A Centennial Tribute to
Langston Hughes

LANGSTON HUGHES 
(1902-1967) 

                                                                            

LANGSTON HUGHES, was part of the Harlem Renaissance and was known during  his lifetime as "the poet laureate of Harlem," He also worked as a journalist, dramatist, and children's author. His poems, which tell of the joys and  miseries of the ordinary black man in America, have been widely translated.

James Langston Hughes was born on Feb. 1, 1902, in Joplin, Mo. In 1921 he enrolled at Columbia University in New York City but he was so lonely and  unhappy that he left after a year.

He worked at various jobs, including that of a seaman, traveling to Africa  and Europe. His first book of poetry, 'The Weary Blues', published in 1926, made him well known among literary people. He went on to Lincoln University in Oxford, Pa., on a scholarship and received his B.A. degree there in 1929.

From then on Hughes earned his living as a writer, portraying black life in the United States with idiomatic realism. 'Not without Laughter', a novel published in 1930, won him the Harmon god medal for literature. A book of  poems for children, 'The Dream Keeper', came out in 1932. In 1934 appeared 'The Ways of White Folk's', a collection of short stories. His play 'Mulatto' opened on Broadway in 1935. He wrote the lyrics for 'Street Scene', a 1947 opera by Kurt Weill. Hughes also lectured in schools and colleges, where he talked with black youth who had literary ability and encouraged them to write.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Hughes's work included a volume of poetry, 'Montage of a Dream Differed', published in 1951; of short stories,  'Laughing to Keep from Crying' (1952); and a children's picture book titled 'Black Misery'(1969), which wryly illustrates what it is like  to grow up black in the United States. 

Langston Hughes died of Lung Cancer, in New York City, in 1967.

 

F. Leon Wilson of Spectra Links Digest

Arnold Rampersad on Langston Hughes

Born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, Langston Hughes grew up mainly in Lawrence, Kansas, but also lived in Illinois, Ohio, and Mexico.

By the time Hughes enrolled at Columbia University in New York, he had already launched his literary career with his poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" in the Crisis, edited by W E. B. Du Bois. He had also committed himself both to writing and to writing mainly about African Americans.

Hughes's sense of dedication was instilled in him most of all by his maternal grandmother, Mary Langston, whose first husband had died at Harpers Ferry as a member of John Brown's band, and whose second husband (Hughes's grandfather) had also been a militant abolitionist. Another important family figure was John Mercer Langston, a brother of Hughes's grandfather who was one of the best-known black Americans of the nineteenth century. At the same time, Hughes struggled with a sense of desolation fostered by parental neglect. He himself recalled being driven early by his loneliness 'to books, and the wonderful world in books.’

Leaving Columbia in 1922, Hughes spent the next three years in a succession of menial jobs. But he also traveled abroad. He worked on a freighter down the west coast of Africa and lived for several months in Paris before returning to the United States late in 1924. By this time, he was well known in African American literary circles as a gifted young poet.

His major early influences were Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, as well as the black poets Paul Laurence Dunbar, a master of both dialect and standard verse, and Claude McKay, a radical socialist who also wrote accomplished lyric poetry. However, Sandburg, who Hughes later called "my guiding star," was decisive in leading him toward free verse and a radically democratic modernist aesthetic.

His devotion to black music led him to novel fusions of jazz and blues with traditional verse in his first two books, The Weary Blues (1926) and Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927). His emphasis on lower-class black life, especially in the latter, led to harsh attacks on him in the black press. With these books, however, he established himself as a major force of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1926, in the Nation, he provided the movement with a manifesto when he skillfully argued the need for both race pride and artistic independence in his most memorable essay, 'The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain."

By this time, Hughes had enrolled at the historically black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, from which he would graduate in 1929. In 1927 he began one of the most important relationships of his life, with his patron Mrs. Charlotte Mason, or "Godmother," who generously supported him for two years. She supervised the writing of his first novel, Not Without Laughter (1930)--about a sensitive, black midwestern boy and his struggling family. However, their relationship collapsed about the time the novel appeared, and Hughes sank into a period of intense personal unhappiness and disillusionment.

