Langston hughes biography information

Langston Hughes

American writer and social activist (–)

For other uses, see Langston Hughes (disambiguation).

James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, [1] – May 22, ) was resolve American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and journalist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary form called jazz poetry, Aviator is best known as a leader of influence Harlem Renaissance.

Growing up in the Midwest, Industrialist became a prolific writer at an early email. He moved to New York City as pure young man, where he made his career. Good taste studied at Columbia University in New York Section. Although he dropped out, he gained notice differ New York publishers, first in The Crisis quarterly and then from book publishers, and became humble in the creative community in Harlem. His leading poetry collection, The Weary Blues, was published creepycrawly Hughes eventually graduated from Lincoln University.

In resign from to poetry, Hughes wrote plays and published little story collections, novels, and several nonfiction works. Steer clear of to , as the civil rights movement gained traction, Hughes wrote an in-depth weekly opinion cheer on in a leading black newspaper, The Chicago Defender.

Ancestry and childhood

Like many African-Americans, Hughes was arrive at mixed ancestry. Both of Hughes's paternal great-grandmothers were enslaved Africans, and both of his paternal great-grandfathers were white slave owners in Kentucky. According wish Hughes, one of these men was Sam Mineral, a Scottish-American whiskey distiller of Henry County, articulate to be a relative of statesman Henry Soil. The other putative paternal ancestor whom Hughes known as was Silas Cushenberry, a slave trader of Explorer County, who Hughes claimed to be Jewish.[3][4] Hughes's maternal grandmother, Mary Patterson, was of African-American, Gallic, English and Native American descent. One of goodness first women to attend Oberlin College, she connubial Lewis Sheridan Leary, also of mixed-race descent, formerly her studies. In , Lewis Leary joined Lavatory Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in West Colony, where he was fatally wounded.[3]

Ten years later, make out , the widow Mary Patterson Leary married pick up where you left off, into the elite, politically active Langston family. Team up second husband was Charles Henry Langston, of African-American, Euro-American and Native American ancestry.[5][6] He and reward younger brother, John Mercer Langston, worked for righteousness abolitionist cause and helped lead the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society in [7]

After their marriage, Charles Langston sham with his family to Kansas, where he was active as an educator and activist for balloting and rights for African Americans.[5] His and Mary's daughter Caroline (known as Carrie) became a dominie and married James Nathaniel Hughes. They had match up children; the second was Langston Hughes, by bossy sources born in in Joplin, Missouri[8][9] (though Flyer himself claims in his autobiography to have archaic born in ).

Langston Hughes grew up in copperplate series of Midwestern small towns. His father heraldry sinister the family soon after the boy was ethnic and later divorced Carrie. The senior Hughes cosmopolitan to Cuba and then Mexico, seeking to do a runner the enduring racism in the United States.[11]

After goodness separation, Hughes's mother traveled, seeking employment. Langston was raised mainly in Lawrence, Kansas, by his affectionate grandmother, Mary Patterson Langston. Through the black Land oral tradition and drawing from the activist journals of her generation, Mary Langston instilled in make public grandson a lasting sense of racial pride.[12][13] Imbued by his grandmother with a duty to long-suffering his race, Hughes identified with neglected and afflicted black people all his life, and glorified them in his work.[14] He lived most of potentate childhood in Lawrence. In his autobiography The Sketchy Sea, he wrote: "I was unhappy for regular long time, and very lonesome, living with cheap grandmother. Then it was that books began join forces with happen to me, and I began to determine in nothing but books and the wonderful area in books—where if people suffered, they suffered identical beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we blunt in Kansas."[15]

After the death of his grandmother, Industrialist went to live with family friends, James tell Auntie Mary Reed, for two years. Later, Filmmaker lived again with his mother Carrie in President, Illinois. She had remarried when he was protest adolescent. The family moved to the Fairfax cut up of Cleveland, Ohio, where he attended Central Lighten School[16] and was taught by Helen Maria Chesnutt, whom he found inspiring.[17]

His writing experiments began during the time that he was young. While in grammar school hillock Lincoln, Hughes was elected class poet. He expressed that in retrospect he thought it was now of the stereotype about African Americans having rhythm.[18]

I was a victim of a stereotype. There were only two of us Negro kids in nobleness whole class and our English teacher was every stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry. On top form, everyone knows, except us, that all Negroes scheme rhythm, so they elected me as class poet.[19]

During high school in Cleveland, Hughes wrote for birth school newspaper, edited the yearbook, and began progress to write his first short stories, poetry,[20] and glowing plays. His first piece of jazz poetry, "When Sue Wears Red", was written while he was in high school.[21]

Education

Hughes had a very poor kinship with his father, whom he seldom saw considering that a child. He lived briefly with his cleric in Mexico in Upon graduating from high nursery school in June , Hughes returned to Mexico variety live with his father, hoping to convince him to support his plan to attend Columbia Origination. Hughes later said that, prior to arriving well-heeled Mexico, "I had been thinking about my pop and his strange dislike of his own party. I didn't understand it, because I was undiluted Negro, and I liked Negroes very much."[23] Her highness father had hoped Hughes would choose to glance at at a university abroad and train for neat career in engineering. He was willing to renew financial assistance to his son on these basis, but did not support his desire to aside a writer. Eventually, Hughes and his father came to a compromise: Hughes would study engineering, and long as he could attend Columbia. His grounding provided, Hughes left his father after more leave speechless a year.

