Langston Hughes Biography and List of Works

African-American poet and writer, who became one of the foremost interpreters of race relations in the United States. Hughes was one of the first black authors who could support himself by his writings. Influenced by the Bible, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Walt Whitman, Hughes depicted realistically the ordinary lives of black people. Many of his poems written in rhythmical language have been set to music. Hughes's poems were meant 'to be read aloud, crooned, shouted and sung'.

"Rest at pale evening...
A tall slim tree...
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.
(from Dream Variations, 1926)

Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri. His parents separated and his mother moved from city to city in search of work. In his rootless childhood Hughes lived in Mexico, Topeka, Kansas, Colorado, Indiana and Buffalo. After graduating from a high school in Cleveland, he sojourned for a year in Mexico with his father, who had found in Mexico a release from American racism. Hughes's first poem appeared in the African-American journal Crisis (1921). As an adolescent in Cleveland he participated in the activity of Karamu Players, and published in 1921 his first play, THE GOLDEN PIECE in 1921.

Supported by his father, Hughes entered in the early 1920s the Columbia University, New York. For the permanent disappointment of his father, Hughes soon abandoned his studies, and participated in more entertaining jazz and blues activities in nearby Harlem. He enlisted as a steward on a freighter bound to West Africa. He travelled to Paris, worked as a doorman of a night club, and continued to Italy.

After his return to the United States, Hughes worked in menial jobs and wrote poems, which earned him scholarship to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. In 1929 Hughes received his bachelor's degree. He was celebrated as a young promising poet of the generation, publishing his poetry in Crisis (1923-24) and in Alain Locke's anthology The New Negro (1925). His first book of verse, THE WEARY BLUES, supported by Carl Van Vechten, appeared in 1926. The work assimilated techniques associated with the secular music with verse, while its content reflected the lives of African-Americans. Hughes published his first novel, NOT WITHOUT LAUGHTER, in 1930. It was set in Kansas and recounted the story of a mother and her three daughters. The book had a cordial reception and Hughes bought a Ford. He toured the colleges of southern America as a teacher and poet.

In the 1930s Hughes travelled in the Soviet Union, Haiti and Japan. He embraced radical politics, publishing a collection of satiric short stories, THE WAY OF WHITE FOLKS (1943), and returned to satire and racial prejudices later in LAUGHING TO KEEP FROM CRYING (1952) and SOMETHING IN COMMON (1963). Hughes emphasized the importance of African culture and shared Du Bois's belief that renewal could only come from an understanding of African roots.

"My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder where I'm gonna die,
Being neither white nor black?"
(from 'Cross')

Hughes's play THE MULATTO (1935), revised without his knowledge, opened on Broadway in 1935. In the same year he won a Guggenheim Fellowship. He founded in the 1930s and 1940s black theatre groups in Harlem, Chicago and Los Angeles. In the Spanish Civil War (1937) he served as a newspaper correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American. During this time he became a friend of Ernest Hemingway, with whom he attended bullfights.

Hughes's inaccurate reputation for being a Communist dates from his poems in the 1930s. During the era of McCarthyism Hughes tested unequivocally to a very inquisitive Senate committee that he was not, and never had been, a Communist. In several of his poems Hughes had expressed with ardent voice sociopolitical protests. He portrayed people whose lives were impacted by racism and sexual conflicts, he wrote about southern violence, Harlem street life, poverty, prejudice, hunger and hopelessness. But basically he was a conscientious artist who worked hard to chronicle the black American experience, contrasting the beauty of the soul with the oppressive circumstance.

"Wear it
Like a banner
For the proud -
Not like a shroud."
(from Color, 1943)

In the 1950s Hughes published among others MONTAGE OF A DREAM DEFERRED (1951), which included his famous poem 'Harlem', PICTORIAL HISTORY OF NEGRO IN AMERICA (1956), and edited THE BOOK OF NEGRO FOLKLORE (1958) with Arna Bontemps. Hughes's autobiographical books include THE BIG SEA (1940) and I WONDER AS I WANDER (1956). For juveniles he did a series of 'Famous' biographies, beginning with FAMOUS AMERICAN NEGROES (1954).

Hughes wrote children's stories, non-fiction and numerous works for the stage, including lyrics for Kurt Weill's and Elmer Rice's opera Street Scene, screenplay for the Hollywood film Way Down South with the actor Clarence Muse, and translated the poetry of Federico García Lorca and Gabriela Mistral. His popular comic character Jesse B. Semple appeared in Hughes's columns in the Chicago Defender and the New York Post. The comments of the ironic, street-wise Harlem dweller were first collected into SIMPLE SPEAKS HIS MIND (1950). In was followed by three other collections.

In later years Hughes held posts at the Universities of Chicago and Atlanta. Hughes never married and there has been irrelevant speculation about his sexuality. Several of his friends were homosexual, among them Carl Van Vechten, who wrote the controversial novel Nigger Heaven (1926) and several were not. Hughes died in New York on May 22, 1967. His posthumous book of poems, THE PANTHER AND THE LASH (1967) reflected the anger and militancy of the 1960s. Although the Harlem Renaissance faded away during the Great Depression, its influence is seen in the writings of later authors, such as James Baldwin.

Harlem - also called A Dream Deferred, published in 1951. An extended poem cycle about life in Harlem. The 11-line poem speculates about the consequences of white society's withholding of equal opportunity. After listing several benign possibilities, the poet suggest that a dream deferred may explode.

Harlem Renaissance: Countee Cullen - Harlem literature: (novels) Jean Toomer's experimental Cane (1923), Claude McKay's Home to Harlem (1928); Countee Cullen's One Way to Heaven (1932), Anna Bontemps's Black Thunder (1936); (poems and plays) Abraham Hill's On Striver's Row (1933), Langston Hughes's Shakespeare in Harlem (1942) - Harlem Renaissance, see This Was Harlem by Jervase Anderson (1981), Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance by Houston A. Baker Jr (1987) - Note: Hughes's 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers,' written on a train taking him to Mexico, has been among the most quoted of all poems by black poets.

For further reading: To Make a Black Poet by S. Redding (1939); Langston Hughes by J. Emanuel (1967); Black Genius: A Critical Evaluation, ed. by T. O'Daniel (1971); A Biobibliography of Langston Hughes 1902-1967 by D.C. Dickinson (1972); Langston Hughes: The Poet and His Critics by R.K. Barksdale (1977); The Life of Langston Hughes: 1902-1941: I, Too, Sing America by Arnold Rampersad (1986); The Life of Langston Hughes, 1941-1967: I Dream a World by Arnold Rampersad (1988); The Art and Imagination of Langston Hughes by R. Baxter Miller (1990); Langston Hughes: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, ed. by Henry Louis Gates (1993); Langston Hughes: A Study of the Short Fiction by Hans Ostrom (1993); Coming Home: From the Life of Langston Hughes by Floyd Cooper (1994 - note: for ages 4-8); Free to Dream by Audrey Osofsky (1996 - note: for ages 9-12); Langston Hughes by Joseph McLaren et al (1997); Langston Hughes: Poet of the Harlem Renaissance by Christine M. Hill (1997); Langston Hughes: Comprehensive Research and Study Guide, ed. by Harold Bloom (1999)

THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS, (1921)