Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri into an abolitionist family. He was the grandson of Charles Henry Langston. His brother was John Mercer Langston, who was the the first Black American to be elected to public office in 1855. Hughes attended Central High School in Cleveland, Ohio, but began writing poetry in the eighth grade, and was selected as Class Poet. His father didn’t think he would be able to make a living as a writer. His father paid his tuition to Columbia University for him to study engineering.
After a short time, Langston dropped out of the program with a B+ average, all the while he continued writing poetry. His first published poem was also one of his most famous, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, and it appeared in Brownie’s Book. Later, his poems, short plays, essays, and short stories appeared in the NAACP publication Crisis Magazine and in Opportunity Magazine and other publications. One of Hughes’ finest essays appeared in the Nation in 1926, entitled The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.
It spoke of Black writers and poets, who would surrender racial pride in the name of a false integration, where a talented Black writer would prefer to be considered a poet, not a Black poet, which to Hughes meant he subconsciously wanted to write like a white poet. Hughes argued, no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself’. He wrote in this essay, We younger Negro artists now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they aren’t, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful.
And ugly too… If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn’t matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, as strong as we know how and we stand on the top of the mountain, free within ourselves. In 1923, Hughes traveled abroad on a freighter to the Senegal, Nigeria, the Cameroons, Belgium Congo, Angola, and Guinea in Africa, and later to Italy and France, Russia and Spain. One of his favorite pastimes whether abroad or in Washington, D. C. or Harlem, New York was sitting in the clubs listening to blues, jazz and writing poetry.
Through these experiences a new rhythm emerged in his writing, and a series of poems such as The Weary Blues were penned. He returned to Harlem, in 1924, the period known as the Harlem Renaissance. During this period, his work was frequently published and his writing flourished. In 1925 he moved to Washington, D. C. , still spending more time in blues and jazz clubs. He said, I tried to write poems like the songs they sang on Seventh Street… (these songs) had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going.
At this same time, Hughes accepted a job with Dr. Carter G. Woodson, editor of the Journal of Negro Life and History and founder of Black History Week in 1926. He returned to his beloved Harlem later that year. Langston Hughes received a scholarship to Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania, where he received his B. A. degree in 1929. In 1943, he was awarded an honorary Litt. D by his alma mater; a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935 and a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1940. Based on a conversation with a man he knew in a Harlem bar, he created a character know as My Simple Minded Friend in a series of essays in the form of a dialogue.
In 1950, he named this lovable character Jess B. Simple, and authored a series of books on him. Langston Hughes was a prolific writer. In the forty-odd years between his first book in 1926 and his death in 1967, he devoted his life to writing and lecturing. He wrote sixteen books of poems, two novels, three collections of short stories, four volumes of editorial and documentary fiction, twenty plays, children’s poetry, musicals and operas, three autobiographies, a dozen radio and television scripts and dozens of magazine articles. In addition, he edited seven anthologies.