African American writers and poets have for years openly challenged cultural stigmas, creating classic works of literature. Many have earned Pulitzer and Nobel prizes, NAACP and Coretta Scott King Book awards among other honors. 

Among these literary giants stands James Mercer Langston Hughes (1902–1967), whose poetry and other writings made him a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

Born in Joplin, Mo., Langston Hughes’s parents separated shortly after he was born. His father relocated to Mexico, and the child was raised by his mother and grandmother. After his grandmother died, he and his mother eventually settled in Cleveland.

Hughes began experimenting with poetry during grammar school. His work was so well liked that he was elected class poet. He stated that “in retrospect,” he thought it was because of the stereotype about African Americans “having rhythm.”

It was summer after he graduated from high school that he penned “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” Published in The Crisis (1921), a piece that brought him considerable attention and put it his work on the path to being noticed.

That same year Hughes enrolled in New York City’s Columbia College. He left a year later, citing “racial prejudice among students and teachers” as one of the reasons. He describes his first interaction at Columbia as “largely isolating and exclusionary.” In his autobiography Big Sea, he opens a chapter with “I didn’t like Columbia.” 

He would later build a relationship with the university––after he became a prominent writer.

After Columbia, Hughes remained in Harlem while working and continuing to write. In 1925, he won an Opportunity magazine poetry prize. Writer Carl Van Vechten then introduced Hughes’s poetry to the publisher Alfred A. Knopf. 

“The Weary Blues “was published in 1926.

Hughes also spent time in Washington, D.C., where he worked as a hotel busboy. As poet Vachel Lindsay sat in the hotel’s dining room, Hughes placed three of his own poems beside Lindsay’s plate. The following day, several newspapers reported that Lindsay had “discovered” an African-American busboy poet. Later that year, Hughes received a scholarship to Lincoln University. 

He also received the Witter Bynner Undergraduate Poetry Award and published “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” in The Nation.

In 1926, Hughes published a second collection of poetry, “Fine Clothes to the Jew.” It faced great criticism from the Black press. By 1929, he had helped launch the influential magazine Fire!! His first prose volume, “Not Without Laughter” was published in 1930. He traveled in the American South in 1931, then to the Soviet Union, Haiti, Japan, and other countries; and served as a newspaper correspondent (1937) during the Spanish Civil War.

Hughes published countless other works during the 1950s and 1960s, including several books in his series “Simple.” He won several awards including the Anisfeld-Wolfe Award for best book on racial relations, the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP, the Golden Harmon Award and the Guggenheim Fellowship.

Hughes continued writing until he died in 1967.

Sources:  https://www.biography.com/writer/langston-hughes
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Langston-Hughes
https://allpoetry.com/Langston-Hughes

Christy Price

Posts by Christy Price