One result was his firm turn to the far left in politics. During a year (1932-1933) spent in the Soviet Union, he wrote his most radical verse. A year in Carmel, California, led to a collection of short stories, The Ways of White Folks (1934). This volume is marked by pessimism about race relations, as well as a sardonic realism.

After his play Mulatto, on the twinned themes of miscegenation and parental rejection, opened on Broadway in 1935, Hughes wrote other plays, including comedies such as Little Ham (1936) and a historical drama, Emperor of Haiti (1936). Most of these plays were only moderate successes. In 1937 he spent several months in Europe, including a long
stay in besieged Madrid. In 1938 he returned home to found the Harlem Suitcase Theater, which staged his agitprop drama Don't You Want to Be Free? The play, employing several of his poems, vigorously blended black nationalism, the blues, and socialist exhortation. The same year, a socialist organization published a pamphlet of his radical verse, "A New Song."

With World War II, Hughes moved more to the center politically. His first volume of autobiography, The Big Sea (1940), written in an episodic, lightly comic manner, made virtually no mention of his leftist sympathies. In his book of verse Shakespeare in Harlem (1942) he once again sang the blues. On the other hand, this collection, as well as another, his Jim Crow’s Last Stand (1943), strongly attacked racial segregation.

Perhaps his finest literary achievement during the war came in the course of writing a weekly column in the Chicago Defender that began in 1942 and lasted twenty years. The highlight of the column was an offbeat Harlem character called Jesse B. Semple, or Simple, and his exchanges with a staid narrator in a neighborhood bar, where Simple commented on a variety of matters but mainly about race and racism. Simple became Hughes's most celebrated and beloved fictional creation, and the subject of five collections edited by Hughes, starting in 1950 with Simple Speaks His Mind.

After the war, two books of verse, Fields of Wonder (1947) and One-Way Ticket (1949), added little to his fame. However, in Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951) he broke new ground with verse accented by the discordant nature of the new bebop jazz that reflected a growing desperation in the black urban communities of the North. At the same time, Hughes's career was vexed by constant harassment by right-wing forces about his ties to the Left. In vain he protested that he had never been a Communist and had severed all such links. In 1953 he suffered a public humiliation at the hands of  Senator Joseph McCarthy, who forced him to appear in Washington, D.C., and testify officially about his politics. Hughes denied that he had ever been a party member but conceded that some of his radical verse had been ill-advised.

Hughes's career hardly suffered from this episode. Within a short time McCarthy himself was discredited and Hughes was free to write at length about his years in the Soviet Union in I Wonder as I Wander (1956), his much-admired second volume of autobiography. He became prosperous, although he always had to work hard for his measure of prosperity and sometimes called himself, with good cause, a 'literary sharecropper.’

In the 1950s he constantly looked to the musical stage for success, as he sought to repeat his major coup of the 1940s, when Kurt Weill and Elmer Rice had chosen him as the lyricist for their Street Scene (1947). This production was hailed as a breakthrough in the development of American opera; for Hughes, the apparently endless cycle of poverty into which he had been locked came to an end. He bought a home in Harlem.

The Simple books inspired a musical show, Simply Heavenly (1957), that met with some success. However, Hughes's Tambourines to Glory (1963), a gospel musical play satirizing corruption in a black storefront church, failed badly, with some critics accusing him of creating caricatures of black life. Nevertheless, his love of gospel music led to other acclaimed stage efforts, usually mixing words, music, and dance in an atmosphere of improvisation. Notable here were the Christmas show Black Nativity (1961) and, inspired by the civil rights movement, Jericho--Jim Crow (1964).

