NAME: Langston Hughes
OCCUPATION: Poet
BIRTH DATE: February 01, 1902
DEATH DATE: May 22, 1967
EDUCATION: Columbia University, Lincoln University
Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. He published his first poem in 1921. He left Columbia University after one year, traveling and supporting himself with odd jobs. His poetry was later promoted by Vachel Lindsay, and Hughes published his first book in 1926. He wrote poetry, stories, and plays, as well as a popular column for the Chicago Defender. He died May 22, 1967.
Quotes
Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.
– Langston Hughes
Poet, writer, playwright. Born February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. After publishing his first poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (1921), he attended Columbia University (1921), but left after one year to work on a freighter, traveling to Africa, living in Paris and Rome, and supporting himself with odd jobs. After his poetry was promoted by Vachel Linday, he attended Lincoln University (1925–9), and while there his first book of poems, The Weary Blues (1926), launched his career as a writer.
As one of the founders of the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance, which he practically defined in his essay, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (1926), he was innovative in his use of jazz rhythms and dialect to depict the life of urban blacks in his poetry, stories, and plays. Having provided the lyrics for the musical Street Scene (1947) and the play that inspired the opera Troubled Island (1949), in the 1960s he returned to the stage with works that drew on black gospel music, such as Black Nativity (1961).
A prolific writer for four decades, he abandoned the Marxism of his youth, but never gave up protesting the injustices committed against his fellow African Americans. Among his most popular creations was Jesse B Semple, better known as "Simple," a black Everyman featured in the syndicated column he began in 1942 for the Chicago Defender.
In his later years, Hughes completed a two-volume autobiography and edited anthologies and pictorial volumes. Because he often employed humor and seldom portrayed or endorsed violent confrontations, he was for some years disregarded as a model by black writers, but by the 1980s he was being reappraised and was newly appreciated as a significant voice of African-Americans.
© 2012 A&E Television Networks. All rights reserved.
