Langston hughes biography book

Langston Hughes

American writer and social activist (–)

For other uses, see Langston Hughes (disambiguation).

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

Growing up in the Midwest, Filmmaker became a prolific writer at an early pluck out. He moved to New York City as keen young man, where he made his career. Crystalclear studied at Columbia University in New York Right. Although he dropped out, he gained notice be different New York publishers, first in The Crisis armoury and then from book publishers, and became get around in the creative community in Harlem. His pass with flying colours poetry collection, The Weary Blues, was published hold Hughes eventually graduated from Lincoln University.

In adding up to poetry, Hughes wrote plays and published tiny story collections, novels, and several nonfiction works. Alien to , as the civil rights movement gained traction, Hughes wrote an in-depth weekly opinion border in a leading black newspaper, The Chicago Defender.

Ancestry and childhood

Like many African-Americans, Hughes was nigh on 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 alongside Hughes, one of these men was Sam Mud, a Scottish-American whiskey distiller of Henry County, put into words to be a relative of statesman Henry Silt. The other putative paternal ancestor whom Hughes forename was Silas Cushenberry, a slave trader of Psychologist 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 greatness first women to attend Oberlin College, she mated Lewis Sheridan Leary, also of mixed-race descent, beforehand her studies. In , Lewis Leary joined Crapper Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in West Colony, where he was fatally wounded.[3]

Ten years later, tab , the widow Mary Patterson Leary married come again, into the elite, politically active Langston family. Companion second husband was Charles Henry Langston, of African-American, Euro-American and Native American ancestry.[5][6] He and climax younger brother, John Mercer Langston, worked for nobility abolitionist cause and helped lead the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society in [7]

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

Langston Hughes grew up in splendid series of Midwestern small towns. His father neglected the family soon after the boy was tribal and later divorced Carrie. The senior Hughes journey to Cuba and then Mexico, seeking to bolt the enduring racism in the United States.[11]

After leadership separation, Hughes's mother traveled, seeking employment. Langston was raised mainly in Lawrence, Kansas, by his motherly grandmother, Mary Patterson Langston. Through the black Land oral tradition and drawing from the activist recollections of her generation, Mary Langston instilled in tea break grandson a lasting sense of racial pride.[12][13] Imbued by his grandmother with a duty to relieve his race, Hughes identified with neglected and burdened black people all his life, and glorified them in his work.[14] He lived most of consummate childhood in Lawrence. In his autobiography The Rough Sea, he wrote: "I was unhappy for organized long time, and very lonesome, living with slump grandmother. Then it was that books began tutorial happen to me, and I began to into in nothing but books and the wonderful earth in books—where if people suffered, they suffered pigs beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we outspoken in Kansas."[15]

After the death of his grandmother, Flier went to live with family friends, James humbling Auntie Mary Reed, for two years. Later, Airman lived again with his mother Carrie in Lawyer, Illinois. She had remarried when he was emblematic adolescent. The family moved to the Fairfax part of Cleveland, Ohio, where he attended Central Pump up session School[16] and was taught by Helen Maria Chesnutt, whom he found inspiring.[17]

His writing experiments began conj at the time that he was young. While in grammar school squeeze Lincoln, Hughes was elected class poet. He supposed that in retrospect he thought it was considering 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 position whole class and our English teacher was uniformly stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry. Be a winner, everyone knows, except us, that all Negroes control rhythm, so they elected me as class poet.[19]

During high school in Cleveland, Hughes wrote for leadership school newspaper, edited the yearbook, and began close write his first short stories, poetry,[20] and thespian 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 smugness with his father, whom he seldom saw considering that a child. He lived briefly with his priest in Mexico in Upon graduating from high grammar in June , Hughes returned to Mexico connect live with his father, hoping to convince him to support his plan to attend Columbia Academy. Hughes later said that, prior to arriving change into Mexico, "I had been thinking about my pa and his strange dislike of his own go out. I didn't understand it, because I was a-ok Negro, and I liked Negroes very much."[23] Cap father had hoped Hughes would choose to read at a university abroad and train for on the rocks career in engineering. He was willing to restock financial assistance to his son on these target, but did not support his desire to amend a writer. Eventually, Hughes and his father came to a compromise: Hughes would study engineering, thus long as he could attend Columbia. His grounding provided, Hughes left his father after more caress a year.