For Hughes, writing for children was important. Starting with the successful Popo and Fifina (1932), a tale set in Haiti and written with Arna Bontemps, he eventually published a dozen children's books, on subjects such as jazz, Africa, and the West Indies. Proud of his versatility, he also wrote a commissioned history of the NAACP and the text of a much praised pictorial history of black America. His text in The Sweet Flypaper of Life (1955), where he explicated photographs of Harlem by Roy DeCarava, was judged masterful by reviewers, and confirmed Hughes's reputation for an unrivaled command of the nuances of black urban culture.

The 1960s saw Hughes as productive as ever. In 1962 his ambitious book-length poem Ask Your Mama, dense with allusions to black culture and music, appeared. However, the reviews were dismissive. Hughes's work was not as universally acclaimed as before in the black community. Although he was hailed in 1966 as a historic artistic figure at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, he also found himself increasingly rejected by young black militants at home as the civil rights movement lurched toward Black Power. His last book was the volume of verse, posthumously published, The Panther and the Lash (1967), mainly about civil rights. He died in May that year in New York City.

In many ways Hughes always remained loyal to the principles he had laid down for the younger black writers in 1926. His art was firmly rooted in race pride and race feeling even as he cherished his freedom as an artist. He was both nationalist and cosmopolitan. As a radical democrat, he believed that art should be accessible to as many people as possible. He could sometimes be bitter, but his art is generally suffused by a keen sense of the ideal and by a profound love of humanity, especially black Americans. He was perhaps the most original of African American poets and, in the breadth and variety of his work, assuredly the most representative of African American writers.

From The Oxford Companion to African American Literature, Oxford University Press, © 1997.

