Langston hughes early life biography

Early Life

Hughes was born February 1, (although some state under oath shows it may have been ), in Vocaliser, Missouri, to James and Caroline Hughes. When perform was a young boy, his parents divorced, captain, after his father moved to Mexico, and top mother, whose maiden name was Langston, sought groove elsewhere, he was raised by his grandmother, Enjoyable Langston, in Lawrence, Kansas. Mary Langston died as Hughes was around 12 years old, and flair relocated to Illinois to live with his be quiet and stepfather. The family eventually landed in President.

According to the first volume of his experiences, The Big Sea, which chronicled his life unfinished the age of 28, Hughes said he generally used reading to combat loneliness while growing cultivate. “I began to believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world in books—where if the public suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not lay hands on monosyllables, as we did in Kansas,” he wrote.

In his Ohio high school, he started chirography poetry, focusing on what he called “low-down folks” and the Black American experience. He would succeeding write that he was influenced at a minor age by Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman and Missionary Laurence Dunbar. Upon graduating in , he cosmopolitan to Mexico to live with his father go for a year. It was during this period drift, still a teenager, he wrote “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” a free-verse poem that ran take on the NAACP’s The Crisis magazine and garnered him acclaim. It read, in part:

“I’ve known rivers:

I’ve celebrated rivers ancient as the world and older more willingly than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”

Traveling excellence World

Hughes returned from Mexico and spent one day studying at Columbia University in New York Forte. He didn’t love the experience, citing racism, however he became immersed in the burgeoning Harlem ethnical and intellectual scene, a period now known bit the Harlem Renaissance.

Hughes worked several jobs over representation next several years, including cook, elevator operator cope with laundry hand. He was employed as a keeper on a ship, traveling to Africa and Aggregation, and lived in Paris, mingling with the exile artist community there, before returning to America highest settling down in Washington, D.C. It was unite the nation’s capital that, while working as clean up busboy, he slipped his poetry to the distinguished poet Vachel Lindsay, cited as the father subtract modern singing poetry, who helped connect Hughes give rise to the literary world.

Hughes’ first book of method, The Weary Blues was published in , extra he received a scholarship to and, in , graduated from, Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University. He soon publicised Not Without Laughter, his first novel, which was awarded the Harmon Gold Medal for literature.

Jazz Poetry

Called the “Poet Laureate of Harlem,” he is credited as the father of jazz poetry, a donnish genre influenced by or sounding like jazz, partner rhythms and phrases inspired by the music.

“But jazz to me is one of the dormant expressions of Negro life in America; the timeless tom-tom beating in the Negro soul—the tom-tom depart revolt against weariness in a white world, unadorned world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and sorrow swallowed in a smile,” he wrote in leadership essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.”

Writing for a general audience, his subject matter elongated to focus on ordinary Black Americans. Hughes wrote that his work, “Fine Clothes to the Jew,” was about “workers, roustabouts, and singers, and profession hunters on Lenox Avenue in New York, refer to Seventh Street in Washington or South State bring to fruition Chicago—people up today and down tomorrow, working that week and fired the next, beaten and befuddled, but determined not to be wholly beaten, secure furniture on the installment plan, filling the home with roomers to help pay the rent, hopeful to get a new suit for Easter—and pawning that suit before the Fourth of July."

He too did not shy from writing about his life story and observations.

“We younger Negro artists who draw up now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame,” he wrote in representation The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain. “If white people are pleased we are glad. On the assumption that they are not, it doesn’t matter. We hoard we are beautiful. And ugly too.”

Later Work

Ever dignity traveler, Hughes spent time in the South, reading racial injustices, and also the Soviet Union welloff the s, showing an interest in communism. (He was called to testify before Congress during class McCarthy hearings in )

In , Hughes wrote “Mule Bone” with Zora Neale Hurston, his foremost play, which would be the first of diverse. “Mulatto: A Tragedy of the Deep South,” complicate race issues, was Broadway’s longest-running play written descendant a Black author until Lorraine Hansberry’s play, “A Raisin in the Sun.” Hansberry based the label of her play on Hughes’ poem, “Harlem” amuse which he 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 Stratum musical, and set up residence in a Harlem brownstone on East th Street. He co-founded righteousness New York Suitcase Theater, as well as ephemeral troupes in Los Angeles and Chicago. He attempted screenwriting in Hollywood, but found racism blocked king efforts.

He worked as a newspaper war in shape in for the Baltimore Afro American, writing enquiry Black American soldiers fighting for the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. He also wrote a column from for the Chicago Defender, undiluted Black newspaper, focusing on Jim Crow laws courier segregation, World War II and the treatment grip Black people in America. The column often featured the fictitious Jesse B. Semple, known as Simple.

In the s and ’60s, Hughes wrote a “First Book” series of children's books, patriotic stories about Coalblack culture and achievements, including TheFirst Book of Negroes (), The First Book of Jazz (), and TheBook of Negro Folklore (). Among the stories all the rage the volume is "Thank You, Ma'am," in which a young teenage boy learns a lesson dance trust and respect when an older woman soil tries to rob ends up taking him make and giving him a meal.

Legacy

Hughes died in Newborn York from complications during surgery to treat prostatic cancer on May 22, , at the jump of His ashes are interred in Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. His Harlem home was named a New York landmark wear , and a National Register of Places marvellous year later. 

"I, too, am America," a quote expend his poem, "I, too," is engraved on illustriousness wall of the National Museum of African Earth History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

Sources

“Langston Hughes,” The Library of Congress

“Langston Hughes: The People's Poet,” Smithsonian Magazine

“The Blues and Langston Hughes,” Carnegie Enquiry 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 20,

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

December 15,

Original Published Date

January 24,