Langston Hughes biography
"An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he
must also never be afraid to do what he might choose."
– Langston Hughes
Synopsis
Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in
Joplin, Missouri. He published his first poem in 1921. He attended Columbia
University, but left after one year to travel. His poetry was later promoted by
Vachel Lindsay, and Hughes published his first book in 1926. He went on to
write countless works of poetry, prose and plays, as well as a popular column
for the Chicago Defender. He died on May 22, 1967.
Early Life
James Mercer Langston Hughes was born on February 1,
1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents, James Hughes and Carrie Langston, separated
soon after his birth, and his father moved to Mexico. While Hughes’s mother
moved around during his youth, Hughes was raised primarily by his maternal
grandmother, Mary, until she died in his early teens. From that point, he went
to live with his mother, and they moved to several cities before eventually
settling in Cleveland, Ohio. It was during this time that Hughes first began to
write poetry, and that one of his teachers first introduced him to the poetry
of Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman, both whom
Hughes would later cite as primary influences. Hughes was also a regular
contributor to his school's literary magazine, and frequently submitted to
other poetry magazines, although they would ultimately reject him.
Hughes graduated from high school in 1920 and spent
the following year in Mexico with his father. Around this time, Hughes's poem
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" was published in The Crisis magazine
and was highly praised. In 1921 Hughes returned to the United States and
enrolled at Columbia University where he studied briefly, and during which time
he quickly became a part of Harlem's burgeoning cultural movement, what is
commonly known as the Harlem Renaissance. But Hughes dropped out of Columbia in
1922 and worked various odd jobs around New York for the following year, before
signing on as a steward on a freighter that took him to Africa and Spain. He left
the ship in 1924 and lived for a brief time in Paris, where he continued to
develop and publish his poetry.
Growing Success
In November 1924, Hughes returned to the United States
and worked various jobs. In 1925, he was working as a busboy in a Washington,
D.C. hotel restaurant when he met American poet Vachel Lindsay. Hughes showed
some of his poems to Lindsay, who was impressed enough to use his connections
to promote Hughes’s poetry and ultimately bring it to a wider audience. In
1925, Hughes’s poem “The Weary Blues” won first prize in the Opportunity
magazine literary competition, and Hughes also received a scholarship to attend
Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania. While studying at Lincoln, Hughes poetry
came to the attention of novelist and critic Carl Van Vechten, who used his
connections to help get Hughes’s first book of poetry, The Weary Blues,
published by Knopf in 1926. The book had popular appeal and established both
his poetic style and his commitment to black themes and heritage. Hughes was also
among the first to use jazz rhythms and dialect to depict the life of urban
blacks in his work.
He published a second volume of poetry, Fine
Clothes to the Jew, in 1927.
After his graduation from Lincoln in 1929, Hughes
published his first novel, Not Without Laughter. The book was
commercially successful enough to convince Hughes that he could make a living
as a writer. During the 1930s, Hughes would frequently travel the United States
on lecture tours, and also abroad to the Soviet Union, Japan, and Haiti. He
continued to write and publish poetry and prose during this time, and in 1934
he published his first collection of short stories, The Ways of White Folks.
In 1937 he served as a war correspondent for several American newspapers during
the Spanish Civil War.
A Continuing Life of Letters
In 1940, Hughes's autobiography up to age 28, The
Big Sea, was published. Also around this time, Hughes began contributing a
column to the Chicago Defender, for which he created a comic character
named Jesse B. Semple, better known as "Simple," a black Everyman
that Hughes used to further explore urban, working-class black themes, and to
address racial issues. The columns were highly successful, and
"Simple" would later be the focus of several of Hughes's books and
plays.
In the late 1940s, Hughes contributed the lyrics for a
Broadway musical titled Street Scene, which featured music by Kurt
Weill. The success of the musical would earn Hughes enough money that he was
finally able to buy a house in Harlem. Around this time, he also taught
creative writing at Atlanta University and was a guest lecturer at a university
in Chicago for several months.
Over the next two decades, Hughes would continue his
prolific output. In 1949 he wrote a play that inspired the opera Troubled
Island and published yet another anthology of work, The Poetry of the
Negro. During the 1950s and 1960s, he published countless other works,
including several books in his "Simple" series, English translations
of the poetry of Federico García Lorca and Gabriela Mistral, another anthology
of his own poetry, and the second installment of his autobiography, I Wonder
as I Wander.
Death and Legacy
On May 22, 1967, Langston Hughes died from
complications of prostate cancer. A tribute to his poetry, his funeral contained
little in the way of spoken eulogy, but was filled with jazz and blues music.
Hughes's ashes were interred beneath the entrance of the Arthur Schomburg
Center for Research in Black culture in Harlem. The inscription marking the
spot features a line from Hughes's poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers."
It reads: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers."
Hughes's Harlem home, on East 127th Street, received
New York City Landmark status in 1981 and was added to the National Register of
Places in 1982. Volumes of his work continue to be published and translated
throughout the world.
http://www.biography.com/print/profile/langston-hughes-9346313
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