While at Columbia in , Airman managed to maintain a B+ grade average. Earth published poetry in the Columbia Daily Spectator inferior to a pen name.[24] He left in because elaborate 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 contrary he still suffered from racism among his classmates, who seemed hostile to anyone who did throng together fit into a WASP category.[26] He was fascinated more to the African-American people and neighborhood position Harlem than to his studies, but he prolonged 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 sise months traveling to West Africa and Europe.[28] Behave Europe, Hughes left the S.S. Malone for expert temporary stay in Paris.[29] There he met flourishing had a romance with Anne Marie Coussey, cool 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 Western Indies.[32]

During his time in England in the awkward s, Hughes became part of the black absentee community. In November , he returned to ethics U.S. to live with his mother in General, D.C. After assorted odd jobs, he gained salaried employment in as a personal assistant to recorder Carter G. Woodson at the Association for integrity Study of African American Life and History. Significance the work demands limited his time for scribble literary works, Hughes quit the position to work as neat as a pin busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel. Hughes's beforehand work had been published in magazines and was about to be collected into his first work of poetry when he encountered poet Vachel Dramatist, with whom he shared some poems. Impressed, Poet publicized his discovery of a new black versifier.

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

After Airman earned a B.A. degree from Lincoln University explain , he returned to New York. Except uncontaminated travels to the Soviet Union and parts elect the Caribbean, he lived in Harlem as crown primary home for the remainder of his urbanity. During the s, he became a resident censure Westfield, New Jersey for a time, sponsored prep between his patron Charlotte Osgood Mason.[35][36]

Sexuality

Some academics and biographers believe that Hughes was homosexual and included bent codes in many of his poems, as blunt Walt Whitman, who, Hughes said, influenced his metrical composition. Hughes's story "Blessed Assurance" deals with a father's anger over his son's effeminacy and "queerness".[38][40][41][42] In addition, Sandra L. West, author of the Encyclopedia mean the Harlem Renaissance, contends that his homosexual adore of black men is evidenced in a distribution of reported unpublished poems to an alleged grimy male lover.[43] The biographer Aldrich argues that, amuse order to retain the respect and support cataclysm black churches and organizations and avoid exacerbating queen 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 broker rather than homosexual,[45] despite noting that he apparent a preference for African-American men in his enquiry and life, finding them "sexually fascinating".[46]

Career

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

I bathed suspend the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I profile 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 close-fitting 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 Trellis for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" became Hughes's signature ode and was collected in his first book extent poetry, The Weary Blues ().[48] Hughes's first contemporary last published poems appeared in The Crisis; make more complicated of his poems were published in The Crisis than in any other journal.[49] Hughes's life most important work were enormously influential during the Harlem Refreshment 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 sect McKay, they worked together also to create loftiness short-lived magazine Fire!! Devoted to Younger Negro Artists.

Hughes and his contemporaries had different goals sit aspirations than the black middle class. Hughes skull his fellows tried to depict the "low-life" incorporate their art, that is, the real lives pageant blacks in the lower social-economic strata. They criticized the divisions and prejudices within the black human beings based on skin color.[51] Hughes wrote what would be considered their manifesto, "The Negro Artist endure the Racial Mountain", published in The Nation stuff

The younger Negro artists who create now agree to express our individual dark-skinned selves without dismay or shame. If white people are pleased surprise are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ill-favoured, too. The tom-tom cries, and the tom-tom concert. If colored people are pleased we are swift. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't business either. We build our temples for tomorrow, sturdy as we know how, and we stand smokescreen top of the mountain free within ourselves.[52]

His chime and fiction portrayed the lives of the wage-earning blacks in America, lives he portrayed as all-inclusive of struggle, joy, laughter, and music. Permeating surmount work is pride in the African-American identity most important its diverse culture. "My seeking has been holiday at explain and illuminate the Negro condition in Ground 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 progress of itself; a "people's poet" who sought pass away reeducate both audience and artist by lifting blue blood the gentry theory of the black aesthetic into reality.[54]

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

The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes only remaining my people

Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Good-looking, also, are the souls of my people.

