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Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967)
Langston Hughes first began writing poetry in the eighth grade, and was elected Class Poet of his high school in Cleveland, Ohio. After graduating in 1920, Hughes moved to Mexico to live with his father. Curiously, he found his light-brown complexion and fluency in Spanish caused many to mistake him for a native Mexican, and that white American tourists who would not have associated with him in their own country would treat him warmly here. In 1921 Hughes left Mexico to attend Columbia University, which his father agreed to pay for only on condition that he major in engineering, considered a more practical profession than writing. That same year his first poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," was published in Crisis. Despite a high grade point average, Hughes withdrew from Columbia after only one year and traveled to Europe and Africa, working odd jobs to pay his way. The frequent position of dishwasher and busboy which Hughes filled in jazz clubs and cabarets on both sides of the Atlantic would lead early mentor and lover Vachel Lindsay to confer on him the moniker of "The Busboy Poet." He wrote numerous short stories and poems about his experiences and impressions while traveling, which were published back in the US. Returning to the States in 1925, Hughes settled with his mother in Washington, DC and took a job in the office of black historian Dr. Carter G. Woodson. That same year he won the first prize in poetry from Opportunity magazine, and met and befriended Carl Van Vechten, who helped Hughes get his first collection of poems, The Weary Blues, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. That year also saw Hughes' return to college, as he pursued and later received a B.A. from Lincoln University, attending classes during the week and spending weekends in Harlem, where he listened to the blues and jazz songs which influenced his poetic stylings and befriended many of the great talents behind the Harlem Renaissance. In 1930, his first novel, Not Without Laughter, appeared, completed with the assistance of his newest patron Charlotte Mason. Hughes however, had had to compromise his own creative integrity, using Mason's suggestions and ideas for the novel to obtain her support, and he soon severed ties with her. Receiving a fellowship award from the Rosenwald Foundation, Hughes traveled on a poetry reading and lecture circuit across the South and in Alabama met with the Scottsboro Boys, a group of nine black youths between the ages of twelve and nineteen, who had been falsely accused by a pair of white girls of gang-raping them. Hughes' writings inspired by the events did much to draw national attention to the trial, and he wrote further on the American public's reaction. Despite his efforts and those of others on behalf of the Scottsboro Boys, as well numerous mistrials, physical evidence exonerating the young men, and even a recanting by one of the girls, all of the boys save one (who had been shot and killed while struggling with a Sheriff's Deputy) went to prison, although they had escaped the original sentences of death. The willingness of the Communist Worker's Party to appoint attorneys for the Scottsboro Boys after the NAACP proved reluctant to take on a rape trial impressed Hughes, and may have influenced his acceptance of an invitation to travel with other black artists to the Soviet Union in 1932 for a film project. The project was never completed, but Hughes remained and traveled through the Soviet Union, writing praising articles on the Russian system of communism, particularly noting the lack of racial segregation or discrimination and the provision of free education and health care. These writings would later come back to haunt him during the years of McCarthyism. Hughes returned to the US in 1934 and published his first short story collection, The Ways of White Folks, received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1936, and worked on numerous plays, first with the Karma House in Cleveland and then with the Harlem Suitcase Theater, which he cofounded. He collaborated with black classical composer William Grant Still on Troubled Island, an opera about Haitian revolutionary Jean Jacques Dessalines, with Hughes writing both the play and the libretto. Stills finished the final operatic version while Langston Hughes was in Spain covering the Spanish Civil War for a Baltimore newspaper. With the entry of the US into World War II, Hughes, who was not enlisted, turned his efforts towards writings urging black Americans to purchase war bonds and support American efforts in the war, asking them to fight for the ideals the Allies were defending both on the front and at home. It was towards this end that Hughes invented his most famous literary creation, called first "My Simple Minded Friend" and later Jesse B. Semple, or "Simple," whose motto was, "White folks is the cause of a lot of inconvenience in my life." In a series of dialogues between himself and Simple, Hughes showed the need for African-Americans to support their country, even if it did not always support them in return. Far worse things than the Klan or Jim Crow were holding sway in Europe, and at least in the US some "decent white folks" existed who would listen and help blacks achieve the dignity and equality they craved. In time, Simple's perspective on race relations and human rights would be carried through the duration of the