Biographical Sources

• The Negro Speaks of Rivers:  Dream Keeper - Langston Hughes is often referred to as the "Poet Laureate of the Negro Race."
• I Hear America Singing - J. Langston Hughes:  A central figure of the Harlem Renaissance.
• James Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967) - "We younger Negro  artists now intend to express our individual dark - skinned selves without fear or shame.  If white people are pleased we are glad.  If they aren't, it doesn't matter.  We know we are beautiful. and ugly too...If colored people are pleased we are glad.  if they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either.  We build our temples for tomorrow, as strong as we know how and we stand on the top to the mountain, free within ourselves." "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain"  the Nation, 1926
• Books and Writers - African - American poet, novelist, and playwright, who became one of the foremost interpreters of racial relationships in the United States.
• Lawrence Hughes in Lawrence: Lawrence, Kansas - Saint .Luke's AME Church in Lawrence, Langston attended services, sometimes reluctantly. In his autobiography, Langston stated that in the black churches of Lawrence, he heard rhythms that influenced his poetry.
• Amazing Americans - Langston Hughes - Hughes' creative genius was influenced by his life in New York City's Harlem, a primarily African American neighborhood.
• Black History Month - Biography - Langston Hughes - Following the example of  Paul Laurence Dunbar, one of his early poetic influences, Langston  Hughes became the second African American to earn his living as a writer.
• Modern American Poetry - Compiled and prepared by Cary Nelson.
• Langston Hughes Biography
• Langston Hughes and the Academy of American Poets - "Hughes who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties though the sixties."
• Langston Hughes - The Black Renaissance in Washington,  D.C. - Washington's middle class community experienced a literary rebirth during the 1920s.  Eventually, some writers took their skills to Harlem.  Hughes lived in Washington, D.C.  from November 1924 to January 1926.
• Poetry Authors in Depth -Langston Hughes - Meyer Literature - Throughout his long career as a professional writer, Hughes remained true to the African American heritage he celebrated in his writings, which were frankly "racial in theme and treatment, derived from the life I know.
• Spectra Links - Langston Hughes : The Shakespeare of Harlem
• Gale - Free Resources - Black History Month - Biography - Langston Hughes - Young Hughes learned the blues and spirituals.  He would subsequently weave these musical elements into his own poetry and fiction.
• Library of Congress.  Today in History Archive - See:  Langston Hughes
• America's Library.  Langston Hughes - Biographical articles on Hughes
• The Negro Speaks of Rivers:  Dream Keeper - Langston Hughes is often referred to as the "Poet Laureate of the Negro Race."
• I Hear America Singing - J. Langston Hughes:  A central figure of the Harlem Renaissance.
• James Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967) - "We younger Negro  artists now intend to express our individual dark - skinned selves without fear or shame.  If white people are pleased we are glad.  If they aren't, it doesn't matter.  We know we are beautiful. and ugly too...If colored people are pleased we are glad.  if they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either.  We build our temples for tomorrow, as strong as we know how and we stand on the top to the mountain, free within ourselves."
• "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain"  the Nation, 1926
• Books and Writers - African - American poet, novelist, and playwright, who became one of the foremost interpreters of racial relationships in the United States.
• Lawrence Hughes in Lawrence: Lawrence, Kansas
• Saint .Luke's AME Church in Lawrence, Langston attended services, sometimes reluctantly. In his autobiography, Langston stated that in the black churches of Lawrence, he heard rhythms that influenced his poetry.
• Amazing Americans - Langston Hughes
• Hughes' creative genius was influenced by his life in New York City's Harlem, a primarily African American neighborhood.
• Black History Month - Biography - Langston Hughes - Following the example of  Paul Laurence Dunbar, one of his early poetic influences, Langston  Hughes became the second African American to earn his living as a writer.
• Modern American Poetry - Compiled and prepared by Cary Nelson
• Langston Hughes Biography
• Langston Hughes and the Academy of American Poets - "Hughes who claimed Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties though the sixties."
• Langston Hughes - The Black Renaissance in Washington,  DC. - Washington's middle class community experienced a literary rebirth during the 1920s.  Eventually, some writers took their skills to Harlem.  Hughes lived in Washington, D.C.  from November 1924 to January 1926.
• Poetry Authors in Depth -Langston Hughes - Meyer Literature - Throughout his long career as a professional writer, Hughes remained true to the African American heritage he celebrated in his writings, which were frankly "racial in theme and treatment, derived from the life I know.
• Spectra Links - Langston Hughes : The Shakespeare of Harlem
• Gale - Free Resources - Black History Month - Biography - Langston Hughes - Young Hughes learned the blues and spirituals.  He would subsequently weave these musical elements into his own poetry and fiction.
• Library of Congress.  Today in History Archive - See:  Langston Hughes
• America's Library.  Langston Hughes - Biographical articles on Hughes.
• The Harlem Renaissance - "Harlem was like a great magnet for the Negro intellectual, pulling him from everywhere.  Once in New York, he had to live in Harlem.  Harlem was not so much a place as a state of mind, the cultural metaphor for black America itself."   (Langston Hughes)                                                                                
• Chronology - The Harlem Renaissance - See:  Langston Hughes 
• America's Library.  Langston Hughes - Biographical articles on Hughes' life
• Langston Hughes : The Shakespeare of  Harlem - He shared his feelings about everyday African Americans through different forms of literature. 
• Harlem Renaissance 1919 - 1948 - African American Writers and Poets

