Langston Hughes
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Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes was one of the first black men to express the spirit of blues
and jazz into words. An African American Hughes became a well known poet,
novelist, journalist, and playwright. Because his father emigrated to Mexico and
his mother was often away, Hughes was brought up in Lawrence, Kansas, by his
grandmother Mary Langston. Her second husband (Hughes's grandfather) was a
fierce abolitionist. She helped Hughes to see the cause of social justice. As a
lonely child Hughes turned to reading and writing, publishing his first poems
while in high school in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1921 he entered Columbia University,
but left after an unhappy year. Even as he worked as a delivery man, a messmate
on ships to Africa and Europe, a busboy, and a dishwasher, his poetry appeared
regularly in such magazines as The Crisis (NAACP) and Opportunity (National
Urban League).1 As a poet, Hughes was the first person to combine the
traditional poetry with black artistic forms, especially blues and jazz. As a
leader in the Harlem Renaissance of the twenties and thirties Hughes became the
movements best known poet. He published two poetry collections, The Weary Blues
(1926) and Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927).2 Mainly because of the depression
Hughes became a socialist in the 1930s. He never joined the Communist party, but
he wrote many radical poems and essays in magazines like New Masses and
International Literature and spent a year in the Soviet Union. In 1939 Hughes
moved away from the political scene. During the war he supported the Allies with
patriotic songs and sketches and published a collection of poems Shakespeare in
Harlem (1942). He attacked segregation, especially in his column in the black
weekly Chicago Defender, where he created a comic but keen black urban Every
man, Jesse B. Semple.3 In 1947, as lyricist with Kurt Weill and Elmer Rice on
the Broadway opera Street Scene, Hughes received great success. Hughes bought a
house in Harlem, where he spent the rest of his life. Hughes still feared for
the future of urban blacks. His point of view became immense and included
another book of poetry, almost a dozen children's books, several opera libretti,
four books translated from French and Spanish, two collections of stories,
another novel, a history of the NAACP and another volume of autobiography, I
Wonder As I Wander (1956). He also continued his work in the theater, pioneering
in the gospel musical play. Blues began in the south and slowly mad...
The complete article is about 1435 words and 5.74 pages long.
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