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James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 [1] – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance.
Aug 22, 2024 · Langston Hughes, American writer who was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance and who vividly depicted the African American experience through his writings, which ranged from poetry and plays to novels and newspaper columns. Learn more about Hughes’s life and work.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Langston Hughes was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, the flowering of black intellectual, literary, and artistic life that took place in the 1920s in a number of American cities, particularly Harlem. A major poet, Hughes also wrote novels, short stories, essays, and plays.
- Early Life
- Traveling The World
- Jazz Poetry
- Later Work
- Legacy
- Sources
Hughes was born February 1, 1902 (although some evidence shows it may have been 1901), in Joplin, Missouri, to James and Caroline Hughes. When he was a young boy, his parents divorced, and, after his father moved to Mexico, and his mother, whose maiden name was Langston, sought work elsewhere, he was raised by his grandmother, Mary Langston, in Law...
Hughes returned from Mexico and spent one year studying at Columbia University in New York City. He didn’t love the experience, citing racism, but he became immersed in the burgeoning Harlem cultural and intellectual scene, a period now known as the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes worked several jobs over the next several years, including cook, elevator...
Called the “Poet Laureate of Harlem,” he is credited as the father of jazz poetry, a literary genre influenced by or sounding like jazz, with rhythms and phrases inspired by the music. “But jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America; the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul—the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in...
Ever the traveler, Hughes spent time in the South, chronicling racial injustices, and also the Soviet Union in the 1930s, showing an interest in communism. (He was called to testifybefore Congress during the McCarthy hearings in 1953.) In 1930, Hughes wrote “Mule Bone” with Zora Neale Hurston, his first play, which would be the first of many. “Mula...
Hughes died in New York from complications during surgery to treat prostate cancer on May 22, 1967, at the age of 65. His ashes are interred in Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. His Harlem home was named a New York landmark in 1981, and a National Register of Places a year later. "I, too, am America," a quote from his 1926 po...
“Langston Hughes,” The Library of Congress “Langston Hughes: The People's Poet,” Smithsonian Magazine “The Blues and Langston Hughes,” Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh “Langston Hughes,” Poets.org
- 3 min
Langston Hughes (1901-67) was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance in New York in the 1920s. A prolific writer, he was a novelist, playwright, social activist, and journalist, among many other things (he even wrote a musical).
Langston Hughes. 1901 –. 1967. Read poems by this poet. James Mercer Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1901, in Joplin, Missouri. Hughes’s birth year was revised from 1902 to 1901 after new research from 2018 uncovered that he had been born a year earlier.
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Langston Hughes (1901–1967) was a poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, columnist, and a significant figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Joplin, Missouri, Hughes was the descendant of enslaved African American women and white slave owners in Kentucky.