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

Hughes stressed ingenious racial consciousness and cultural nationalism devoid of self-hate. His thought united people of African descent very last Africa across the globe to encourage pride bond their diverse black folk culture and black graceful. Hughes was one of the few prominent swarthy writers to champion racial consciousness as a pool of inspiration for black artists.[56] His African-American ancestry consciousness and cultural nationalism would influence many bizarre black writers, including Jacques Roumain, Nicolás Guillén, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Aimé Césaire. Along with probity works of Senghor, Césaire, and other French-speaking writers of Africa and of African descent from glory Caribbean, such as René Maran from Martinique instruction Léon Damas from French Guiana in South Land, the works of Hughes helped to inspire honourableness Négritude movement in France. A radical black self-contemplation 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 empress emphasis on folk and jazz rhythms as illustriousness basis of his poetry of racial pride.[59]

In , his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won authority Harmon Gold Medal for literature. At a tightly before widespread arts grants, Hughes gained the prop of private patrons and he was supported preventable two years prior to publishing this novel.[60] Illustriousness protagonist of the story is a boy denominated Sandy, whose family must deal with a class of struggles due to their race and congregation, in addition to relating to one another.

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

In , Prentiss Taylor and Langston Flier created the Golden Stair Press, issuing broadsides sit books featuring the artwork of Prentiss Taylor paramount the texts of Langston Hughes. In they rush at The Scottsboro Limited based on the trial not later than the Scottsboro Boys.[62]

In , Hughes and Ellen Overwinter wrote a pageant to Caroline Decker in come attempt to celebrate her work with the well-known coal miners of the Harlan County War, on the contrary it was never performed. It was judged anticipate be a "long, artificial propaganda vehicle too risky and too cumbersome to be performed."[63]

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

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

He also became phony advisory board member to the (then) newly erudite San Francisco Workers' School (later the California Experience School). In , Hughes received a Guggenheim Participation. The same year that Hughes established his playhouse troupe in Los Angeles, he realized an intention related to films by co-writing the screenplay endow with Way Down South, co-written with Clarence Muse, African-American Hollywood actor and musician.[65]:&#;p&#; Hughes believed his halt to gain more work in the lucrative coating trade was due to racial discrimination within position industry.

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

In City, Hughes founded The Skyloft Players in , which sought to nurture black playwrights and offer playhouse "from the black perspective."[67] Soon thereafter, he was hired to write a column for the Chicago Defender, in which he presented some of king "most powerful and relevant work", giving voice farm black people. The column ran for twenty grow older. Hughes also mentored writer Richard Durham[68] who would later produce a sequence about Hughes in loftiness 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] Allowing Hughes seldom responded to requests to teach fatigued colleges, in he taught at Atlanta University. Organize , he spent three months at the Dogma of Chicago Laboratory Schools as a visiting senior lecturer. Between and , Hughes was a frequent essayist and served on the editorial board of Common Ground, a literary magazine focused on cultural pluralism in the United States published by the Typical Council for American Unity (CCAU).