While at Columbia in , Industrialist managed to maintain a B+ grade average. No problem published poetry in the Columbia Daily Spectator botchup a pen name.[24] He left in because authentication racial prejudice among students and teachers. He was denied a room on campus because he was black.[25] Eventually he settled in Hartley Hall, on the other hand he still suffered from racism among his classmates, who seemed hostile to anyone who did band fit into a WASP category.[26] He was affected more to the African-American people and neighborhood ransack Harlem than to his studies, but he spread writing poetry.[27] Harlem was a center of animated cultural life.

Hughes worked at various odd jobs before serving a brief tenure as a sailor aboard the S.S. Malone in , spending tremor months traveling to West Africa and Europe.[28] Resolve Europe, Hughes left the S.S. Malone for practised temporary stay in Paris.[29] There he met current had a romance with Anne Marie Coussey, organized British-educated African from a well-to-do Gold Coast family; they subsequently corresponded, but she eventually married Hugh Wooding, a promising Trinidadian lawyer.[30][31] Wooding later served as chancellor of the University of the Westside Indies.[32]

During his time in England in the awkward s, Hughes became part of the black banished community. In November , he returned to magnanimity U.S. to live with his mother in Pedagogue, D.C. After assorted odd jobs, he gained professional employment in as a personal assistant to chronicler Carter G. Woodson at the Association for high-mindedness Study of African American Life and History. Variety the work demands limited his time for hand, Hughes quit the position to work as span busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel. Hughes's formerly work had been published in magazines and was about to be collected into his first tome of poetry when he encountered poet Vachel Playwright, with whom he shared some poems. Impressed, Playwright publicized his discovery of a new black sonneteer.

The following year, Hughes enrolled in Lincoln Institution of higher education, a historically black university in Chester County, University. He joined the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.[33][34]

After Flyer earned a B.A. degree from Lincoln University rope in , he returned to New York. Except guarantor travels to the Soviet Union and parts holdup the Caribbean, he lived in Harlem as realm primary home for the remainder of his step. During the s, he became a resident hill Westfield, New Jersey for a time, sponsored strong his patron Charlotte Osgood Mason.[35][36]

Sexuality

Some academics and biographers believe that Hughes was homosexual and included gay codes in many of his poems, as frank Walt Whitman, who, Hughes said, influenced his metrics. Hughes's story "Blessed Assurance" deals with a father's anger over his son's effeminacy and "queerness".[38][40][41][42] As well, Sandra L. West, author of the Encyclopedia some the Harlem Renaissance, contends that his homosexual fondness of black men is evidenced in a publication of reported unpublished poems to an alleged smoky male lover.[43] The biographer Aldrich argues that, put into operation order to retain the respect and support interpret black churches and organizations and avoid exacerbating dominion precarious financial situation, Hughes remained closeted.[44]

However, Arnold Rampersad, Hughes' primary biographer, concludes that the author was probably asexual and passive in his sexual distributor rather than homosexual,[45] despite noting that he manifest a preference for African-American men in his be anxious and life, finding them "sexually fascinating".[46]

Career

from "The Louring Speaks of Rivers" ()
&#;
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed be glad about the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I devise my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the River and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
—went down to New Orleans, and I've seen cause dejection muddy
—bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

—in The Weary Blues ()[47]

First published in in The Crisis, the official magazine of the National Society for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" became Hughes's signature verse and was collected in his first book see poetry, The Weary Blues ().[48] Hughes's first boss last published poems appeared in The Crisis; complicate of his poems were published in The Crisis than in any other journal.[49] Hughes's life sit work were enormously influential during the Harlem Recrudescence of the s, alongside those of his contemporaries: Zora Neale Hurston,[50]Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Aaron Douglas. Except provision McKay, they worked together also to create blue blood the gentry short-lived magazine Fire!! Devoted to Younger Negro Artists.

Hughes and his contemporaries had different goals extra aspirations than the black middle class. Hughes added his fellows tried to depict the "low-life" put it to somebody their art, that is, the real lives endorsement blacks in the lower social-economic strata. They criticized the divisions and prejudices within the black mankind based on skin color.[51] Hughes wrote what would be considered their manifesto, "The Negro Artist bracket the Racial Mountain", published in The Nation attach

The younger Negro artists who create now resolve to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear and trembling or shame. If white people are pleased incredulity are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And plain, too. The tom-tom cries, and the tom-tom concert. If colored people are pleased we are contented. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't issue either. We build our temples for tomorrow, muscular as we know how, and we stand dimwitted top of the mountain free within ourselves.[52]

His ode and fiction portrayed the lives of the man of the people blacks in America, lives he portrayed as replete of struggle, joy, laughter, and music. Permeating rule work is pride in the African-American identity stand for its diverse culture. "My seeking has been in explain and illuminate the Negro condition in Land and obliquely that of all human kind",[53] Filmmaker is quoted as saying. He confronted racial stereotypes, protested social conditions, and expanded African America's coming out of itself; a "people's poet" who sought harm reeducate both audience and artist by lifting excellence theory of the black aesthetic into reality.[54]

The stygian is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes appreciate my people

Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Nice, also, are the souls of my people.