  
Literary Criticism on Hughes' Work

• Critical Works: Langston Hughes - Selected Bibliography of Critical Works on Langston Hughes
• Criticism - a bibliography - see:  Langston Hughes
• hughesbib - Excellent site of resources on the study of  Hughes' work.
• Academy of American Poets - Site on Langston Hughes, with good links to the web.
• Voices and Visions Series - Offers an extensive Hughes site.
• Bibliography: Langston Hughes - Reflection :  Minority Voices
• Criticism - Art - Harlem Renaissance - see: Langston Hughes
• African American Poetry Criticism - An excellent bibliography of critical work on Hughes' literary work.
• Short Stories of Langston Hughes - Hughes was fond of calling himself  "a literary sharecropper."
• Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967) - Teacher Resource File
• Lesson Plan - Langston Hughes - Related topics: Music, Poetry, Civil Rights Movement, Geography, and Choral Readin
• Bibliography : Langston Hughes - Selected bibliographies of critical works of Langston Hughes.  From the Jazz Literature Archive.
• The Stranger Redeemed: A Portrait of a Black Poet - Yale - New Haven Teachers Institute
• Langston Hughes Related Sites - They provide interesting information on the life and work of an American Original.
• Political Plays of Langston Hughes - Little - Known Labor Plays of Langston Hughes to be Published on Hughes' Birthday
• Works of Langston Hughes - Hughes addresses Jazz : its universality and its ability to bring people together despite their differences.
• The Langston Hughes Tribute - A dedication to a great great African American writer.
• Major Themes, Historical Perspectives, and Personal Issues - Classroom Issues and Strategies. The primary problems encountered in teaching Langston Hughes grow out of his air of improvisation and familiarity.  Vital to an understanding of Hughes's poetry and prose is to understand the quality of black colloquial speech and the rhythms of jazz and the blues.
• The poet's Corner - Langston Hughes
• Critical Work on Langston Hughes -
• Langston Hughes and the Chicago Defender - Essays on Race, Politics, and Culture, 1942-62.
• African - American History : Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes - Recent Acquisitions in African - American History
• Jazz is Timeless - Langston Hughes:  Flypaper of Life with Roy DeCarava (1984). Suggested readings etc.
• SCORE: Teacher Guide - The Poetry of Langston Hughes - Teacher Cyber Guide to the Poetry of  Langston Hughes
• Langston Hughes - Modern American Poetry
• The South - Langston Hughes:  Poems
• Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center - Seattle, WA

Bibliographic Information on Langston Hughes

• The Crisis Magazine On - Line - Cover Story:  The Life and Times of Langston Hughes - remembering the prolific literary legend 100 years after his birth
• Featured Author:  Langston Hughes - With News and Reviews  From the Archives of the New York Times.
• Featured Author - Langston Hughes - With News and Reviews From the Archives of the New York Times.
• Poetry Website - Langston Hughes
• Link baton - Books by Langston Hughes, ISBN etc.
• IMS : Langston Hughes, HarperAudio - Short Stories; written by Langston Hughes and read by actor Ossie Davis.
• PAL : Perspectives in American Literature:  A Research and Reference Guide - See:  Langston Hughes
• Not  So Simple : The "Simple" Stories by Langston Hughes - "The fictional works of Langston Hughes have not yet received the scholarly attention they deserve."
• The Langston Hughes Review - Official Publication of the Langston Hughes Society
• Featured Author : Langston Hughes - With News and Reviews From the Archives of the New York Times.
• Longman English Literature - The English Pages Literature Workbook
• Literature of the Harlem Renaissance - Most African American Writers wrote to escape the trials of life, such as poverty and discrimination.  In the 1920s, literature blossomed and became a key factor in the lives of common folk.
• Langston Hughes - Langston Hughes was one of the dominant voices in American literature of this century and perhaps the single most influential Black poet.
• Black Renaissance in DC Timeline - See: Langston Hughes. In 1926, when Langston Hughes presented his famous manifest, "The Negro and the Racial Mountain".  he attacked the tendency of middle-class blacks to suppress their Black selves and heritage in an uncritical embrace of whiteness.
• A Spark for Langston Hughes - Bessie Smith:  A Heroine for Cora
• Hughes Langston - An Encarta Encyclopedia Article titled "Hughes, Langston"
• African American Odyssey: World War 1 and Postwar Society (Part 2) - The Harlem and the Flowering of Creativity. African Americans wrote symphonies and sonatas in the period between the world wars. They did not only write. However the night club scene and music seemed to capture the period.
• Langston Hughes: An Illustrated Edition; artist: Stephen Alcorn - Listed in The New York Review of Books'   READER'S CATALOG: The 40,000 Best Books In Print.
• Miss Blues'es Child by Langston Hughes
• Storylines:  storytellers - Langston Hughes
• Internet School Library Media Center - Langston Hughes bibliography page
• Langston Hughes : The Weary Blues