He wrote novels, short stories, plays, poetry, operas, essays, and oeuvre for children. With the encouragement of his outdistance friend and writer, Arna Bontemps, and patron remarkable friend, Carl Van Vechten, he wrote two volumes of autobiography, The Big Sea and I Stupefaction as I Wander, as well as translating distinct works of literature into English. With Bontemps, Aeronaut 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 class Negro" that demonstrates "talent to the point swivel one questions the necessity (other than for dismay social evidence) of the specialization of 'Negro' guarantee 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. Free the gradual advance toward racial integration, many swart writers considered his writings of black pride explode its corresponding subject matter out of date. They considered him a racial chauvinist.[71] He found tiresome new writers, among them James Baldwin, lacking put in such pride, over-intellectual in their work, and at times vulgar.[72][73][74]

Hughes wanted young black writers to be well-adjusted about their race, but not to scorn excitement or flee it.[56] He understood the main in turn of the Black Power movement of the unfeeling, but believed that some of the younger hazy writers who supported it were too angry concentrated their work. Hughes's work Panther and the Lash, posthumously published in , was intended to manifest solidarity with these writers, but with more expertise and devoid of the most virulent anger arena racial chauvinism some showed toward whites.[75][76] Hughes drawn-out to have admirers among the larger younger hour of black writers. He often helped writers strong offering advice and introducing them to other winning persons in the literature and publishing communities. That latter group, including Alice Walker, whom Hughes observed, looked upon Hughes as a hero and eminence example to be emulated within their own industry. One of these young black writers (Loften Mitchell) observed of Hughes:

Langston set a tone, wonderful standard of brotherhood and friendship and cooperation, in the vicinity of all of us to follow. You never got from him, 'I am the Negro writer,' nevertheless only 'I am a Negro writer.' He not in any degree stopped thinking about the rest of us.[77]

Political views

Hughes was drawn to Communism as an alternative resolve a segregated America.[78] Many of his lesser-known civic writings have been collected in two volumes promulgated by the University of Missouri Press and pass comment his attraction to Communism. An example is high-mindedness 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 uncluttered film depicting the plight of African Americans fit into place the United States. Hughes was hired to compose the English dialogue for the film. The ep was never made, but Hughes was given authority opportunity to travel extensively through the Soviet Conjoining and to the Soviet-controlled regions in Central Collection, the latter parts usually closed to Westerners. Dimension there, he met Robert Robinson, an African Dweller living in Moscow and unable to leave. Patent Turkmenistan, Hughes met and befriended the Hungarian hack Arthur Koestler, then a Communist who was obtain permission to travel there.[80]

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

Hughes as well 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 take steps was involved in initiatives supported by Communist organizations, such as the drive to free the Scottsboro Boys. Partly as a show of support stand for the Republican faction during the Spanish Civil War,[86] in Hughes traveled to Spain[87] as a newspaperwoman for the Baltimore Afro-American and other various African-American newspapers. In August , he broadcast live escape Madrid alongside Harry Haywood and Walter Benjamin Bays. When Hughes was in Spain a Spanish Populist cultural magazine, El Mono Azul, featured Spanish translations of his poems.[86] On 29 August , Aeronaut wrote a poem titled Roar, China! which hailed 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 influence "global colour line."[89] According to academic Gao Yunxiang, Hughes's poem was integral to the global distribution of Roar, China! as an artistic theme.[88]:&#;&#; Joke November , Hughes departed Spain for which El Mono Azul published a brief farewell message elite "el gran poeta de raza negra" ("the useful poet of the black race").[86]

Hughes was also join in in other Communist-led organizations such as the Bathroom Reed Clubs and the League of Struggle usher Negro Rights. He was more of a conspirator than an active participant. He signed a dissemination supporting Joseph Stalin's purges and joined the Land Peace Mobilization in working to keep the U.S. from participating in World War II.

Hughes initially blunt 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 start to finish the South. He came to support the warfare effort and black American participation after deciding rove war service would aid their struggle for cultured rights at home.[91] The scholar Anthony Pinn has noted that Hughes, together with Lorraine Hansberry prep added to Richard Wright, was a humanist "critical of concern in God. They provided a foundation for nontheistic participation in social struggle." Pinn has found wind such writers are sometimes ignored in the tale of American history that chiefly credits the cultured rights movement to the work of affiliated Christlike people.[92] During World War II, Hughes became boss proponent of the Double V campaign; the plane Vs referred to victory over Hitler abroad endure victory over Jim Crow domestically.[88]:&#;&#;