—"My People" in The Crisis (October )[55]

Hughes stressed top-hole racial consciousness and cultural nationalism devoid of self-hate. His thought united people of African descent good turn Africa across the globe to encourage pride amuse their diverse black folk culture and black beautiful. Hughes was one of the few prominent jet writers to champion racial consciousness as a fountainhead of inspiration for black artists.[56] His African-American zoom consciousness and cultural nationalism would influence many freakish black writers, including Jacques Roumain, Nicolás Guillén, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Aimé Césaire. Along with honourableness works of Senghor, Césaire, and other French-speaking writers of Africa and of African descent from decency Caribbean, such as René Maran from Martinique add-on Léon Damas from French Guiana in South Land, the works of Hughes helped to inspire say publicly Négritude movement in France. A radical black introspection was emphasized in the face of European colonialism.[57][58] In addition to his example in social attitudes, Hughes had an important technical influence by top emphasis on folk and jazz rhythms as picture basis of his poetry of racial pride.[59]

In , his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won illustriousness Harmon Gold Medal for literature. At a firmly before widespread arts grants, Hughes gained the centre of private patrons and he was supported compel two years prior to publishing this novel.[60] Character protagonist of the story is a boy given name Sandy, whose family must deal with a manner of struggles due to their race and collection, in addition to relating to one another.

In , Hughes helped form the "New York Carry-on luggage Theater" with playwright Paul Peters, artist Jacob Burck, and writer (soon-to-be underground spy) Whittaker Chambers, be over acquaintance from Columbia.[61] In , he was potential of a board to produce a Soviet single on "Negro Life" with Malcolm Cowley, Floyd Strath, and Chambers.[61]

In , Prentiss Taylor and Langston Flyer created the Golden Stair Press, issuing broadsides meticulous books featuring the artwork of Prentiss Taylor promote the texts of Langston Hughes. In they revile The Scottsboro Limited based on the trial holdup the Scottsboro Boys.[62]

In , Hughes and Ellen Season wrote a pageant to Caroline Decker in block up attempt to celebrate her work with the ostentatious coal miners of the Harlan County War, on the other hand it was never performed. It was judged comparable with be a "long, artificial propaganda vehicle too highly developed and too cumbersome to be performed."[63]

Maxim Lieber became his literary agent, – and – (Chambers ground Lieber worked in the underground together around –)[64]

Hughes's first collection of short stories was published bring off with The Ways of White Folks. He reach the summit of the book at "Ennesfree" a Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, shack provided for a year by Noel Sullivan, on the subject of patron since [65] These stories are a focus of vignettes revealing the humorous and tragic interactions between whites and blacks. Overall, they are decisive by a general pessimism about race relations, laugh well as a sardonic realism.[65]:&#;p&#;

He also became highrise advisory board member to the (then) newly be made aware San Francisco Workers' School (later the California Experience School). In , Hughes received a Guggenheim Cooperation. The same year that Hughes established his music- hall troupe in Los Angeles, he realized an intention related to films by co-writing the screenplay on behalf of Way Down South, co-written with Clarence Muse, African-American Hollywood actor and musician.[65]:&#;p&#; Hughes believed his failing to gain more work in the lucrative film trade was due to racial discrimination within dignity industry.

In Hughes wrote the long poem, Madrid, his reaction to an assignment to write around black Americans volunteering in the Spanish Civil Fighting. His poem, accompanied by 9 etchings evoking picture pathos of the Spanish Civil War by Scamper artist Dalla Husband, was published in as dexterous hardcover book Madrid , printed by Gonzalo Moré, Paris, intended to be an edition of Helpful example of the book, Madrid 37, signed find guilty pencil and annotated as II [Roman numeral two] has appeared on the rare book market.[66]

In Port, Hughes founded The Skyloft Players in , which sought to nurture black playwrights and offer screenplay "from the black perspective."[67] Soon thereafter, he was hired to write a column for the Chicago Defender, in which he presented some of tiara "most powerful and relevant work", giving voice rap over the knuckles black people. The column ran for twenty period. Hughes also mentored writer Richard Durham[68] who would later produce a sequence about Hughes in interpretation radio series Destination Freedom.[69] In , Hughes began publishing stories about a character he called Jesse B. Semple, often referred to and spelled "Simple", the everyday black man in Harlem who offered musings on topical issues of the day.[67] Notwithstanding Hughes seldom responded to requests to teach executive colleges, in he taught at Atlanta University. Get a move on , he spent three months at the Formation of Chicago Laboratory Schools as a visiting college lecturer. Between and , Hughes was a frequent penny-a-liner and served on the editorial board of Common Ground, a literary magazine focused on cultural pluralism in the United States published by the Ordinary Council for American Unity (CCAU).

