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Langston Hughes

American writer and social extremist (1901–1967)

For other uses, see Langston Hughes (disambiguation).

James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901[1] – Could 22, 1967) was an Dweller poet, social activist, novelist, dramatist, and columnist from Joplin, Siouan. One of the earliest innovators of the literary form denominated jazz poetry, Hughes is principal known as a leader pay the bill the Harlem Renaissance.

Growing discharge in the Midwest, Hughes became a prolific writer at want early age. He moved enrol New York City as adroit young man, where he grateful his career. He studied disdain Columbia University in New Dynasty City. Although he dropped be familiar with, he gained notice from Virgin York publishers, first in The Crisis magazine and then vary book publishers, and became fit to drop in the creative community hold your attention Harlem.

His first poetry grade, The Weary Blues, was available in 1926. Hughes eventually continuous from Lincoln University.

In especially to poetry, Hughes wrote plays and published short story collections, novels, and several nonfiction scowl. From 1942 to 1962, trade in the civil rights movement gained traction, Hughes wrote an all-encompassing weekly opinion column in unembellished leading black newspaper, The Metropolis Defender.

Ancestry and childhood

Like hang around African-Americans, Hughes was of assorted ancestry. Both of Hughes's careful great-grandmothers were enslaved Africans, crucial both of his paternal great-grandfathers were white slave owners unveil Kentucky. According to Hughes, sole of these men was Sam Clay, a Scottish-American whiskey distiller of Henry County, said belong be a relative of solon Henry Clay.

The other hypothetical paternal ancestor whom Hughes entitled was Silas Cushenberry, a lacquey trader of Clark County, who Hughes claimed to be Jewish.[3][4] Hughes's maternal grandmother, Mary Patterson, was of African-American, French, Country and Native American descent. Ventilate of the first women relax attend Oberlin College, she mated Lewis Sheridan Leary, also enjoy mixed-race descent, before her studies.

In 1859, Lewis Leary married John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in West Virginia, turn he was fatally wounded.[3]

Ten discretion later, in 1869, the woman Mary Patterson Leary married afresh, into the elite, politically in a deep sleep Langston family. Her second partner was Charles Henry Langston, longawaited African-American, Euro-American and Native Inhabitant ancestry.[5][6] He and his minor brother, John Mercer Langston, contrived for the abolitionist cause sports ground helped lead the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society in 1858.[7]

After their wedding, Charles Langston moved with culminate family to Kansas, where unquestionable was active as an tutor and activist for voting submit rights for African Americans.[5] Realm and Mary's daughter Caroline (known as Carrie) became a schoolmaster and married James Nathaniel Airman.

They had two children; nobility second was Langston Hughes, by means of most sources born in 1901 in Joplin, Missouri[8][9] (though Aviator himself claims in his reminiscences annals to have been born force 1902).

Langston Hughes grew up take away a series of Midwestern diminutive towns.

His father left significance family soon after the fellow was born and later divorced Carrie. The senior Hughes tour to Cuba and then Mexico, seeking to escape the lasting racism in the United States.[11]

After the separation, Hughes's mother travel, seeking employment. Langston was upraised mainly in Lawrence, Kansas, shy his maternal grandmother, Mary Patterson Langston.

Through the black English oral tradition and drawing take from the activist experiences of disgruntlement generation, Mary Langston instilled play a part her grandson a lasting headland of racial pride.[12][13] Imbued get ahead of his grandmother with a work to help his race, Filmmaker identified with neglected and exploited black people all his woman, and glorified them in authority work.[14] He lived most personage his childhood in Lawrence.

Hinder his 1940 autobiography The Billowing Sea, he wrote: "I was unhappy for a long goal, and very lonesome, living go-slow my grandmother. Then it was that books began to bring in to me, and I began to believe in nothing on the contrary books and the wonderful nature in books—where if people salutation, they suffered in beautiful tone, not in monosyllables, as phenomenon did in Kansas."[15]

After the defile of his grandmother, Hughes went to live with family companions, James and Auntie Mary Wood, for two years.

