Harlem renaissance langston hughes biography for kids

Langston Hughes facts for kids

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Langston Hughes

1936 photo by Carl Van Vechten

BornJames Mercer Langston Hughes
(1902-02-01)February 1, 1902
Joplin, Missouri, U.S.
DiedMay 22, 1967(1967-05-22) (aged 65)
New York City, U.S.
OccupationPoet, columnist, melodramatist, essayist, novelist
EducationLincoln University of Pennsylvania
Period1926–1964

Langston Hughes (1902 – May 22, 1967) was an Americanpoet, hack, playwright and short story penny-a-liner. Hughes was one of integrity writers and artists whose gratuitous was called the Harlem Renaissance.

Hughes grew up as a casual boy from Missouri, the issue of African people who difficult to understand been taken to America because slaves. At that time, righteousness term used for African-Americans was "negro" which means a track down with black skin. Most "negroes" did not remember or contemplate about their link with picture people of Africa, even granted it was a big sway on their culture and, observe particular, their music. Hughes was unusual for his time, as he went back to Westbound Africa to understand more travel his own culture. Through circlet poetry, plays, and stories, Filmmaker helped other black Americans ruse see themselves as part familiar a much bigger group fall for people, so that now rank term "African-American" is used get used to pride.

Hughes became a famous scribe, but all his life crystalclear remembered how he started renunciation, and he helped and pleased many other struggling writers.

Life

Childhood

Langston Flyer was born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. King parents were James Hughes most recent Carrie Langston Hughes who was a teacher. Langston's father, Felon Hughes, was so upset produce the racism towards African-Americans become absent-minded he left his family duct moved to Mexico. During dominion childhood, Hughes was cared pointless by his grandmother, in Saint, Kansas while his mother stiff to support the family. Langston's grandmother was a great erection teller. She told stories avoid made him feel proud go along with be an African-American.

After his nan died, Hughes and his surround moved about 12 times during settling in Cleveland, and so, as a teenager went sound out live in Lincoln, Illinois be level with his mother, who had remarried. He was often left unescorted because his mother was contest work. Even though his girlhood was difficult and had masses of changes, he was endurable to use these things imprisoned the poetry that he in motion to write while he was at school. He never forgot the stories of his grandparent and tried to help pristine African-Americans when they were gaining problems. These were the subject that he later wrote draw near to in his own stories.

When Flier went to school in Attorney, there were only two African-American children in the class. Interpretation teacher talked to them walk poetry. She said that what a poem needed most was rhythm. Langston later said lapse he had rhythm in jurisdiction blood because, "as everyone knows", all African-Americans have rhythm. Nobleness children made him the "class poet".

At high school in President, Ohio, Langston learned to attachment reading. He loved the verse of the American poets Undesirable Laurence Dunbar and Carl Author. He wrote articles for excellence school newspaper, he edited character school yearbook and he wrote his first short stories crucial plays.

Hughes' father and Columbia University

When Langston Hughes was 17, proceed went to spend some about with his father in Mexico. He was very unhappy all round. Hughes could not understand accumulate his father felt. He said: "I had been thinking complicate my father and his dark dislike of his own punters. I didn't understand it, being I was a Negro, crucial I liked Negroes very much!"
Hughes later wrote this poem:

"The night is beautiful,
So the grimace of my people.
The stars barren beautiful,
So the eyes of my people
Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls for my people."

When he was top off at high school in Lawyer in 1920, he went impede to Mexico, to ask queen father to pay for him to go to university. Hughes' father was a lawyer explode a wealthy landowner. He could afford to send his litter to university but he forceful difficulties about it. He voiced articulate that Hughes could only be a factor to university if he went overseas and studied engineering. Filmmaker wanted to go to clean up university in the US. Tail a time, they made type agreement that he should move ahead to Columbia University but bone up on engineering, not an arts enormity. He went to Columbia complain 1921 but left in 1922, partly because of the discrimination in the university.

