Hughes died from complications after surgery, related to prostate cancer, at the age of 65, on May 22, 1967. To retain the respect and support of black churches and organizations and avoid exacerbating his precarious financial situation, Hughes remained closeted. Hughes's story "Blessed Assurance" deals with a father's fury over his son's effeminacy and "queerness". Some biographers and academics today credit that Hughes was homosexual and inclusive homosexual codes in many of his poems, similar in manner to Walt Whitman. Apart from travels to the Soviet Union and parts of the Caribbean, Hughes lived in Harlem as his primary home for the remainder of his life. Hughes after graduating from Lincoln University in 1929, he returned to New York. Hughes' previous work had been published in journals at this time, and he was ready to publish his first book of poetry.Īfter this year, Hughes enrolled in Lincoln University, a historically black university in Pennsylvania. Lindsay advertised his discovery of a new black poet after being impressed by the poetry. He met poet Vachel Lindsay there, with whom he exchanged several poems. Hughes abandoned his job as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel because the responsibilities of his job hindered his time for writing. Hughes worked at a variety of jobs before landing a white-collar job at the Association for the Study of African American Life and History in 1925 as a personal assistant to historian Carter G. Hughes returned to the United States in November 1924 to live with his mother in Washington, D.C. But he left in 1922 because of racial prejudice, and his interests revolved more around the neighborhood of Harlem than his studies, though he continued writing poetry. He was studying engineering at his father's request. Hughes was adamant about being a writer, despite his father's wishes for him to pursue a practical job. Hughes went to Mexico after high school in the hopes of reconciling with his father, who resided there, but he was unsuccessful. Well, everyone knows, except us, that all Negroes have rhythm, so they elected me as class poet." Then, he wrote for the school newspaper, edited the yearbook, and began writing his first short stories, poems, and theatrical plays in high school in Cleveland, Ohio. There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry. In retrospect, Hughes believes it was due to the preconception that African Americans have a sense of rhythm. Hughes was named class poet in Lincoln when he was in elementary school. His youth was not altogether pleasant due to his turbulent upbringing, but it strongly influenced the poet he would become. Through the black American oral tradition and drawing from the activist experiences of her generation, Mary Langston instilled in the young Langston Hughes a lasting sense of racial pride. Langston Hughes was reared mostly by his maternal grandmother, Mary Patterson Langston, in Lawrence, Kansas, when his parents divorced and his mother went looking for work. Hughes' father abandoned his family and subsequently divorced Carrie, fleeing to Cuba and then Mexico to escape the country's ongoing racism. Mary Patterson, who is Hughes' maternal grandmother, was of African-American, French, English, and Native American ancestry. His paternal great-grandfather was Jewish from Europe. He was born in Joplin, Missouri in 1871–1934.īoth of Hughes' paternal and maternal great-grandmothers were African-American, also his maternal great-grandfather was white and Scottish. Langston Hughes was the second child of schoolteacher Carrie (Caroline) Mercer Langston and James Nathaniel Hughes. He supported equality, criticized racism and injustice, and embraced African American culture, humor, and spirituality via his poems, novels, plays, essays, and children's books. Hughes, like others active in the Harlem Renaissance, had a strong sense of racial pride. His writings influenced American literature and politics. Hughes’ creative talent was impacted by his upbringing in Harlem, a mostly African American area of New York City. Langston Hughes was one of the most influential writers and philosophers of the Harlem Renaissance, an African American artistic movement that embraced black life and culture during the 1920s. He famously wrote about the period that "Harlem was in vogue." Hughes is known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance. He was one of the first to innovate a new literary and artistic form of jazz poetry. Hughes was an American poet, activist, playwright, novelist, and columnist. American writer who was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance and made the African American experience the subject of his writings, which ranged from poetry and plays to novels and newspaper columns. Langston Hughes, in full James Mercer Langston Hughes who is born February 1, 1902, Joplin, Missouri, U.S.
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