Biography of Langston Hughes

James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, essayist, playwright, and short-story writer. He is considered one of the most renowned contributors to American literature in the twentieth century. He rose to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance and continued to produce experimental and groundbreaking work for the next several decades. Hughes was known for vocalizing the concerns of working-class African Americans. His work was deeply influenced by jazz, and he often wrote in a simple fashion, sometimes using African-American vernacular.

Hughes was born around 1902, though researchers are not certain of the year of his birth. Born in Joplin, Missouri, Hughes was a descendant of prominent abolitionists. His racial heritage was a mix of Indian, African, and French. His father moved to Mexico while he was still a child, and his mother took him to Lawrenceville, Kansas to live with his grandmother. The inspiration for one of Hughes‘s early poems called "Aunt Sue’s Stories” is thought to be Hughes’s grandmother, Mary Leary Langston. Mary Leary’s first husband was a follower of abolitionist John Brown and was fatally injured at John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859. Mary Leary then remarried Charles Mercer Langston in 1869. Langston was an abolitionist like her first husband. The pair settled in Lawrence, Kansas where their grandchild Langston Hughes would eventually grow up.

Hughes and his mother lived an itinerant lifestyle while she looked for work, and she exposed her son to literature and theater. These maternal influences had a great impact on his writings. Hughes began writing at an early age and published poems and short stories in his Cleveland high school periodical. He also became the editor of the school's annual magazine and was elected class poet. Besides the work of Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg, Hughes found inspiration in the writing of leftists, philosophers, and progressives.

After graduating from high school, Hughes traveled to Mexico to visit his father. Along the way, he composed his first major poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," which was published in W. E. B. Du Bois's journal The Crisis. In 1921, Hughes wrote a prize-winning poem called "The Weary Blues." That poem also appeared in a volume of the same name in 1926. Over the next few years, Hughes met and befriended Alain Locke, Zora Neale Hurston, and Carl Van Vechten, all of whom were associated with the Harlem Renaissance. He traveled to Europe before graduating from Pennsylvania's Lincoln University in 1929.

In 1930, Hughes received a Harmon Foundation Medal for his novel Not Without Laughter. He continued to garner public recognition and win awards for the next three decades, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rosenwald Fund Fellowship, the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP, and an induction to the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

In the 1930s, Hughes's poems became more radical as the racial tensions in America became increasingly divisive. His commitment to Marxist ideals is evident in pieces like "Good Morning Revolution," and his internal conflict with Christianity is apparent in "Goodbye Christ" (1932), which is also his most controversial poem. Hughes wrote about the Spanish Civil War in 1937 for the Baltimore Afro-American. During the 1930s, he also worked regularly in the theater, collaborating with Zora Neale Hurston on Mule Bone. However, their friendship waned because of creative differences that arose during the writing of the play.

Hughes settled in Harlem but continued to travel throughout his life. He wrote sixteen books of poetry, two novels, seven collections of short stories, two autobiographies, four nonfiction works, ten books for children, and over twenty-five plays.

Hughes never married and is not known to have had any significant romantic relationships. He died alone in 1967 at a hospital in Harlem due to complications from prostate cancer. The New York Times obituary stated, "Mr. Hughes was sometimes characterized as the 'O. Henry of Harlem.' He was an extremely versatile and productive author who was particularly well known for his folksy humor.'"