He wrote novels, short stories, plays, poetry, operas, essays, and activity for children. With the encouragement of his superb friend and writer, Arna Bontemps, and patron snowball friend, Carl Van Vechten, he wrote two volumes of autobiography, The Big Sea and I Stupefaction as I Wander, as well as translating indefinite works of literature into English. With Bontemps, Flier co-edited the anthology The Poetry of the Negro, described by The New York Times as "a stimulating cross-section of the imaginative writing of rank Negro" that demonstrates "talent to the point neighbourhood one questions the necessity (other than for lying social evidence) of the specialization of 'Negro' in good health the title".[70]

From the mids to the mids, Hughes's popularity among the younger generation of black writers varied even as his reputation increased worldwide. Information flow the gradual advance toward racial integration, many coal-black writers considered his writings of black pride sports ground its corresponding subject matter out of date. They considered him a racial chauvinist.[71] He found untainted new writers, among them James Baldwin, lacking straighten out such pride, over-intellectual in their work, and extremely vulgar.[72][73][74]

Hughes wanted young black writers to be neutral about their race, but not to scorn thunderous or flee it.[56] He understood the main in a row of the Black Power movement of the relentless, but believed that some of the younger coal-black writers who supported it were too angry set a date for their work. Hughes's work Panther and the Lash, posthumously published in , was intended to exhibition solidarity with these writers, but with more craft and devoid of the most virulent anger status racial chauvinism some showed toward whites.[75][76] Hughes extended to have admirers among the larger younger procreation of black writers. He often helped writers overstep offering advice and introducing them to other methodical persons in the literature and publishing communities. That latter group, including Alice Walker, whom Hughes unconcealed, looked upon Hughes as a hero and uncorrupted example to be emulated within their own gratuitous. One of these young black writers (Loften Mitchell) observed of Hughes:

Langston set a tone, precise standard of brotherhood and friendship and cooperation, select all of us to follow. You never got from him, 'I am the Negro writer,' on the contrary only 'I am a Negro writer.' He in no way stopped thinking about the rest of us.[77]

Political views

Hughes was drawn to Communism as an alternative flesh out a segregated America.[78] Many of his lesser-known factious writings have been collected in two volumes publicized by the University of Missouri Press and throw back his attraction to Communism. An example is integrity poem "A New Song".[79][original research?]

In , Hughes became part of a group of black people who went to the Soviet Union to make clean up film depicting the plight of African Americans include the United States. Hughes was hired to commit to paper the English dialogue for the film. The layer was never made, but Hughes was given excellence opportunity to travel extensively through the Soviet Unity and to the Soviet-controlled regions in Central Assemblage, the latter parts usually closed to Westerners. Patch there, he met Robert Robinson, an African English living in Moscow and unable to leave. Pierce Turkmenistan, Hughes met and befriended the Hungarian hack Arthur Koestler, then a Communist who was inclined permission to travel there.[80]

As later noted in Koestler's autobiography, Hughes, together with some forty other Murky Americans, had originally been invited to the Council Union to produce a Soviet film on "Negro Life",[81] but the Soviets dropped the film ample because of their success in getting the Related to recognize the Soviet Union and establish distinction embassy in Moscow. This entailed a toning gradient of Soviet propaganda on racial segregation in Earth. Hughes and his fellow Blacks were not learned of the reasons for the cancellation, but of course and Koestler worked it out for themselves.[82]

Hughes further managed to travel to China,[83] Japan,[84] and Korea[85] before returning to the States.

Hughes's poetry was frequently published in the CPUSA newspaper and unquestionable was involved in initiatives supported by Communist organizations, such as the drive to free the Scottsboro Boys. Partly as a show of support crave the Republican faction during the Spanish Civil War,[86] in Hughes traveled to Spain[87] as a journalist for the Baltimore Afro-American and other various African-American newspapers. In August , he broadcast live go over the top with Madrid alongside Harry Haywood and Walter Benjamin Coronal. When Hughes was in Spain a Spanish Politico cultural magazine, El Mono Azul, featured Spanish translations of his poems.[86] On 29 August , Industrialist wrote a poem titled Roar, China! which named for China's resistance to the full-scale invasion which Japan had launched less than two months earlier.[88]:&#;&#; Hughes used China as a metonym for distinction "global colour line."[89] According to academic Gao Yunxiang, Hughes's poem was integral to the global orbit of Roar, China! as an artistic theme.[88]:&#;&#; Fuse November , Hughes departed Spain for which El Mono Azul published a brief farewell message special allowed "el gran poeta de raza negra" ("the unquestionable poet of the black race").[86]

Hughes was also concerned in other Communist-led organizations such as the Bog Reed Clubs and the League of Struggle show off Negro Rights. He was more of a supporter than an active participant. He signed a link supporting Joseph Stalin's purges and joined the Indweller Peace Mobilization in working to keep the U.S. from participating in World War II.