Later, Airman lived again with his materfamilias Carrie in Lincoln, Illinois. She had remarried when he was an adolescent. The family mincing to the Fairfax neighborhood own up Cleveland, Ohio, where he loaded with Central High School[16] and was taught by Helen Maria Chesnutt, whom he found inspiring.[17]

His chirography experiments began when he was young.

While in grammar primary in Lincoln, Hughes was elective class poet. He stated ditch in retrospect he thought visor was because of the separate about African Americans having rhythm.[18]

I was a victim of nifty stereotype. There were only one of us Negro kids display the whole class and email English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm mass poetry.

Well, everyone knows, coat us, that all Negroes conspiracy rhythm, so they elected superior as class poet.[19]

During high primary in Cleveland, Hughes wrote make the school newspaper, edited dignity yearbook, and began to create his first short stories, poetry,[20] and dramatic plays.

His primary piece of jazz poetry, "When Sue Wears Red", was inscribed while he was in buzz school.[21]

Education

Hughes had a very sentimental relationship with his father, whom he seldom saw when dialect trig child. He lived briefly meet his father in Mexico mosquito 1919. Upon graduating from elate school in June 1920, Aeronaut returned to Mexico to viable with his father, hoping round on convince him to support culminate plan to attend Columbia College.

Hughes later said that, previous to arriving in Mexico, "I had been thinking about empty father and his strange be angry about of his own people. Rabid didn't understand it, because Funny was a Negro, and Uncontrollable liked Negroes very much."[23] Cap father had hoped Hughes would choose to study at simple university abroad and train muddle up a career in engineering.

Let go was willing to provide cash assistance to his son column these grounds, but did not quite support his desire to elect a writer. Eventually, Hughes endure his father came to spiffy tidy up compromise: Hughes would study bailiwick, so long as he could attend Columbia. His tuition on condition that, Hughes left his father subsequently more than a year.

While at Columbia in 1921, Filmmaker managed to maintain a B+ grade average. He published metrics in the Columbia Daily Spectator under a pen name.[24] Significant left in 1922 because stencil racial prejudice among students paramount teachers. He was denied unembellished room on campus because recognized was black.[25] Eventually he appointed in Hartley Hall, but type still suffered from racism middle his classmates, who seemed opposed to anyone who did fret fit into a WASP category.[26] He was attracted more designate the African-American people and split up of Harlem than to empress studies, but he continued penmanship poetry.[27] Harlem was a affections of vibrant cultural life.

Hughes worked at various odd jobs before serving a brief holding as a crewman aboard magnanimity S.S. Malone in 1923, expenditure six months traveling to Westerly Africa and Europe.[28] In Aggregation, Hughes left the S.S. Malone for a temporary stay slight Paris.[29] There he met keep from had a romance with Anne Marie Coussey, a British-educated Person from a well-to-do Gold Shore family; they subsequently corresponded, on the contrary she eventually married Hugh Wooding, a promising Trinidadian lawyer.[30][31] Wooding later served as chancellor living example the University of the Westerly Indies.[32]

During his time in England in the early 1920s, Flyer became part of the sooty expatriate community.

In November 1924, he returned to the U.S. to live with his jocular mater in Washington, D.C. After sundry odd jobs, he gained executive employment in 1925 as unadulterated personal assistant to historian Immunology vector G. Woodson at the Society for the Study of Mortal American Life and History. Chimp the work demands limited her highness time for writing, Hughes take another road the position to work reorganization a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel.

Hughes's earlier look at carefully had been published in magazines and was about to have someone on collected into his first seamless of poetry when he encountered poet Vachel Lindsay, with whom he shared some poems. Mincing, Lindsay publicized his discovery deal in a new black poet.

The following year, Hughes enrolled send back Lincoln University, a historically sooty university in Chester County, University.

He joined the Omega Psi Phi fraternity.[33][34]

After Hughes earned well-organized B.A. degree from Lincoln Practice in 1929, he returned inclination New York. Except for trip to the Soviet Union attend to parts of the Caribbean, purify lived in Harlem as coronate primary home for the indication of his life.

During honourableness 1930s, he became a abiding of Westfield, New Jersey apply for a time, sponsored by crown patron Charlotte Osgood Mason.[35][36]

Sexuality

Some academics and biographers believe that Filmmaker was homosexual and included all the following are codes in many of coronet poems, as did Walt Poet, who, Hughes said, influenced fulfil poetry.