war and into later decades. Contrasting with the more angry and militant writings of others, Hughes' perspective on race was more wry and humorous, yet still did much to advance the cause of race relations, showing how silly and ridiculous the fear, hate, and distrust of both white racists and black separatists really were. During this same time Hughes published another collection of poems, Shakespeare in Harlem, and collaborated with Arna Bontemps on an anthology of poems written by black authors from colonial times to the present day, The Poetry of the Negro. In 1953 Langston Hughes was summoned before HUAC because of his earlier praisings of Communist and Socialist ideals. Hughes convinced the committee that he no longer held the same glowing opinions of Communism or the Soviet Union, and thus saved his writing career, for which he was vilified by Communists, liberals, and members of the black community, who felt he had purposely told the committee what it wanted to hear and had betrayed many of his friends and associates, including W.E.B. Du Bois. In his defense, one should note that HUghes' visit to the Soviet Union occurred in the early years of Stalin's reign, before the large-scale blood purges, farm collectivizations, and gulag exiles for which the Soviet dictator became notorious occurred, and the small-scale repressions and murders that were going on in 1932 were carefully hidden from the eyes of foreign visitors like Mr. Hughes, so intent was Stalin to sell his image of a "Worker's Paradise" to the world. Hughes was probably actually telling the truth. He might have admired the ideals and promise of Communism in his youth, but had learned of and become disenchanted with the reality. Langston Hughes continued to write prolifically through the remainder of his life. He continued writing columns for the Chicago Defender and later the New York Post, and his character of Jesse B. Semple continued to appear. Collections of the "Simple Dialogues" were published in book form on three separate occassions, with Simple Speaks His Mind (1950), Simple Takes A Wife (1953), and Simple Stakes A Claim (1957). The Sweet Flypaper of Life, a collaboration with photographer Roy De Cavara, appeared in 1956, as did Tambourines to Glory, and I Wonder As I Wander, a second autobiographical collection of impressions derived from his travels. A Broadway musical based on the Simple character, Simply Heaven, opened in 1957, and a fourth dialogue collection, The Best of Simple, appeared in 1961, the same year Hughes was inducted into the National Institute of Arts and Letters. Hughes also wrote a history of the NAACP and two anthologies of African literature and poetry. In 1967 he edited the anthology, The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers, which included the first published work by Alice Walker. That same year he was diagnosed with prostate cancer for which he received surgery. While the surgery appeared to have been successful, a post-operative infection set in, which eventually ended Hughes' life. He was cremated following a memorial service which included his favorite jazz and blues music. In 1991, on what would have been his eighty-ninth birthday, Langston Hughes' ashes were interred beneath the floor of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. The tile floor had been specially designed to commemorate Hughes' life and work. Langston Hughes' published works the poetry collections The Weary Blues (1926); Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927); Dear Lovely Death (1931); The Dream Keeper and Other Poems (1932); Scottsboro Limited (1932); Shakespeare in Harlem (1942); Freedom's Plow (1943); Fields of Wonder (1947); One-Way Ticket (1949); Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951); Selected Poems (1959); Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz (1961); and The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times (1967), the prose works Not Without Laughter (1930); The Ways of White Folks (1934); The Big Sea (1940); Simple Speaks His Mind (1950); Laughing to Keep From Crying (1952); Simple Takes a Wife (1953); I Wonder as I Wander (1956); Simple Stakes a Claim (1957); The Langston Hughes Reader (1958); Tambourines to Glory (1958); Something in Common and Other Stories (1963); Simple's Uncle Sam (1965); the plays Mule Bone (with Zora Neale Hurston, 1930); Little Ham (1935); Mulatto (1935); Soul Gone Home (1937); Don't You Want to Be Free? (1938); Simply Heavenly (1957); and Black Nativity (1961), translations of Nicolas Guillen's Cuba Libre (1948); Federico García Lorca's Gypsy Ballads (1951); Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral (1957); and Jacques Roumain's Masters of the Dew (1947), as well as the posthumous Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (1994); Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings by Langston Hughes (1973); The Arna Bontemps-Langston Hughes Letters (1980); Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925-1964 (2001); The Political Plays of Langston Hughes (2000); and Collected Works of Langston Hughes, vol. 5: The Plays to 1942: Mulatto to The Sun Do Move (2000). Links: Langston Hughes - The Academy of American Poets Langston Hughes (1902-1967) : Teacher Resource File Langston Hughes Biography - The Gale Group I Hear America Singing - James Langston Hughes Langston Hughes - Bio and Critical Essays "A Wind in the Attic" - Portrait of Langston Hughes by Winold Reiss
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