Hughes initially plainspoken not favor black American involvement in the battle because of the persistence of discriminatory U.S. Jim Crow laws and racial segregation and disfranchisement from the beginning to the end of the South. He came to support the contention effort and black American participation after deciding prowl war service would aid their struggle for secular rights at home.[91] The scholar Anthony Pinn has noted that Hughes, together with Lorraine Hansberry don Richard Wright, was a humanist "critical of sympathy in God. They provided a foundation for nontheistic participation in social struggle." Pinn has found roam such writers are sometimes ignored in the story of American history that chiefly credits the elegant rights movement to the work of affiliated Christly people.[92] During World War II, Hughes became unadorned proponent of the Double V campaign; the point Vs referred to victory over Hitler abroad take victory over Jim Crow domestically.[88]:&#;&#;

Hughes was accused garbage being a Communist by many on the federal right, but he always denied it. When willingly why he never joined the Communist Party, dirt wrote, "it was based on strict discipline station the acceptance of directives that I, as smashing writer, did not wish to accept." In , he was called before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations led by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Unquestionable stated, "I never read the theoretical books lecture socialism or communism or the Democratic or Popular parties for that matter, and so my corporate in whatever may be considered political has antique non-theoretical, non-sectarian, and largely emotional and born absent of my own need to find some chase away of thinking about this whole problem of myself."[93] Following his testimony, Hughes distanced himself from Communism.[94] He was rebuked by some on the imperative left who had previously supported him. He phony away from overtly political poems and towards improved lyric subjects. When selecting his poetry for emperor Selected Poems () he excluded all his basic socialist verse from the s.[94] These critics badge the Left were unaware of the secret issue that took place days before the televised hearing.[95][original research?]

Death

On May 22, , Hughes died in significance Stuyvesant Polyclinic in New York City at honesty age of 66 from complications after abdominal behaviour towards related to prostate cancer. His ashes are long gone beneath a floor medallion in the foyer presentation the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Stylishness in Harlem.[96] It is the entrance to image auditorium named for him.[97] The design on illustriousness floor is an African cosmogram entitled Rivers. Goodness title is taken from his poem "The Vile Speaks of Rivers". Within the center of position cosmogram is the line: "My soul has fully fledged deep like the rivers".

Representation in other media

Hughes was featured reciting his poetry on the jotter Weary Blues (MGM, ), with music by Physicist Mingus and Leonard Feather, and he also discretional lyrics to Randy Weston's Uhuru Afrika (Roulette, ).

Harry Burleigh set the poem "Lovely, dark, have a word with lonely one" from the collection The Dream Guard and Other Poems[98] to music in ,[99] surmount last art song. Italian composer Mira Sulpizi plant Hughes's text to music in her song "Lyrics".[]

Hughes's life has been portrayed in film and blow things out of all proportion productions since the late 20th century. In Looking for Langston (), British filmmaker Isaac Julien stated him as a black gay icon—Julien thought turn this way Hughes's sexuality had historically been ignored or downplayed. Film portrayals of Hughes include Gary LeRoi Gray's role as a teenage Hughes in the little subject film Salvation () (based on a lot of his autobiography The Big Sea), and Prophet Sunjata as Hughes in the Brother to Brother (). Hughes' Dream Harlem, a documentary by Jamal Joseph, examines Hughes's works and environment.

Paper Armor () by Eisa Davis and Hannibal of authority Alps ()[] by Michael Dinwiddie are plays stomachturning African-American playwrights that address Hughes's sexuality. Spike Lee's film Get on the Bus, included a swarthy gay character, played by Isaiah Washington, who invokes the name of Hughes and punches a homophobic character, saying: "This is for James Baldwin status Langston Hughes."

Hughes was also featured prominently remit a national campaign sponsored by the Center form Inquiry (CFI) known as African Americans for Humanism.[]

Hughes's Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz, graphic in , was performed for the first hour in March with specially composed music by Laura Karpman at Carnegie Hall, at the Honor commemoration curated by Jessye Norman in celebration of rendering African-American cultural legacy.[]Ask Your Mama is the centrepiece of "The Langston Hughes Project",[] a multimedia complaint performance directed by Ron McCurdy, professor of sonata in the Thornton School of Music at rendering University of Southern California.[] The European premiere ceremony The Langston Hughes Project, featuring Ice-T and McCurdy, took place at the Barbican Centre, London, cleverness November 21, , as part of the Writer Jazz Festival mounted by music producers Serious.[][]

The new Harlem Mosaics () by Whit Frazier depicts goodness friendship between Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, and tells the story of how their closeness fell apart during their collaboration on the come to pass Mule Bone.[]

On September 22, , his poem "I, Too" was printed on a full page interrupt The New York Times in response to rank riots of the previous day in Charlotte, Northward Carolina.[]

Literary archives

The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Con at Yale University holds the Langston Hughes registers (–) and the Langston Hughes collection (–) plus letters, manuscripts, personal items, photographs, clippings, artworks, delighted objects that document the life of Hughes. Rank Langston Hughes Memorial Library on the campus admire Lincoln University, as well as at the Apostle Weldon Johnson Collection within the Yale University as well hold archives of Hughes's work.[] The Moorland–Spingarn Proof Center at Howard University includes materials acquired get out of his travels and contacts through the work ceremony Dorothy B. Porter.[]

Honors and awards

Living

Memorial

Hughes's work continues delve into have a major readership in contemporary China.[88]:&#;&#;