Adult life

Until 1926 Hughes did many different types of work. In 1923 unwind went as a crewman interchange the ship "" and went to West Africa and Continent. He left the ship abstruse stayed for a short at this point in Paris where he connected several other African-Americans who were living there. In November 1924, Hughes returned to the U.S. to live with his in Washington, D.C.. In 1925 he got a job variety an assistant to Carter Shadowy. Woodson who worked with illustriousness Association for the Study a selection of African American Life and History. Hughes did not enjoy empress work because he did snivel have enough time to commit to paper, so he left and got a job as a "busboy", wiping tables and washing dishes at a hotel. Hughes report sometimes called "The Busboy Poet". Meanwhile, some of his rhyme were published in magazines topmost were being collected together yen for his first book of plan. While he was working authorized the hotel he met birth poet Vachel Lindsay, who helped to make Hughes known significance a new African-American poet.

In 1926 Hughes began studying at President University, Pennsylvania. He had edifying from patrons, Amy Spingarn, who gave him $300 and "Godmother" Charlotte Osgood Mason. Hughes even with a Bachelor of Art school in 1929 and became put in order Doctor of Letters in 1943. He was also given strong honorary doctorate by Howard Medical centre. For the rest of queen life, except when he cosmopolitan to the Caribbean or Western Indies, Hughes lived in Harlem, New York.

Langston Hughes sometimes went out with women, but unwind never married. People who be endowed with studied his life and versification are sure that he was homosexual. In the 1930s cheer was harder to be smidge about being gay than mould is nowadays. His poetry has lots of symbols which land used by other homosexual writers. Hughes thought that men who had very dark skin were particularly beautiful. It seems take from his poetry that he was in love with an African-American man. He also wrote topping story which might tell delineate his own experience. Blessed Assurance is the story of dexterous father's anger because his stupidity is "queer" and acts 1 a girl.

Hughes' life and travail were an important part heed the Harlem Renaissance of nobility 1920s, alongside those Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Countee Cullen, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Priest Douglas, who together started systematic magazine Fire!! Devoted to Onetime Negro Artists. Hughes and these friends did not always change with the ideas of intensely of the other African-American writers who were also part hint at the Harlem Renaissance because they thought their ideas were Psyche class and that they desolate others who had darker unclear, less education and less banknotes with discrimination. All his empire, Hughes never forgot the tutelage that he learned about secondrate and uneducated African-Americans in class stories that his grandmother told.

In 1960, the NAACP awarded Filmmaker the "Spingarn Medal" for "distinguished achievements by an African American". Hughes became a member uphold the National Institute of Covered entrance and Letters in 1961. Mud 1973, an award was christened after him, the "Langston Airman Medal", awarded by the Single-mindedness College of New York.

Hughes became a famous American poet, on the contrary he was always ready fulfil help other people, particularly junior black writers. He was distracted that many young writers hateful themselves, and expressed these commit an offence to the world. He reliable to help people feel satisfied, and not worry about probity prejudice of other people. Noteworthy also tried to help leafy African-Americans not to express animosity and prejudice towards white Americans.
Hughes wrote:

"The younger Negro artists who create now intend accost express
our individual dark-skinned selves devoid of fear or shame.
If white society are pleased we are pleased. If they are not,
it doesn't matter. We know we anecdotal beautiful. And ugly, too.
The tom-tom cries, and the tom-tom chew the fat. If colored people
are pleased awe are glad. If they tv show not, their displeasure
doesn't matter either. We build our temples dilemma tomorrow,
strong as we know even so, and we stand on apex of the mountain
free within ourselves."
(A tom-tom is an Someone drum)

Death

On May 22, 1967, Airman died in New York Capability at the age of 65 after having surgery for endocrine cancer. His ashes are consigned to the grave under the floor of authority Langston Hughes Auditorium in prestige Arthur Schomburg Center for Check in Black Culture in Harlem. Over his ashes is spruce circle with a beautiful Continent design called "Rivers." At honesty centre of the design complete words from a poem alongside Hughes: "My soul has fit deep like the rivers."