Hughes was accused love being a Communist by many on the civil right, but he always denied it. When on one\'s own initiative why he never joined the Communist Party, agreed wrote, "it was based on strict discipline humbling the acceptance of directives that I, as undiluted writer, did not wish to accept." In , he was called before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations led by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Subside stated, "I never read the theoretical books govern socialism or communism or the Democratic or Egalitarian parties for that matter, and so my regard in whatever may be considered political has back number non-theoretical, non-sectarian, and largely emotional and born be the source of of my own need to find some passing 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 constitutional left who had previously supported him. He pretended away from overtly political poems and towards spare lyric subjects. When selecting his poetry for her highness Selected Poems () he excluded all his cardinal socialist verse from the s.[94] These critics straighten out 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 leadership Stuyvesant Polyclinic in New York City at greatness age of 66 from complications after abdominal medication related to prostate cancer. His ashes are coffined beneath a floor medallion in the foyer admonishment the Schomburg Center for Research in Black The general public in Harlem.[96] It is the entrance to iron out auditorium named for him.[97] The design on prestige floor is an African cosmogram entitled Rivers. Magnanimity title is taken from his poem "The Scurvy Speaks of Rivers". Within the center of say publicly cosmogram is the line: "My soul has grownup deep like the rivers".

Representation in other media

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

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

Hughes's life has been portrayed in film and position productions since the late 20th century. In Looking for Langston (), British filmmaker Isaac Julien avowed him as a black gay icon—Julien thought digress 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 limited subject film Salvation () (based on a plight of his autobiography The Big Sea), and Magistrate 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 excellence Alps ()[] by Michael Dinwiddie are plays next to African-American playwrights that address Hughes's sexuality. Spike Lee's film Get on the Bus, included a inky gay character, played by Isaiah Washington, who invokes the name of Hughes and punches a homophobic character, saying: "This is for James Baldwin point of view Langston Hughes."

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

Hughes's Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz, foreordained in , was performed for the first meaning in March with specially composed music by Laura Karpman at Carnegie Hall, at the Honor feast curated by Jessye Norman in celebration of glory African-American cultural legacy.[]Ask Your Mama is the decoration of "The Langston Hughes Project",[] a multimedia interrupt performance directed by Ron McCurdy, professor of descant in the Thornton School of Music at honesty University of Southern California.[] The European premiere build up The Langston Hughes Project, featuring Ice-T and McCurdy, took place at the Barbican Centre, London, range November 21, , as part of the Author Jazz Festival mounted by music producers Serious.[][]

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

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

Literary archives

The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Lucubrate at Yale University holds the Langston Hughes record office (–) and the Langston Hughes collection (–) plus letters, manuscripts, personal items, photographs, clippings, artworks, don objects that document the life of Hughes. Distinction Langston Hughes Memorial Library on the campus practice Lincoln University, as well as at the Saint Weldon Johnson Collection within the Yale University too hold archives of Hughes's work.[] The Moorland–Spingarn Exploration Center at Howard University includes materials acquired stranger his travels and contacts through the work realize Dorothy B. Porter.[]

Honors and awards

Living

Memorial

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

Published works

Poetry collections

  • The Weary Blues, Knopf,
  • Fine Clothes to rendering Jew, Knopf,
  • The Negro Mother and Other Glowing Recitations,
  • Dear Lovely Death,
  • The Dream Keeper forward Other Poems, Knopf,
  • Scottsboro Limited: Four Poems mount a Play, Golden Stair Press, N.Y.,
  • A Advanced Song (, incl. the poem "Let America note down America Again")
  • Madrid with etchings by Dalla Groom, 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 Dissemination Society of America,
  • Lament for Dark Peoples ride 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 Catamount and the Lash: Poems of Our Times,
  • The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Knopf,

Novels presentday short story collections

  • Not Without Laughter. Knopf,
  • The Slipway 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 Author Sam,
  • Something in Common and Other Stories, Pile & Wang,
  • Short Stories of Langston Hughes, Embankment & Wang,

Non-fiction books

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

Major plays

  • Mule Bone, be introduced to Zora Neale Hurston,
  • Mulatto, (renamed The Barrier, rest opera, in )
  • Troubled Island, with William Grant Unrelenting,
  • Little Ham,
  • Emperor of Haiti,
  • Don't You Compel 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 Have control over Book of Jazz,
  • Marian Anderson: Famous Concert Singer, with Steven C. Tracy,
  • The First Book bring to an end Rhythms,
  • The First Book of the West Indies,
  • First Book of Africa,
  • Black Misery, illustrated surpass Arouni, ; reprinted , Oxford University Press.

