FREE ESSAY ON LANGSTON HUGES

LANGSTON HUGES

Langston Hughes Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. His
father was James Nathaniel and his mother was Carrie Mercer Langston Hughes. His
grandfather was Charles Langston, an Ohio abolitionist. As a young boy he lived in
Buffalo, New York, Cleveland, Ohio, Lawrence, Kansas, Mexico City, Topeka, Kansas,
Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Kansas City, Kansas. In 1914 his parents divorced and he,
his mother, and his stepfather moved to Lincoln, Illinois. In high school back in
Cleveland, he was elected class poet, and editor of the senior class yearbook. He taught
English to some families in Mexico in 1921 and also published his first prose piece,
Mexican Games(Davis). In an excerpt from an article about Langston Hughes in Encarta 97,
it says that he was discovered in 1925, while he was working as a busboy in a restaurant
in Washington, D.C., when he accidentally left three of his poems next to the plate of
Vachel Lindsay, an American poet. She helped him ge! t publicity for his works and she
got him seriously started in writing(Encarta). In an article about Langston Hughes in The
Reference Library of Black America it talks about all the places in the world that Hughes
has traveled. He probably used much of the information of the cultures of other countries
to write. Hughes traveled all over the world as a seaman. He went to the Soviet Union,
Haiti, Japan, Spain, Genoa, France, and other parts of Europe. Hughes was an author,
anthologist, librettist, songwriter, columnist, translator, founder of theaters, and a
poetical innovator in jazz technology. Hughes liked to write in many genres such as
prose, comedy, drama, fiction, biographies, autobiographies, and TV and radio scripts.
Langston Hughes was the father of the Harlem Renaissance and made many contributions on
the behalf of African- Americans which led to the end of discrimination and
segregation(Davis). Hughes was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance because he
was one of the most talented and famous black writers in his time. The Harlem Renaissance
was the black movement during the 1920's. Many African-Americans got famous during this
time and more people in the United States and the world got to see another side of
African- Americans which had never been seen before. People saw that blacks could do
things the same or better than white people and many, but certainly not all, barriers
like segregation were decreased noticeably. He wrote numerous protest poems in which he
used irony to get his points across to the reader. Hughes was influenced by Jean Toomer,
another black writer and poet. It seemed as though Hughes used his poetry as a way to
combat against the ongoing struggle that African- Americans still face today. Many
believe that his best poems were inspired by the city of Harlem. He was even called the
Poet-Laureate of Harlem because of his unders! tanding for the city. Hughes best volume
of Harlem works is Montage of a Dream Deferred. Hughes was the author who during the
Harlem Renaissance used much of the Black culture in his work. He began to use the Blues,
Ballad form, dance rhythms, folk speech, and Jazz in his poetry. Hughes had success in
many different fields of writing. His best drama, Mulatto, a play, was performed on
Broadway 373 times in 1935. In his best comedy, Little Ham(1935), again he uses themes
from Harlem. Hughes's best fiction is in his Simple series. In his lifetime, Langston
Hughes won several awards. In 1925 he won his first prize for poetry in the Opportunity
contest and third prize for essay in the Crisis contest. In 1926 he published his first
volume of poems, The Weary Blues. In 1953 he won the Anisfeld-Wolfe Award. Hughes also
won the Witter Bynner Prize for undergraduate poetry while attending Lincoln University.
Even West Indian poets, such as Leopold Senghor, saw Hughes as the father of the
Negritude Movement(Davis). One of Hughes's works mentioned in the book, The Langston
Hughes Reader, is entitled, My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience. This short story of
his is a true story of his childhood. It shows all the themes he is fighting for and the
things he is fighting against. What happens is that Hughes and a white friend of his go
into a restaurant. His friend gets his food, but when he gets his, the white clerk
charges him six times what the food is worth. He argued with the clerk and finally left
with his friend. Years later a group of white and black workers walked in and demanded to
be served. They did get their meals and ended the segregation in that particular
restaurant. This shows how prejudice was in the early 1900's. Even during the start of
the Harlem Renaissance people still hated African-Americans. That story shows why Hughes
wrote so many protest poems and became so involved in the black movement(Davis). Langston
Hughes was the father of the Harlem Renaissance and made many contributions on the behalf
of African-Americans which led to the end of discrimination and segregation. Hughes was
an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance because he was one of the most talented and
famous black writers in his time. Even West Indian poets saw Hughes as the father of the
Negritude Movement. It seemed as though Hughes used his writing as his weapon to combat
against the ongoing struggle that African-Americans still face today. If it were not for
Langston Hughes, African-Americans would not have their current political and social
positions today, even though they are not equal to those that white Americans have.