James
Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents
divorced when he was a small child, and his father moved to Mexico. He was
raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln,
Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually
settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It was in Lincoln, Illinois, that Hughes began
writing poetry. Following graduation, he spent a year in Mexico and a year at
Columbia University. During these years, he held odd jobs as an assistant cook,
launderer, and a busboy, and travelled to Africa and Europe working as a
seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes's first book of
poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He
finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three
years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the
Harmon gold medal for literature.
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 through the sixties. He wrote novels, short stories
and plays, as well as poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the
world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in "Montage of a
Dream Deferred." His life and work were enormously important in shaping
the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Unlike other
notable black poets of the period—Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Countee
Cullen—Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the
common experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people
in ways that reflected their actual culture, including both their suffering and
their love of music, laughter, and language itself.
Langston
Hughes died of complications from prostate cancer in May 22, 1967, in New York.
In his memory, his residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, New York City,
has been given landmark status by the New York City Preservation Commission,
and East 127th Street has been renamed "Langston Hughes Place."
In
addition to leaving us a large body of poetic work, Hughes wrote eleven plays
and countless works of prose, including the well-known “Simple” books: Simple
Speaks His Mind, Simple Stakes a Claim,Simple Takes a Wife, and Simple's
Uncle Sam. He edited the anthologies The Poetry of the Negro and The
Book of Negro Folklore, wrote an acclaimed autobiography (The Big Sea)
and co-wrote the play Mule Bone with Zora Neale Hurston.
In
Langston Hughes's poetry, he uses the rhythms of African American music,
particularly blues and jazz. This sets his poetry apart from that of other
writers, and it allowed him to experiment with a very rhythmic free verse.
Hughes's second volume of poetry, Fine
Clothes to the Jew
(1927), was not well received at the time of its publication because it was too
experimental. Now, however, many critics believe the volume to be among
Hughes's finest work.
Langston
Hughes returned to school in 1926, this time to the historically black Lincoln
University in Pennsylvania. He was supported by a patron of the arts, a wealthy
white woman in her seventies named Charlotte Osgood Mason. Mason directed
Hughes's literary career, convincing him to write the novel Not Without
Laughter; the two had a dispute in 1930, however, and the relationship came
to an end. At this point in Hughes's life he turned to the political left and
began to develop his interest in socialism. He published poetry in New
Masses, a journal associated with the Communist Party, and in 1932 sailed
to the Soviet Union with a group of young African Americans. Later in the
1930s, Hughes's primary writing was for the theater. His drama about
miscegenation and the South - "Mulatto" - became the longest running
Broadway play written by an African American until Lorraine Hansberry's "A
Raisin in the Sun" (1958).
In
1942, during World War II, Hughes began writing a column for the African
American newspaper, the Chicago Defender. In 1943 he introduced the
character of Jesse B. Semple, or Simple, to his readers. This fictional
everyman, while humorous, also allowed Hughes to discuss very serious racial
issues. The Simple columns were also popular--and they ran for twenty years and
were collected in several books.
Money
was a nagging concern for Hughes throughout his life. While he managed to
support himself as a writer, no small task, he was never financially secure. In
1947, however, through his work writing the lyrics for the Broadway musical
"Street Scene," Hughes
was finally able to earn enough money to purchase a house in Harlem, which had
been his dream. He continued to write: "Montage of a Dream Deferred,"
one of his best known volumes of poetry, was published in 1951; and from that
time until his death sixteen years later he wrote more than twenty additional
works.
Langston Hughes was,
in his later years, deemed the "Poet Laureate of the Negro Race," a
title he encouraged. Hughes meant to represent the race in his writing and he
was, perhaps, the most original of all African American poets. On May 22, 1967
Langston Hughes died after having had abdominal surgery. Hughes' funeral, like
his poetry, was all blues and jazz: the jazz pianist Randy Weston was called
and asked to play for Hughes's funeral. Very little was said by way of eulogy,
but the jazz and the blues were hot, and the final tribute to this writer so influenced
by African American musical forms was fitting.