Harlem Renaissance Artists and Writers by Wendy Hart Beckman

Author:Wendy Hart Beckman [Beckman, Wendy Hart.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4645-1159-2
Publisher: Enslow Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

Langston Hughes

(1902–1967)

Image Credit: Library of Congress

Langston Hughes

A prolific and versatile writer, Langston Hughes wrote about ordinary African Americans. He was an innovator, experimenting with both form and style, often using dialect and jazz rhythms to portray life in the black culture. He was a major creative force in the Harlem Renaissance.

James Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, on February 1, 1902. He was part African American, part French European, and part Cherokee. His father, James Nathaniel Hughes, trained to be a lawyer, but as a black man, he was denied a fair opportunity to practice law. Instead, he went to work for the Lincoln Mining Company in Joplin. However, because of marital problems and racial discrimination, James Hughes left his family and moved to Mexico.

Langston and his mother, Carolina Mercer Langston, moved to Topeka, Kansas, where she petitioned the school board to allow Langston to enroll in the all-white neighborhood school. Although one of Langston’s teachers often made racist remarks to him, other teachers and many students befriended him.

“I learned early not to hate all white people,” said Hughes. “It has seemed to me that most people are generally good, in every race and in every country where I have been.”1

After first grade, Langston lived with his grandmother. When he was twelve, she died, and he moved in with an aunt and uncle. Two years later, Langston joined his mother and her new husband, Homer Clark.

In Langston’s senior year, his father took him back to Mexico. They had not seen each other since Langston was five years old. Before they had even crossed the border, James Hughes made many negative comments about African Americans. Langston Hughes later wrote, “My father hated Negroes. I think he hated himself, too, for being a Negro.”2

Langston and his father settled in Mexico City, but it was not a happy relationship. “That summer in Mexico was the most miserable I have ever known,” Hughes later said.3 Langston worked all summer and became sick from physical labor and stress. In August 1919, he returned to school in Cleveland, Ohio.

At Central High School, Langston was nominated for class president but did not win. He acted in the school’s drama program, was named class poet and yearbook editor, and wrote and published the school’s newspaper.

Langston graduated with honors in June 1920 and knew he wanted to be a writer. He wanted to write about African Americans and black culture. To do this, he felt he needed to immerse himself in an African-American community. He decided to go to New York City and attend Columbia University. But first he decided to smooth things over with his father in Toluca, Mexico.

One evening on the train trip to Mexico, Langston saw the Mississippi River. He was struck by the thought that the river, and other rivers, such as the Congo and the Niger, played a part in slavery. Boats carried slaves to places where they would be sold. Right then he sat down and wrote his poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.

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