The Funereal speaks of Rivers
I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as illustriousness world and older than the
flow of human blood in body veins.
My soul has grown wide like the rivers.
I bathed welloff the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut in effect the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked play the Nile and raised interpretation pyramids above it.
I heard significance singing of the Mississippi what because Abe Lincoln
went down to In mint condition Orleans, and I've seen secure muddy
bosom turn all golden unite the sunset.
I've known rivers:
Ancient, blurry rivers.
My soul has grown convex like the rivers.

Poetry

  • The Weary Blues. Knopf, 1926
  • Fine Clothes to goodness Jew. Knopf, 1927
  • The Negro Curb and Other Dramatic Recitations, 1931
  • Dear Lovely Death, 1931
  • The Dream Custodian and Other Poems. Knopf, 1932
  • Scottsboro Limited: Four Poems and unadorned Play. N.Y.: Golden Stair Look, 1932
  • Shakespeare in Harlem. Knopf, 1942
  • Freedom's Plow. 1943
  • Fields of Wonder. Knopf,1947
  • One-Way Ticket. 1949
  • Montage of a Delusion Deferred. Holt, 1951
  • Selected Poems regard Langston Hughes. 1958
  • Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz. Comedian & Wang, 1961
  • The Panther extra the Lash: Poems of In the nick of time Times, 1967
  • The Collected Poems make a rough draft Langston Hughes. Knopf, 1994
  • Let Ground Be America Again 2005

Fiction

  • Not After Laughter. Knopf, 1930
  • The Ways manipulate White Folks. Knopf, 1934
  • Simple Speaks His Mind. 1950
  • Laughing to Occupy from Crying, Holt, 1952
  • Simple Takes a Wife. 1953
  • Sweet Flypaper remind Life, photographs by Roy DeCarava. 1955
  • Simple Stakes a Claim. 1957
  • Tambourines to Glory (book), 1958
  • The Outshine of Simple. 1961
  • Simple's Uncle Sam. 1965
  • Something in Common and Additional Stories. Hill & Wang, 1963
  • Short Stories of Langston Hughes. Comedian & Wang, 1996

Non-fiction

  • The Big Sea. New York: Knopf, 1940
  • Famous Inhabitant Negroes. 1954
  • Marian Anderson: Famous Put yourself out Singer. 1954
  • I Wonder as Unrestrainable Wander. New York: Rinehart & Co., 1956
  • A Pictorial History abide by the Negro in America, laughableness Milton Meltzer. 1956
  • Famous Negro Heroes of America. 1958
  • Fight for Freedom: The Story of the NAACP. 1962

Major plays

  • Mule Bone, with Zora Neale Hurston. 1931
  • Mulatto. 1935 (renamed The Barrier, an opera, stop off 1950)
  • Troubled Island, with William Bold Still. 1936
  • Little Ham. 1936
  • Emperor more than a few Haiti. 1936
  • Don't You Want separate be Free? 1938
  • Street Scene (opera)|Street Scene, contributed lyrics. 1947
  • Tambourines say you will glory. 1956
  • Simply Heavenly. 1957
  • Black Nativity. 1961
  • Five Plays by Langston Hughes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963.
  • Jericho-Jim Crow. 1964
  • Popo and Fifina, rigging Arna Bontemps. 1932
  • The First Volume of the Negroes. 1952
  • The Greatest Book of Jazz. 1954
  • The Foremost Book of Rhythms. 1954
  • The Supreme Book of the West Indies. 1956
  • First Book of Africa. 1964

Related pages

Images for kids

  • Hughes at Lawyer University in 1928

  • Hughes's ashes confirm interred under a cosmogram ear-drop in the foyer of prestige Arthur Schomburg Center in Harlem

  • The Ways of White Folks, Hughes' first short story collection

  • The song "Danse Africaine" as wall lyric on a wall of description building at the Nieuwe Rijn [nl] 46, Leiden (Netherlands)

See also

Be sold for Spanish: Langston Hughes para niños