "The New Negro" (1925) 1 plain 2022-01-09T13:48:19-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-01-05T15:14:17-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (1921) 8 plain 2024-01-09T11:08:46-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-01-06T10:13:29-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "Aunt Sue's Stories" (1921) 3 plain 2022-07-02T08:31:28-04:00 07/01/1921 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-01-05T15:08:09-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "Song for a Banjo Dance" (1922) 4 plain 2024-01-09T10:53:16-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-01-06T10:16:44-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "When Sue Wears Red" (1923) 2 plain 2022-07-02T08:29:32-04:00 02/01/1923 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-07-19T14:25:59-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "Dreams" (1923) 1 plain 2022-07-19T14:25:59-04:00 05/01/1923 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-07-11T11:52:37-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "The Last Feast of Belshazzar" (1923) 1 plain 2022-07-11T11:52:37-04:00 08/01/1923 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-01-05T15:10:29-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "Winter Moon" (1923) 3 plain 2024-01-09T11:00:40-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-08-04T12:23:14-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "Song for a Suicide" (1924) 1 plain 2022-08-04T12:23:14-04:00 05/01/1924 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-08-16T08:40:49-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "Johannesburg Mines" (1925) 1 plain 2022-08-16T08:40:49-04:00 02/01/1925 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-08-16T08:39:13-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "Steel Mills" (1925) 1 plain 2022-08-16T08:39:13-04:00 02/01/1925 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-08-16T08:31:34-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "To Certain Intellectuals" (1925) 1 plain 2022-08-16T08:31:34-04:00 01/01/1925 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-07-11T12:55:18-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "To a Negro Jazz Band in a Parisian Cabaret" (1925) 2 plain 2022-07-11T12:56:07-04:00 12/01/1925 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-01-06T10:16:06-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "To the Black Beloved" (1925) 4 plain 2024-01-26T16:59:49-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-07-11T14:57:12-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "Love Song for Lucinda" (1926) 1 plain 2022-07-11T14:57:12-04:00 05/01/1926 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-01-06T10:29:14-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "Young Bride" (1925) 5 plain 2024-02-10T07:39:51-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-07-11T11:09:50-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "The Poppy Flower" (1925) 1 plain 2022-07-11T11:09:50-04:00 02/01/1925 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-01-06T10:32:10-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "Summer Night" (1925) 4 plain 2022-07-11T12:42:15-04:00 12/01/1925 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-07-11T13:00:50-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "A Song to a Negro Wash-woman" (1925) 1 plain 2022-07-11T13:00:50-04:00 01/01/1925 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-08-05T16:33:06-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "To Beauty" (1926) 1 plain 2022-08-05T16:33:06-04:00 10/01/1926 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2022-08-05T15:52:56-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "The Ring" (1926) 1 plain 2022-08-05T15:52:56-04:00 04/01/1926 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2024-03-12T07:08:12-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "Being Old" (1927) 1 plain 2024-03-12T07:08:12-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2024-03-10T08:39:01-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "Ma Lord" (1927) 1 plain 2024-03-10T08:39:01-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2024-03-05T11:41:36-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "For an Indian Screen" (1927) 1 plain 2024-03-05T11:41:36-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2024-03-05T11:43:29-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "Lincoln Monument" (1927) 2 plain 2024-03-05T11:45:02-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2024-03-05T12:33:07-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "I Thought it was Tangiers I Wanter" (1927) 1 plain 2024-03-05T12:33:07-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2024-03-05T11:44:23-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "Day" (1927) 1 plain 2024-03-05T11:44:23-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2024-03-05T11:42:34-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "Passing Love" (1927) 1 plain 2024-03-05T11:42:34-05:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2024-03-12T07:08:50-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "Freedom Seeker" (1927) 1 plain 2024-03-12T07:08:50-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2024-03-12T09:26:11-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "Montmartre Beggar Woman" (1927) 1 plain 2024-03-12T09:26:11-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1
• 1 2024-03-10T08:49:52-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1 Langston Hughes, "Tapestry" (1927) 1 plain 2024-03-10T08:49:52-04:00 Amardeep Singh c185e79df2fca428277052b90841c4aba30044e1

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• 1 media/langston hughes 1923_thumb.jpg 2022-07-21T10:50:03-04:00 Langston Hughes Photo 1923 1 Photo of Langston Hughes taken for Robert Kerlin's "Negro Poets and their Poems" (1923) media/langston hughes 1923.jpg plain 2022-07-21T10:50:03-04:00
• 1 media/Langston Hughes Photo 1936 Carl Van Vechten_thumb.jpg 2022-01-21T09:31:56-05:00 Langston Hughes photo 1936 Carl Van Vechten 1 Langston Hughes photo 1936 Carl Van Vechten media/Langston Hughes Photo 1936 Carl Van Vechten.jpg plain 2022-01-21T09:31:56-05:00

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4.6: Biography: Langston Hughes

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James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri.

He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry. Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that “the negro was in vogue”, which was later paraphrased as “when Harlem was in vogue.”