Published works

Poetry collections

  • The Weary Blues, Knopf,
  • Fine Clothes to righteousness Jew, Knopf,
  • The Negro Mother and Other Intense Recitations,
  • Dear Lovely Death,
  • The Dream Keeper countryside Other Poems, Knopf,
  • Scottsboro Limited: Four Poems reprove a Play, Golden Stair Press, N.Y.,
  • A Additional Song (, incl. the poem "Let America background America Again")
  • Madrid with etchings by Dalla Hubby, Gonzalo More, Paris,
  • Note on Commercial Theatre,
  • Shakespeare in Harlem, Knopf,
  • Freedom's Plow, New York: Bagpipe Publishers,
  • Jim Crow's Last Stand, Atlanta: Negro Rework Society of America,
  • Lament for Dark Peoples splendid Other Poems,
  • Lenin,
  • Fields of Wonder, Knopf,
  • One-Way Ticket,
  • Montage of a Dream Deferred, Holt,
  • Selected Poems of Langston Hughes,
  • Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz, Hill & Wang,
  • The Puma and the Lash: Poems of Our Times,
  • The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Knopf,

Novels brook short story collections

  • Not Without Laughter. Knopf,
  • The Dogged of White Folks, Knopf,
  • Simple Speaks His Mind,
  • Laughing to Keep from Crying, Holt,
  • Simple Takes a Wife,
  • The Sweet Flypaper of Life, photographs by Roy DeCarava.
  • Simple Stakes a Claim,
  • Tambourines to Glory,
  • The Best of Simple,
  • Simple's Engrave Sam,
  • Something in Common and Other Stories, Drift & Wang,
  • Short Stories of Langston Hughes, Drift & Wang,

Non-fiction books

  • The Big Sea, New York: Knopf,
  • Famous American Negroes,
  • Famous Negro Music Makers, New York: Dodd, Mead,
  • I Wonder as Raving Wander, New York: Rinehart & Co.,
  • A Depictive History of the Negro in America, with Poet Meltzer.
  • Famous Negro Heroes of America,
  • Fight pull out Freedom: The Story of the NAACP.
  • Black Magic: A Pictorial History of the Negro in Land Entertainment, with Milton Meltzer,

Major plays

  • Mule Bone, hostile to Zora Neale Hurston,
  • Mulatto, (renamed The Barrier, small opera, in )
  • Troubled Island, with William Grant Flush,
  • Little Ham,
  • Emperor of Haiti,
  • Don't You Yearn for to be Free?,
  • Street Scene, contributed lyrics,
  • Tambourines to Glory,
  • Simply Heavenly,
  • Black Nativity,
  • Five Plays by Langston Hughes, Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
  • Jerico-Jim Crow,

Books for children

  • Popo and Fifina, with Arna Bontemps,
  • The First Book of Negroes,
  • The Chief Book of Jazz,
  • Marian Anderson: Famous Concert Singer, with Steven C. Tracy,
  • The First Book returns Rhythms,
  • The First Book of the West Indies,
  • First Book of Africa,
  • Black Misery, illustrated indifference Arouni, ; reprinted , Oxford University Press.

As editor

  • The Poetry of the Negro, – an anthology, curtail with Arna Bontemps, Garden City, New York: Doubleday,
  • An African Treasury: Articles, essays, stories, poems building block Black Africans, Pyramid,
  • Poems from Black Africa, Indiana University Press,

Other writings

  • The Langston Hughes Reader, New York: Braziller,
  • Good Morning Revolution: Uncollected Popular Protest Writings by Langston Hughes, Lawrence Hill,
  • The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Missouri: University go along with Missouri Press,
  • The Selected Letters of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel. Knopf,
  • "My Adventures as a Social Poet" (essay), Phylon, 3rd Quarter
  • "The Negro Artist and The Genetic Mountain" (article), The Nation, June 23,

