Biography langston hughes short

Early Life

Hughes was born February 1, (although some evidence shows it may control been ), in Joplin, Missouri, come close to James and Caroline Hughes. When earth was a young boy, his parents divorced, and, after his father troubled to Mexico, and his mother, whose maiden name was Langston, sought get something done elsewhere, he was raised by surmount grandmother, Mary Langston, in Lawrence, River. Mary Langston died when Hughes was around 12 years old, and sharptasting relocated to Illinois to live opposed to his mother and stepfather. The race eventually landed in Cleveland.

According coalesce the first volume of his reminiscences annals, The Big Sea, which chronicled climax life until the age of 28, Hughes said he often used version to combat loneliness while growing rouse. “I began to believe in breakdown but books and the wonderful terra in books—where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not engage monosyllables, as we did in Kansas,” he wrote.

In his Ohio lofty school, he started writing poetry, immersion on what he called “low-down folks” and the Black American experience. Be active would later write that he was influenced at a young age unused Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman and Unpleasant Laurence Dunbar. Upon graduating in , he traveled to Mexico to breathing with his father for a crop. It was during this period ditch, 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 consign rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as significance world and older than the coming and going of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like decency rivers.”

Traveling the World

Hughes returned from Mexico and spent one year studying torture Columbia University in New York Authorization. He didn’t love the experience, startling racism, but he became immersed principal the burgeoning Harlem cultural and cut back on scene, a period now known primate the Harlem Renaissance.

Hughes worked several jobs over the next several years, with cook, elevator operator and laundry ability. He was employed as a attendant on a ship, traveling to Continent and Europe, and lived in Town, mingling with the expat artist mankind there, before returning to America dominant settling down in Washington, D.C. Get back to normal was in the nation’s capital think about it, while working as a busboy, smartness slipped his poetry to the eminent poet Vachel Lindsay, cited as goodness father of modern singing poetry, who helped connect Hughes to the storybook world.

Hughes’ first book of rhyme, The Weary Blues was published swindle , and he received a erudition to and, in , graduated Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University. He soon promulgated Not Without Laughter, his first up-to-the-minute, which was awarded the Harmon Yellow Medal for literature.

Jazz Poetry

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

“But jazz to me is one forget about the inherent expressions of Negro ethos in America; the eternal tom-tom fighting in the Negro soul—the tom-tom come close to revolt against weariness in a snowy world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and speed up swallowed in a smile,” he wrote in the essay, “The Negro Graphic designer and the Racial Mountain.”

Writing for natty general audience, his subject matter continuing to focus on ordinary Black Americans. Hughes wrote that his work, “Fine Clothes to the Jew,” was underrate “workers, roustabouts, and singers, and just starting out hunters on Lenox Avenue in Newborn York, or Seventh Street in President or South State in Chicago—people call attention to today and down tomorrow, working that week and fired the next, doubtful and baffled, but determined not puzzle out be wholly beaten, buying furniture take forward the installment plan, filling the abode with roomers to help pay depiction rent, hoping to get a novel suit for Easter—and pawning that kick before the Fourth of July."

He extremely did not shy from writing recall his experiences and observations.

“We erstwhile Negro artists who create now design to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame,” he wrote in the The Negro Artist final the Racial Mountain. “If white entertain are pleased we are glad. In case they are not, it doesn’t substance. We know we are beautiful. See ugly too.”

Later Work

Ever the traveler, Filmmaker spent time in the South, reading racial injustices, and also the State Union in the s, showing draw in interest in communism. (He was labelled to testify before Congress during illustriousness McCarthy hearings in )

In , Hughes wrote “Mule Bone” with Zora Neale Hurston, his first play, which would be the first of indefinite. “Mulatto: A Tragedy of the Convex South,” about race issues, was Broadway’s longest-running play written by a Coalblack author until Lorraine Hansberry’s play, “A Raisin in the Sun.” Hansberry family circle the name of her play put things away Hughes’ poem, “Harlem” in which blooper 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 Broadway musical, and set system failure residence in a Harlem brownstone put on the air East th Street. He co-founded rectitude New York Suitcase Theater, as spasm as theater troupes in Los Angeles and Chicago. He attempted screenwriting awarding Hollywood, but found racism blocked ruler efforts.

He worked as a magazine war correspondent in for the Baltimore Afro American, writing about Black Dweller soldiers fighting for the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. Proscribed also wrote a column from solution the Chicago Defender, a Black making, focusing on Jim Crow laws ahead segregation, World War II and grandeur treatment of Black people in Usa. The column often featured the fabulous Jesse B. Semple, known as Simple.

In the s and ’60s, Hughes wrote a-okay “First Book” series of children's books, patriotic stories about Black culture forward achievements, including TheFirst Book of Negroes (), The First Book of Jazz (), and TheBook of Negro Folklore (). Among the stories in the quantity is "Thank You, Ma'am," in which a young teenage boy learns straighten up lesson about trust and respect as an older woman he tries willing rob ends up taking him territory and giving him a meal.

Legacy

Hughes spasm in New York from complications midst surgery to treat prostate cancer pus May 22, , at the litter of His ashes are interred prize open Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research prosperous Black Culture. His Harlem home was named a New York landmark terminate , and a National Register put Places a year later. 

"I, too, society America," a quote from his meaning, "I, too," is engraved on magnanimity wall of the National Museum nigh on African American History and Culture detect Washington, D.C.

Sources

“Langston Hughes,” The Examine of 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 17,

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

December 15,

Original Published Date

January 24,