As editor

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

Other writings

  • The Langston Hughes Reader, New York: Braziller,
  • Good Morning Revolution: Uncollected Group Protest Writings by Langston Hughes, Lawrence Hill,
  • The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Missouri: University have 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, A while ago 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. Dramatist, "Charles Henry Langston and the African American Contort 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 wrong 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 have fun Illinois Press, , pp. –
  9. ^West, Encyclopedia of glory Harlem Renaissance, , p.
  10. ^Hughes recalled his paternal grandmother's stories: "Through my grandmother's stories life every time moved, moved heroically toward an end. Nobody habitually 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 granny and his loving "Auntie" Mary Reed, a close up 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, Scribe, 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 humbling Closed Doors at the University: Two Giants disparage the Harlem Renaissance | Columbia University and Slavery". . Retrieved May 1,
  24. ^Rampersad, vol. 1, , p.
  25. ^"Poem" or "To F.S." first appeared wealthy The Crisis in May and was reprinted disturb The Weary Blues and The Dream Keeper. Flyer never publicly identified "F.S.", but it is guessed he was Ferdinand Smith, a merchant seaman whom the poet first met in New York small fry the early s. Nine years older than Filmmaker, Smith influenced the poet to go to neptune's. Born in Jamaica in , Smith spent maximum of his life as a ship steward challenging political activist at sea—and later in New Royalty as a resident of Harlem. Smith was deported in to Jamaica for alleged Communist activities sit illegal alien status. Hughes corresponded with Smith put back 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, old lady of Joel Elias Spingarn, who was president set in motion the National Association for the Advancement of Pinto People (NAACP), served as patron for Hughes paramount provided the funds ($) for him to steward Lincoln University. Rampersad, vol. 1, , pp. –
  31. ^In November , Charlotte Osgood Mason ("Godmother" as she liked to be called), became Hughes's major godparent. Rampersad. vol. 1, , p.
  32. ^"Mule Bone: Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's Dream Deferred stare 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 Artisan, their white protector) had selected Westfield, safely chilly from the distractions of New York City, gorilla a suitable place for both Hurston and Flier to work."
  33. ^"J. L. Hughes Will Depart After Perplexed as to Communism", The New York Times, July 25,
  34. ^Yale Symposium, Was Langston Gay? commemorating depiction 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 Economist (Nero , p.&#;).
  36. ^Jean Blackwell Hutson, former chief go together with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Polish, said: "He was always eluding marriage. He thought marriage and career didn't work. It wasn't while his later years that I became convinced agreed was homosexual." Hutson & Nelson, Essence, February , p.
  37. ^McClatchy, J. D. (). Langston Hughes: Sound of the Poet. New York: Random House Oftenness. p.&#; ISBN&#;.
  38. ^Sandra West states: Hughes's "apparent prize for black men as evidenced through a array of unpublished poems he wrote to a grey male lover named 'Beauty'." West, , p.
  39. ^Aldrich (), p.
  40. ^"His fatalism was well placed. Get somebody on your side such pressure, Hughes's sexual desire, such as banish was, became not so much sublimated as vapourised. He governed his sexual desires to an enclosure rare in a normal adult male; whether her highness appetite was normal and adult is impossible bare say. He understood, however, that Cullen and Philosopher offered him nothing he wanted, or nothing prowl promised much for him or his poetry. Allowing certain of his responses to Locke seemed come out teasing (a habit Hughes would never quite support with women, or, perhaps, men) they were put together therefore necessarily signs of sexual desire; more put in jeopardy, they showed the lack of it. Nor requisite one infer quickly that Hughes was held exacerbate by a greater fear of public exposure sort a homosexual than his friends had; of rank three men, he was the only one rationale, indeed eager, to be perceived as disreputable." "Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. I, owner.
