Langston Hughes
(1902–1967)

James Mercer Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, on February 1, 1902, but called many places home. While growing up, he lived, alternately with his parents and with his grandmother in Ohio, Illinois, Kansas, and even Mexico. As a young man, he traveled to Africa and France and began a career as a versatile and prolific writer. His work included poetry, novels, plays, essays, journalism, and two autobiographies. Hughes settled at last in New York City and became one of the major figures of the Harlem Renaissance.

At his graduation from elementary school in Lincoln, Illinois, in 1915, the young Hughes recited his first poem. He wrote his first short story during high school in Cleveland, Ohio. Hughes's early work drew the attention of W.E.B. Du Bois, an influential writer and teacher. The African American literary magazine The Crisis, edited by Du Bois, became one of the first to publish Hughes's poetry.

In 1921, Hughes moved to New York City and started college. He attended Columbia University, which is located near Harlem, a predominantly African American neighborhood in upper Manhattan. After one year, however, Hughes dropped out of Columbia and began to travel again. He pursued a series of odd jobs—including working on merchant ships that journeyed to Europe and Africa—that gave him time to write.

When still in his early twenties, Hughes began to win accolades for his poetry. At this time he also became acquainted with members of the Harlem Renaissance movement—a flowering of the arts partially fueled by the great number of African Americans who moved north in the early twentieth century. By 1926, when Hughes published his first book of poems, The Weary Blues, he had joined these talented ranks.
Shortly thereafter, however, Hughes was on the move again. He had earned a scholarship to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. While enrolled at Lincoln, Hughes toured the southern U.S. with fellow African American writer Zora Neale Hurston. Their goal was to collect traditional African American folktales, a genre that would influence the later works of both writers. In 1929, Hughes received his B.A. degree.

During the 1930s, Hughes continued to write and travel. He collaborated with Hurston on the play Mule Bone, an African American folk comedy. In addition, Hughes published a novel, a short story collection, two books of verse, and three more plays. He visited Haiti and Russia and went to Spain as a correspondent, covering the Spanish Civil War. Hughes also began to speak out publicly against poverty and racial discrimination.

This pattern of creative diversity would continue for the rest of Hughes's life. When he wasn't writing fiction, traveling, or teaching, he pursued new challenges. In the 1940s, he published The Big Sea, an autobiography that recounts his experiences up to age twenty-eight, and he wrote the lyrics for Street Scene, a new opera by the prestigious German-born playwright and composer Kurt Weill (1900–1950). With Arna Bontemps, he also edited The Poetry of the Negro, 1746–1949. In the 1950s, Hughes translated Gypsy Ballads, a work by the revered Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca. Other literary endeavors of this period include books for children and a second volume of autobiography.

By the end of the 1950s, Hughes—nicknamed "Shakespeare in Harlem"— had long been an internationally renowned writer. Despite occasional financial difficulties, he purchased a home in Harlem that became an oasis for other creative artists. In 1960, Hughes was awarded the Springarn Medal from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1961, he was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1963, he received an honorary doctorate from Howard University.

Hughes continued to write until he died on May 22, 1967, in his beloved New York City. At his memorial service, friends read from his poems, and jazz musicians performed a blues song. Hughes's final collection of poems, The Panther and the Lash, was published posthumously.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Harlem was the U.S. capital of African American culture. It was home to myriad theaters, clubs, newspapers, and magazines owned and managed by African Americans. Among the talents of the movement were Jean Toomer, author of Cane (1923); Claude McKay, who became the first African American best-selling author with his novel Home to Harlem (1928); poet Countee Cullen; Zora Neal Hurston, author of the 1937 classic Their Eyes Were Watching God; James Weldon Johnson, who helped found the NAACP; Arna Bontemps, librarian and historian of African American culture; and novelist and short story writer Nella Larsen. Although the movement dwindled after the Great Depression, its achievements continue to influence writers and artists today.

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