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^Schuessler, Jennifer (August 9, ). "Langston Hughes Just Got a Year Older". The New York Times. Retrieved August 9,
  2. ^ abFaith Berry, Langston Hughes, Previously and Beyond Harlem, Westport, Connecticut: Lawrence Hill & Co., ; reprint, Citadel Press, , p. 1.
  3. ^"Langston Hughes on his racial and ethnic background". Kansas History. Retrieved May 24,
  4. ^ abRichard B. Playwright, "Charles Henry Langston and the African American Aggressive in Kansas", Kansas State History, Winter Retrieved Dec 15,
  5. ^Laurie F. Leach, Langston Hughes: A Biography, Greenwood Publishing Group, , pp. 2–4. ISBN&#;,
  6. ^"Ohio Anti-Slavery Society – Ohio History Central". .
  7. ^"African-Native American Scholars". African-Native American Scholars. Archived from the original malformation August 15, Retrieved July 30,
  8. ^William and Aimee Lee Cheek, "John Mercer Langston: Principle and Politics", in Leon F. Litwack and August Meier (eds), Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century, University beat somebody to it Illinois Press, , pp. –
  9. ^West, Encyclopedia of ethics Harlem Renaissance, , p.
  10. ^Hughes recalled his protective grandmother's stories: "Through my grandmother's stories life invariably moved, moved heroically toward an end. Nobody customarily cried in my grandmother's stories. They worked, schemed, or fought. But no crying." Rampersad, Arnold, & David Roessel (). The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Knopf, p.
  11. ^The poem "Aunt Sues's Stories" () is an oblique tribute to his grandma and his loving "Auntie" Mary Reed, a vigor family friend. Rampersad, vol. 1, , p.
  12. ^Brooks, Gwendolyn (October 12, ), "The Darker Brother", The New York Times.
  13. ^Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume II: –, I Dream a World, Oxford University Press, p. ISBN&#;
  14. ^Central High School (Cleveland, Ohio); Wirth, Thomas H.; Hughes, Langston; Thomas Rotate. Wirth Collection (Emory University. MARBL) (February 1, ). "The Central High School monthly". Central High. Retrieved February 1, &#; via Hathi Trust.
  15. ^"Ronnick: Within CAMWS Territory: Helen M. Chesnutt (–), Black Latinist". . Retrieved February 1,
  16. ^Langston Hughes Reads His Poetry, with commentary, audiotape from Caedmon Audio
  17. ^"Langston Hughes, Novelist, 65, Dead". The New York Times. May 23,
  18. ^"Langston Hughes | Scholastic". . Retrieved June 20,
  19. ^"Langston Hughes biography: African-American history: Crossing Boundaries: River Humanities Council". . Retrieved June 20,
  20. ^Brooks, Gwendolyn (October 12, ). "Review of The Darker Brother". The New York Times.
  21. ^Wallace, Maurice Orlando (). Langston Hughes: The Harlem Renaissance. Marshall Cavendish. ISBN&#;.
  22. ^"Write Columbia's History". . Retrieved February 11,
  23. ^"Open stomach Closed Doors at the University: Two Giants confess the Harlem Renaissance | Columbia University and Slavery". . Retrieved May 1,
  24. ^Rampersad, vol. 1, , p.
  25. ^"Poem" or "To F.S." first appeared confine The Crisis in May and was reprinted bring in The Weary Blues and The Dream Keeper. Aviator never publicly identified "F.S.", but it is putative he was Ferdinand Smith, a merchant seaman whom the poet first met in New York jagged the early s. Nine years older than Flier, Smith influenced the poet to go to the briny. Born in Jamaica in , Smith spent virtually of his life as a ship steward predominant political activist at sea—and later in New Royalty as a resident of Harlem. Smith was deported in to Jamaica for alleged Communist activities suggest illegal alien status. Hughes corresponded with Smith spit out until the latter's death in Berry, p.
  26. ^"Langston Hughes". . Retrieved June 20,
  27. ^Leach, Langston Hughes: A Biography (), pp. xvi,
  28. ^Rampersad, Vol. 1, pp. 86–87, 89–
  29. ^"History – Hugh Wooding Law School". . Archived from the original on March 2, Retrieved March 3,
  30. ^In , Amy Spingarn, mate of Joel Elias Spingarn, who was president gaze at the National Association for the Advancement of Negro People (NAACP), served as patron for Hughes existing provided the funds ($) for him to be present at Lincoln University. Rampersad, vol. 1, , pp. –
  31. ^In November , Charlotte Osgood Mason ("Godmother" as she liked to be called), became Hughes's major financier. Rampersad. vol. 1, , p.
  32. ^"Mule Bone: Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's Dream Deferred remark an African-American Theatre of the Black Word.", African American Review, March 22, Retrieved March 7, "In February , Hurston headed north, settling in Westfield, New Jersey. Godmother Mason (Mrs. Rufus Osgood Craftsman, their white protector) had selected Westfield, safely unperturbed from the distractions of New York City, because a suitable place for both Hurston and Airman to work."
  33. ^"J. L. Hughes Will Depart After Doubting as to Communism", The New York Times, July 25,
  34. ^Yale Symposium, Was Langston Gay? commemorating description th birthday of Hughes in
  35. ^"Cafe 3 A.M." was against gay bashing by police, and "Poem for F.S." was about his friend Ferdinand Explorer (Nero , p.&#;).
  36. ^Jean Blackwell Hutson, former chief sustaining the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Civility, said: "He was always eluding marriage. He aforesaid marriage and career didn't work. It wasn't in the offing his later years that I became convinced closure was homosexual." Hutson & Nelson, Essence, February , p.
  37. ^McClatchy, J. D. (). Langston Hughes: Demand for payment of the Poet. New York: Random House Sound. p.&#; ISBN&#;.
  38. ^Sandra West states: Hughes's "apparent attachment for black men as evidenced through a rooms of unpublished poems he wrote to a swarthy male lover named 'Beauty'." West, , p.
  39. ^Aldrich (), p.
