Did You Know: Langston Hughes

 

 

 

langstonhughes

Although his mother resided in the United States and his father in Mexico, he spent the majority of his childhood life with his grandmother in Lawrence, KS. After she died in his teens, he jumped between both households until adulthood. His first poems came from this feeling of being ungrounded that came with constantly switching homes and never quite having the stability of his parents in his life. His first poem was published in 1921. He attended Lincoln University and graduated in 1929.

Langston Hughes was a writer, very much a part of an abolitionist family. One of his great grandparents died in the John Brown slave revolt on Harper Ferry during pre-civil war conflicts while another was related to John Mercer Langston who became the first African American to hold public office. A versatile and prolific author, his works combined the enduring interests of the African American community of his period. Using elements of African American music—particularly blues and jazz— and African American dialect, Langston Hughes’ literary voice became the embodiment of the Harlem Renaissance. Although Hughes was a columnist, novelist, and eventually, a playwright, he is best known for his innovation in form of jazz poetry and his main objective was writing to uplift the condition of his people.

Towards his later years, however, his works became influenced by growing sense of alienation in a segregated America where his voice was still very much submerged; He began veering towards the political left. Like many minority groups at the time, in his later works to begin participating in the Popular Front— a coalition of leftist, radicals, labor activists, and civil rights advocates who promoted labor unionism and other alternative cultural political and economic models. He began to sympathize with socialist regimes writing for a magazine associated with the Communist Party, New Masses, began writing more plays, and in 1932 sailed to the Soviet Union with a group of young African Americans. During World War II, Jesse B. Semple became his character, his version of “everyman,” while he wrote for  The Chicago Defender allowing him to discuss serious political and racial issues in a lighthearted way.

Langston Hughes, in his battle to be heard, chose to represent the plain people because he saw more truth in doing so. His works were misunderstood and disliked by many people but his passions never dwindled and he continued to write. His legacy is being a voice of his people during a period when their voices were marginalized.

He died from cancer in 1967 in New York.

Fun facts!

  1. Hughes’ father only paid for school at Lincoln University on the grounds that Hughes study engineering.
  2. The work of Langston Hughes was read by W.E.B Du Bois!
  3. The Academy of American Poets had a vote in 2002 on their favorite poet who, indeed, was Langston Hughes. Afterwards, the Academy urged the U.S. Postal Service for a Langston Hughes stamp. They did just that on his birthday, February 1sthughes
  4. His ashes lie beneath the entrance of the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black culture in Harlem.
  5. He served a brief period as a crewman on the U.S. Malone traveling to West Africa and Europe.
  6. Many people believe that he was gay and wrote unpublished poems to his lovers.
  7. In high school he was voted “class poet,” before he had ever written poetry.
  8. Apparently, Hughes and Maya Angelou were buds.

Langston-Hughes-and-Maya-Angelou

Sources:

  1. http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/langston-hughes-187.php
  2. http://redhotjazz.com/hughes.html
  3. http://www.kansasheritage.org/crossingboundaries/page6e1.html
  4. http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/langston_hughes/biography
  5. http://www.biography.com/people/langston-hughes-9346313?page=2

 

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