First published in The Crisis in 1921, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” which became Hughes’s signature poem, was collected in his first book of poetry The Weary Blues (1926). Hughes’s first and last published poems appeared in The Crisis ; more of his poems were published in The Crisis than in any other journal. Hughes’s life and work were enormously influential during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, alongside those of his contemporaries, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Aaron Douglas.

Hughes and his contemporaries had different goals and aspirations than the black middle class. They criticized the men known as the midwives of the Harlem Renaissance: W. E. B. Du Bois, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and Alain LeRoy Locke, as being overly accommodating and assimilating eurocentric values and culture to achieve social equality.

Hughes and his fellows tried to depict the “low-life” in their art: that is, the real lives of blacks in the lower social-economic strata. They criticized the divisions and prejudices based on skin color within the black community.   Hughes wrote what would be considered their manifesto, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” published in  The Nation in 1926:

The 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. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain free within ourselves.

His poetry and fiction portrayed the lives of the working-class blacks in America, lives he portrayed as full of struggle, joy, laughter, and music. Permeating his work is pride in the African-American identity and its diverse culture. “My seeking has been to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America and obliquely that of all human kind,”   Hughes is quoted as saying. He confronted racial stereotypes, protested social conditions, and expanded African America’s image of itself–a “people’s poet” who sought to reeducate both audience and artist by lifting the theory of the black aesthetic into reality.

Hughes stressed a racial consciousness and cultural nationalism devoid of self-hate. His thought united people of African descent and Africa across the globe to encourage pride in their diverse black folk culture and black aesthetic. Hughes was one of the few prominent black writers to champion racial consciousness as a source of inspiration for black artists. In addition to his example in social attitudes, Hughes had an important technical influence by his emphasis on folk and jazz rhythms as the basis of his poetry of racial pride.

View Upton Sinclair’s full biography on Wikipedia.

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10 Essential Langston Hughes Poems, Including “Harlem” and “I, Too”

Langston Hughes’ poetry continues to capture the heart of America with its lyrical realism and everyday subject matter.

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The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes

His writing career began the year after he graduated from high school with the 1921 poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” His first book of poetry, The Weary Blues , followed in 1926. Throughout his work, Hughes portrayed working-class African Americans in a range of common experiences, both positive and negative. The New York City transplant was among the first poets to adapt jazz rhythms and dialect on the page. So groundbreaking was his work that Hughes wasn’t convinced he could earn a living as a writer until 1930, ultimately becoming one of the first Black Americans to do so.

Some of his most famous poems include “I, Too,” “Dreams,” and “Harlem,” which influenced playwright Lorraine Hansberry and civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. , among many others. Beyond poetry, Hughes wrote novels like 1930’s Not Without Laughter , short stories, the autobiographies The Big Sea (1940) and I Wonder as I Wander (1956) , and plays like Mulatto . He even worked as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War in 1937 for several American newspapers and as a columnist for the Chicago Defender .

In 1967, the well-traveled writer died of cancer in his mid-60s, yet his legacy has endured. His brownstone home in Harlem became a historic landmark in 1982, schools bear his name, and most of all, his poetry still resonates. Here are 10 essential poems by Langston Hughes that capture of the heart of America.

“The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (1921)

Written when he was 17 years old on a train to Mexico City to see his father, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” was Hughes’ first published poem. It appeared in the June 1921 issue of the NAACP magazine The Crisis and received critical acclaim. The opening lines show a soul deeper than his age: “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.” The style honors that of his poetic influences Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg, as well as the voice of African American spirituals.

“Mother to Son” (1922)

With recitations from notable figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. and actor Viola Davis , “Mother to Son” was published in the December 1922 issue of The Crisis . The 20-line poem traces a mother’s words to her child about their difficult life journey using the analogy of stairs with “tacks” and “splinters” in it. But ultimately she encourages her son to forge ahead, as she leads by example: “So boy, don’t you turn back / Don’t you set down on the steps / ’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard / Don’t you fall now / For I’se still goin’, honey / I’se still climbin’ / And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.”

“Dreams” (1922)

One of several Hughes poems about dreams and fittingly titled, this 1922 poem appeared in World Tomorrow . “Dreams,” an eight-line poem, remains a popular inspirational quote. It partially reads: “Hold fast to dreams / For if dreams die / Life is a broken-winged bird / That cannot fly.”

“The Weary Blues” (1925)

The weary blues by langston hughes.

“The Weary Blues” follows an African American pianist playing in Harlem on Lenox Avenue. It starts off sounding like he’s completely carefree but ends: “The stars went out and so did the moon / The singer stopped playing and went to bed / While the Weary Blues echoed through his head / He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.”

After it won a contest in Opportunity magazine, Hughes called it his “lucky poem.” Sure enough, the next year, his first poetry collection was published by Knopf with the same title. Hughes was 24.

“Po’ Boy Blues” (1926)

As one of four Hughes poems that appeared in the November 1926 issue of Poetry Magazine , as well as his collection The Weary Blues , this poem feels music-like with its stanza and rhymes. The final verse reads: “Weary, weary / Weary early in de morn. / Weary, weary / Early, early in de morn. / I’s so wear / I wish I’d never been born.”