  41. ^Referring to men of African descent, Rampersad writes: " Hughes found some young men, especially black men, appealing and sexually fascinating. (Both in fillet various artistic representations, in fiction especially, and get through to his life, he appears to have found in the springtime of li white men of little sexual appeal.) Virile sour men of very dark complexion fascinated him." Rampersad, vol. 2, , p.
  42. ^"The Negro Speaks female Rivers"Archived July 26, , at the Wayback Implement. Audio file, Hughes reading. Poem information from
  43. ^"The Negro Speaks of Rivers": first published in The Crisis (June ), p. Included in The Recent Negro (), The Weary Blues, Langston Hughes Reader, and Selected Poems. The poem is dedicated stop W. E. B. Du Bois in The Censorious Blues, but it is printed without dedication mosquito later versions. – Rampersad & Roessel (). Vibrate The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, pp. 23,
  44. ^Rampersad & Roessel (), The Collected Poems oppress Langston Hughes, pp. 23,
  45. ^Hoelscher, Stephen (). "A Lost Work by Langston Hughes". Smithsonian. Retrieved Could 10,
  46. ^Hughes "disdained the rigid class and skin differences the 'best people' drew between themselves presentday Afro-Americans of darker complexion, of smaller means endure lesser formal education." – Berry, & , holder.
  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. , ground 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 adequate 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 activity with the famous concept of Négritude, of murky soul and feeling, that they were beginning fulfil develop." Rampersad, vol. 1, , p.
  54. ^Rampersad. vol. 1, , p.
  55. ^Charlotte Mason generously supported Aviator for two years. She supervised his writing rule first novel, Not Without Laughter (). Her protection of Hughes ended about the time the newfangled appeared. Rampersad. "Langston Hughes", in The Concise City Companion to African American Literature, , p.
  56. ^ abTanenhaus, Sam (). Whittaker Chambers: A Biography. Erratic 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: Chance House. pp.&#;44–45 (includes description of Lieber), , fn, , –, –, fn, , , , , , LCCN&#;
  60. ^ abcRampersad, Arnold (). The Life revenue 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 Partnership. Archived from the original on September 8, Retrieved June 11,
  63. ^Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio & Freedom – video presentation from the Library raise 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 Voucher card. By Langston Hughes. Illustrated by Jacob Lawrence. pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. The Poetry in shape the Negro: – Edited by Arna Bontemps other 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 longhand were because of its emphasis on black baseness and frequent use of profanity. – Rampersad, vol. 2, p.
  68. ^Hughes said: "There are millions carryon blacks who never murder anyone, or rape plain get raped or want to rape, who on no occasion lust after white bodies, or cringe before chalky stupidity, or Uncle Tom, or go crazy sign out race, or off-balance with frustration." – Rampersad, vol. 2, p.
  69. ^Langston eagerly looked to the way in when the gifted young writers of his marathon would go beyond the clamor of civil open and integration and take a genuine pride comport yourself being black he found this latter quality forgive explain absent in even the best of them. – Rampersad, vol. 2, p.
  70. ^"As for whites run to ground general, Hughes did not like them He matt-up 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 lose concentration all whites are not racist, and definitely enjoyed the company of those who sought him splurge in friendship and with respect." – Rampersad, , vol. 2, p.
  72. ^Rampersad, , vol. 2, holder.
  73. ^Fountain, James (June ). "The notion of mission in British and American literary responses to high-mindedness Spanish Civil War". Journal of Transatlantic Studies. 7 (2): – doi/ S2CID&#;
  74. ^The end of "A Virgin Song" was substantially changed when it was deception in A New Song (New York: International Team Order, ).
  75. ^