Langston Hughes
Personal Information
Personal Information
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Langston Hughes was born in 1902 in
Joplin, Missouri. By the time Hughes
enrolled at Columbia University in New
York, he had already launched his
literary career with his poem “The
Negro Speaks of Rivers” in the Crisis.
He traveled abroad; worked on a
freighter down the west coast of Africa
and lived for several months in Paris
before returning to the United States
late in 1924. By this time, he was
well known in African American literary
circles as a gifted young poet. His
poetry collections include: The Weary
Blues (1926), Montage of a Dream
Deferred (1951) and The Panther and the
Lash (1967). His devotion to black
music led him to novel fusions of jazz
and blues with traditional verse in his
first two books, The Weary Blues (1926)
and Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927).
After his play Mulatto opened on
Broadway in 1935, Hughes wrote other
plays, including Little Ham (1936),
Emperor of Haiti (1936) and Don't You
Want to Be Free?(1938). His first
volume of autobiography, The Big Sea,
was published in 1940. During this time
he also published his book of verse
Shakespeare in Harlem (1942) and Jim
Crow’s Last Stand (1943), among other
works. The 1960s saw Hughes as
productive as ever. In 1962 his
ambitious book-length poem Ask Your
Mama, appeared. Hughes's work was not
as universally acclaimed as before in
the black community. Although he was
hailed in 1966 as a historic artistic
figure at the First World Festival of
Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, he also
found himself increasingly rejected by
young black militants at home as the
civil rights movement lurched toward
Black Power. His last book was the
volume of verse, posthumously
published, The Panther and the Lash
(1967), mainly about civil rights. He
died in May that year in New York City.
He was perhaps the most original of
African American poets and, in the
breadth and variety of his work,
assuredly the most representative of
African American writers.
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| Playwrights' Sidewalk: |
Langston Hughes has a star on the Playwrights' Sidewalk. |
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