langston hughes

langston hughes

Famous poet Langston Hughes was born, James Langston Hughes on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. He was apart of an abolitionist family. He was the great-great-grandson of Charles Henry Langston, and brother of John Mecer Langston, who was the first Black American to be elected to public office in 1855. His parents divorced when he was little kid, with his father in Mexico, he was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen. Then he later moved with his mother and her husband in Lincoln, Illinois until they settled in Cleveland, Ohio. In Illinois Hughes began to write poetry while in the eighth grade, but when he was in Cleveland’s’ Central High School he was selected as a class poet. His father had doubts in him for a career in poetry, and encouraged him to follow a different path that would have a more promising future for him. Hughes attended Columbia University, his father paid for his tuition. There he studied Engineering, and evidently he dropped out of it with a B+ average, all the while he continued to write poetry.

The first poem which he published was, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, which was also one of his most famous poems. Langston Hughes wrote more than poems he wrote novels, short stories, plays, and essays, one of his finest essays was “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”, in 1926. The essay argued Hughes’ point of that poets should not be titled by there race; meaning instead of them being called a Black Poet they would just be a “Poet”. The year of 1923 was an adventurous year for Langston. He traveled abroad on a freighter to the Senegal, Nigeria, the Cameroon’s, Belgium Congo, Angola, and Guinea in Africa, and later he traveled to Italy, France, Russia, and Spain.

No matter the places he visited overseas his favorite thing to do was to sit in the clubs and listen to the blues, jazz and writing poetry. Through this an new style was presented in his poems, and a series of poems called; “The Weary...