“Let America Be America Again” (1936)

First published in the July 1936 issue of Esquire magazine , “Let America Be America Again” highlights how class plays such a crucial role in the ability to realize the promises of the American dream. The three opening stanzas are each followed by a parenthetical representing the cast-off realities for the lower class, such as: “Let America be America again / Let it be the dream it used to be / Let it be the pioneer on the plain / Seeking a home where he himself is free / (America never was America to me.)”

“Life is Fine” (1949)

Perseverance pushes through all the odds—even suicide attempts—in “Life is Fine.” Broken into three sections, the first part talks about jumping into a cold river: “If that water hadn’t a-been so cold / I might’ve sunk and died.” And the second about going to the top of a 16-floor building: “If it hadn’t a-been so high/ I might’ve jumped and died.” But in the third section, it says, “But for livin’ I was born” before ending with “Life is fine! / Fine as wine! / Life is fine!”

“I, Too” (1945)

In “I, Too,” Hughes addresses segregation head-on: “I am the darker brother / They send me to eat in the kitchen / When company comes.” Despite being hidden in the back, he continues to “laugh,” “eat well,” and “grow strong.” The subject looks to a future of equality, emphatically declaring “I, too, am America.”

“Harlem” (1951)

Perhaps his most influential poem, “Harlem” starts with the line “What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” The poem digs into the dichotomy of the idea of the American dream juxtaposed with the reality of being in a marginalized community. Hughes’ words inspired the title of Lorraine Hansberry ’s 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun about a struggling Black family, and Martin Luther King Jr. referenced it in a number of his sermons and speeches.

“Harlem” was actually conceived as part of a book-length poem, Montage o f Dream Deferred . With more than 90 poems strung together in a musical beat, the full volume paints a full picture of life in Harlem during the Jim Crow era , most questioned in this poem’s final line, “Or does it explode?”

“Brotherly Love” (1956)

Despite the fact that Hughes was more of a household name than King at the time, the poet wrote “Brotherly Love” about the civil rights activist and the Montgomery bus boycott , which starts: “In line of what my folks say in Montgomery / In line of what they’re teaching about love / When I reach out my hand, will you take it — / Or cut it off and leave a nub above?” It was yet another work in which Hughes tackled the idea of racial equality.

Adrienne directs the daily news operation and content production for Biography.com. She joined the staff in October 2022 and most recently worked as an editor for Popular Mechanics , Runner’s World , and Bicycling . Adrienne has served as editor-in-chief of two regional print magazines, and her work has won several awards, including the Best Explanatory Journalism award from the Alliance of Area Business Publishers. Her current working theory is that people are the point of life, and she’s fascinated by everyone who (and every system that) creates our societal norms. When she’s not behind the news desk, find her hiking, working on her latest cocktail project, or eating mint chocolate chip ice cream. 

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Langston Hughes

James Mercer Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was a young child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. 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 in New York City. During this time, he held odd jobs such as assistant cook, launderer, and busboy. He also travelled 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. 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 claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties. He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as 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—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 both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself.

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 Speaks His Mind, (Simon & Schuster, 1950); Simple Stakes a Claim, (Rinehart, 1957); Simple Takes a Wife, (Simon & Schuster, 1953); and Simple’s Uncle Sam (Hill and Wang, 1965). He edited the anthologies The Poetry of the Negro and The Book of Negro Folklore, wrote an acclaimed autobiography, The Big Sea (Knopf, 1940), and 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.”

Poems by Langston Hughes

• Advertisement For The Waldorf-Astoria
• April Rain Song
• As I Grew Older
• Bad Morning
• Bound No’th Blues
• Brass Spittoons
• Children’s Rhymes
• Cultural Exchange
• Daybreak In Alabama
• Dinner Guest: Me
• Dream Boogie
• Dream Deferred
• Dream Variations
• Dying Beast
• Easy Boogie
• Feet o’ Jesus
• Final Curve
• Fire-Caught
• Freedom’s Plow
• Genius Child
• Harlem [dream Deferred]
• Helen Keller
• I Continue To Dream
• I Dream A World
• In Time Of Silver Rain
• Juke Box Love Song
• Kids Who Die
• Let America Be America Again
• Life Is Fine
• Lincoln Monument: Washington
• Lonesome Place
• Love Song For Lucinda
• Madam And Her Madam
• Madam And The Census Man
• Madam And The Phone Bill
• Madam And The Rent Man
• Madam’s Past History
• Me And The Mule
• Merry-Go-Round
• Minstrel Man
• Morning After
• Mother To Son
• Negro Dancers
• Negro Speaks Of Rivers
• Night Funeral In Harlem
• Po’ Boy Blues
• Prize Fighter
• Question [1]
• Song For A Dark Girl
• Suicide’s Note
• Sylvester’s Dying Bed
• Thanksgiving Time
• The Ballad Of The Landlord
• The Dream Keeper
• The Negro Mother
• The Negro Speaks Of Rivers
• The Weary Blues
• Theme For English B
• Trumpet Player
• Walkers With The Dawn
• When Sue Wears Red
• Will V-Day Be Me-Day Too?
• Wisdom And War
• You and your whole race