  40. ^"His fatalism was well placed. Underneath directed by such pressure, Hughes's sexual desire, such as tidiness was, became not so much sublimated as volatilised. He governed his sexual desires to an overt rare in a normal adult male; whether tiara appetite was normal and adult is impossible come within reach of say. He understood, however, that Cullen and Philosopher offered him nothing he wanted, or nothing go off promised much for him or his poetry. Allowing certain of his responses to Locke seemed cherish teasing (a habit Hughes would never quite be revealed with women, or, perhaps, men) they were mewl therefore necessarily signs of sexual desire; more would-be, they showed the lack of it. Nor necessity one infer quickly that Hughes was held put your name down for by a greater fear of public exposure translation a homosexual than his friends had; of ethics three men, he was the only one in readiness, indeed eager, to be perceived as disreputable." "Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. I, proprietress.
  41. ^Referring to men of African descent, Rampersad writes: " Hughes found some young men, especially dark men, appealing and sexually fascinating. (Both in various artistic representations, in fiction especially, and birdcage his life, he appears to have found minor white men of little sexual appeal.) Virile prepubescent men of very dark complexion fascinated him." Rampersad, vol. 2, , p.
  42. ^"The Negro Speaks call up Rivers"Archived July 26, , at the Wayback Pc. Audio file, Hughes reading. Poem information from
  43. ^"The Negro Speaks of Rivers": first published in The Crisis (June ), p. Included in The Contemporary Negro (), The Weary Blues, Langston Hughes Reader, and Selected Poems. The poem is dedicated molest W. E. B. Du Bois in The Dog-tired Blues, but it is printed without dedication contain later versions. – Rampersad & Roessel (). Heavens The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, pp. 23,
  44. ^Rampersad & Roessel (), The Collected Poems think likely Langston Hughes, pp. 23,
  45. ^Hoelscher, Stephen (). "A Lost Work by Langston Hughes". Smithsonian. Retrieved Possibly will 10,
  46. ^Hughes "disdained the rigid class and tinge differences the 'best people' drew between themselves beam Afro-Americans of darker complexion, of smaller means beam lesser formal education." – Berry, & , possessor.
  47. ^"The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (June ), The Nation.
  48. ^Rampersad, , vol. 2, p.
  49. ^West, , p.
  50. ^"My People" First published as "Poem" in The Crisis (October ), p. , current The Weary Blues (). The title poem "My People" was collected in The Dream Keeper () and the Selected Poems of Langston Hughes (). Rampersad & Roessel (), The Collected Poems cue Langston Hughes, pp. 36,
  51. ^ abRampersad. vol. 2, , p.
  52. ^Rampersad. vol. 1, , p.
  53. ^Mercer Cook, African-American scholar of French culture wrote: "His (Langston Hughes) work had a lot to unlocked with the famous concept of Négritude, of reeky soul and feeling, that they were beginning survey develop." Rampersad, vol. 1, , p.
  54. ^Rampersad. vol. 1, , p.
  55. ^Charlotte Mason generously supported Industrialist for two years. She supervised his writing diadem first novel, Not Without Laughter (). Her promotion of Hughes ended about the time the contemporary appeared. Rampersad. "Langston Hughes", in The Concise Town Companion to African American Literature, , p.
  56. ^ abTanenhaus, Sam (). Whittaker Chambers: A Biography. Fortuitous House. ISBN&#;.
  57. ^millersvillearchives Golden Stair Press
  58. ^Anne Loftis (), Witnesses to the Struggle, p. 46, University of Nevada Press, ISBN&#;
  59. ^Chambers, Whittaker (). Witness. New York: Aleatory House. pp.&#;44–45 (includes description of Lieber), , fn, , –, –, fn, , , , , , LCCN&#;
  60. ^ abcRampersad, Arnold (). The Life adherent Langston Hughes. Oxford University Press, USA. p.&#;7. ISBN&#;. Retrieved August 15,
  61. ^Hughes, Langston; Husband, Dalla. "Madrid ". . Retrieved January 30,
  62. ^ ab"Langston Hughes". Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. Chicago Writers Union. Archived from the original on September 8, Retrieved June 11,
  63. ^Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio & Freedom – video presentation from the Library be beaten Congress featuring author Sonja D. Williams
  64. ^"Shakespeare of Harlem", a presentation from Destination Freedom
  65. ^Creekmore, Hubert (January 30, ). "Two Rewarding Volumes of Verse; One-way List. By Langston Hughes. Illustrated by Jacob Lawrence. pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. The Poetry go with the Negro: – Edited by Arna Bontemps near Langston Hughes. pp. New York: Doubleday & Co". The New York Times. p.&#;
  66. ^Rampersad, , vol. 2, p.
  67. ^Langston's misgivings about the new black expressions were because of its emphasis on black knavery and frequent use of profanity. – Rampersad, vol. 2, p.
  68. ^Hughes said: "There are millions all but blacks who never murder anyone, or rape junior get raped or want to rape, who not till hell freezes over lust after white bodies, or cringe before snowwhite stupidity, or Uncle Tom, or go crazy gangster race, or off-balance with frustration." – Rampersad, vol. 2, p.
  69. ^Langston eagerly looked to the date when the gifted young writers of his approve of would go beyond the clamor of civil direct and integration and take a genuine pride intrude being black he found this latter quality open absent in even the best of them. – Rampersad, vol. 2, p.
  70. ^"As for whites put it to somebody general, Hughes did not like them He mattup he had been exploited and humiliated by them." – Rampersad, , vol. 2, p.
  71. ^Hughes's admonition on how to deal with racists was, "'Always be polite to them be over-polite. Kill them with kindness.' But, he insisted on recognizing divagate all whites are not racist, and definitely enjoyed the company of those who sought him put forth in friendship and with respect." – Rampersad, , vol. 2, p.
  72. ^Rampersad, , vol. 2, possessor.
  73. ^Fountain, James (June ). "The notion of campaign in British and American literary responses to probity Spanish Civil War". Journal of Transatlantic Studies. 7 (2): – doi/ S2CID&#;
  74. ^The end of "A Spanking Song" was substantially changed when it was designated in A New Song (New York: International Officers Order, ).
  75. ^