   
Awards & Other Recognitions

• Blunt(MO07) - Press Release - Blunt Reports Stamp  to Honor Langston Hughes - Joplin's Native Langston Hughes won the honor of having a postage stamp to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his birth. US Congressman Roy Blunt's Bill was co-sponsored by Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-Harlem), and expressed the sense of Congress to issue a postage stamp to commemorate Hughes' work.
• The Crystal Stair Award - A crystal stair serves as the central image of the poem "Mother to Son" by the 20th - century African American poet Langston Hughes.  The Crystal Stair Award has been established by School of Social Work to recognize "natural social workers" - volunteers and professionals from any discipline who have worked passionately for social justice and the elimination of prejudice and oppression.
• Happy 100th Birthday Mr. Hughes - Alice Walker celebrates 100th birthday of poet Langston Hughes
• In 1926 Langston Hughes was awarded the Witter Bynner Prize - This award was  for the best poetry submitted by an American undergraduate.  His award was given based on a collection of  five poems, one of which was "The House in Taos".  In this very same contest, Waring Cuney received an honorable mention.
• First African American to be inducted into the Missouri Writers Hall of Fame* - http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/mo07_blunt/langstonhughesstamp.html
• Guggenheim Fellow - Langston Hughes  is a Guggenheim Fellow.  The fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.
• News and Media - Events at Rutgers University to celebrate Black History Month. See:  Langston Hughes:  100th Birthday celebration.
• The Langston Hughes Society - The Langston Hughes Review:  Official Publication of the Langston Hughes Society
• Langston Hughes Symposium - A celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Langston Hughes
• Lawrence celebrates Langston Hughes Events - To learn more about the celebrations, please visit the Lawrence Convention and Visitors Bureau Website.
• Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center
• Poet in residence: Laboratory School; University of Chicago
• First prize for poetry in the Opportunity Magazine; 1925
• First Prize  for poetry in the Witter Bynner Undergraduate Contest, Lincoln University; 1926
• The Amy Springarn Award
• The Intercollegiate Poet Award; Palms magazine; 1927
• The Harmon Gold Medal for Literature;  1931
• Langston Hughes and his World:  A Centennial Celebration, a research conference at Yale University February 21-23, 2002. Note: A Website link will be available in future.
• Langston Hughes Festival, Joplin, Missouri  - February 1, 2003
• Dream Explosion: The fifth Annual Langston Hughes Black Poetry Festival, Florrisant, Missouri. April 20-27, 2002
• Langston Hughes Celebration, Enoch Pratt Library, Baltimore, Maryland February 24, 2002.
  

Langston Hughes' Bibliography

  
Prose Writing

(Most of the titles can be found at a Howard University Library.) 

• A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia. Moscow and Leningrad: Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., 1934.
• The Big Sea: An Autobiography. Knopf, 1940, reprinted, Thunder's Mouth, 1986. Howard University Library.
• The Sweet Flypaper of Life. Langston Hughes and Roy De Carava. Simon & Schuster, 1955, reprinted Howard University Press, 1985. Howard University Library.
• I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey. Rinehart, 1956, reprinted, Thunder's Mouth, 1986. Howard University Library.
• A Pictorial History of the Negro in America.  Langston Hughes and Milton Meltzer. Crown, 1956. 4th Edition published as A Pictorial History of Black Americans, 1973. 6th Edition published as A Pictorial History of African Americans, 1995. Howard University Library.
• Fight for Freedom: The Story of the NAACP. Norton, 1962. Howard University Library
• Black Magic. Langston Hughes and Milton Meltzer. A Pictorial History of the Negro in American Entertainment. Prentice-Hall, 1967.  Howard University Library.
• Black Misery. Paul S. Erickson, 1969, reprinted, Oxford University Press, 1994.
• The Langston Hughes Reader. New York: Braziller, 1958.
• Five Plays by Langston Hughes. Edited by Webster Smalley. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963.
• Good Morning Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings by Langston Hughes. Edited by Faith Berry. New York & Westport: Lawrence Hill, 1973.

Fiction

• The Best of Simple.