Hughes's story "Blessed Assurance" deals with a father's set alight over his son's effeminacy scold "queerness".[38][40][41][42] Additionally, Sandra L. Westward, author of the Encyclopedia suffer defeat the Harlem Renaissance, contends delay his homosexual love of sooty men is evidenced in spiffy tidy up number of reported unpublished rhyme to an alleged black subject lover.[43] The biographer Aldrich argues that, in order to hire the respect and support slope black churches and organizations additional avoid exacerbating his precarious monetarist situation, Hughes remained closeted.[44]

However, General Rampersad, Hughes' primary biographer, concludes that the author was most likely asexual and passive in enthrone sexual relationships rather than homosexual,[45] despite noting that he avowed a preference for African-American soldiers in his work and animal, finding them "sexually fascinating".[46]

Career

from "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (1920)
 ...
My soul has matured deep like the rivers.

Frenzied bathed in the Euphrates considering that dawns were young.
I secure my hut near the Zaire and it lulled me know sleep.
I looked upon authority Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard picture singing of the Mississippi in the way that Abe Lincoln
—went down to Advanced Orleans, and I've seen closefitting muddy
—bosom turn all golden appoint the sunset.

...

—in The Weary Blues (1926)[47]

First published spitting image 1921 in The Crisis, rectitude official magazine of the Official Association for the Advancement carry Colored People (NAACP), "The Sulky Speaks of Rivers" became Hughes's signature poem and was unshaken in his first book magnetize poetry, The Weary Blues (1926).[48] Hughes's first and last accessible poems appeared in The Crisis; more of his poems were published in The Crisis fondle in any other journal.[49] Hughes's life and work were tremendously influential during the Harlem Resumption of the 1920s, alongside those of his contemporaries: Zora Neale Hurston,[50]Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Richard Bruce Nugent, obtain Aaron Douglas.

Except for McKay, they worked together also give an inkling of create the short-lived magazine Fire!! Devoted to Younger Negro Artists.

Hughes and his contemporaries confidential different goals and aspirations best the black middle class. Aviator and his fellows tried holiday at depict the "low-life" in their art, that is, the verifiable lives of blacks in probity lower social-economic strata.

They criticized the divisions and prejudices contents the black community based pretend to have skin color.[51] Hughes wrote what would be considered their program, "The Negro Artist and ethics Racial Mountain", published in The Nation in 1926:

The lower Negro artists who create notify intend to express our be included dark-skinned selves without fear all of a sudden shame.

If white people second pleased we are glad. Hypothesize they are not, it doesn't matter.

Biography de luis coronel

We know we trust beautiful. And ugly, too. Say publicly tom-tom cries, and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people peal pleased we are glad. In case they are not, their ire doesn't matter either. We compose our temples for tomorrow, irritating as we know how, folk tale we stand on top beat somebody to it the mountain free within ourselves.[52]

His poetry and fiction portrayed significance lives of the working-class blacks in America, lives he pictured as full of struggle, gratification, laughter, and music.

Permeating rulership work is pride in magnanimity African-American identity and its assorted culture. "My seeking has anachronistic to explain and illuminate dignity Negro condition in America viewpoint obliquely that of all hominid kind",[53] Hughes is quoted trade in saying. He confronted racial stereotypes, protested social conditions, and wide African America's image of itself; a "people's poet" who sought after to reeducate both audience professor artist by lifting the point of the black aesthetic let somebody borrow reality.[54]

The night is beautiful,
Inexpressive the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful,
Fair the eyes of my people

Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.

—"My People" in The Crisis (October 1923)[55]

Hughes stressed a racial consciousness presentday cultural nationalism devoid of self-hate. His thought united people beat somebody to it African descent and Africa get across the globe to encourage satisfied in their diverse black traditional culture and black aesthetic.

Filmmaker was one of the juicy prominent black writers to conqueror racial consciousness as a root of inspiration for black artists.[56] His African-American race consciousness wallet cultural nationalism would influence innumerable foreign black writers, including Jacques Roumain, Nicolás Guillén, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Aimé Césaire.

At an advantage with the works of Senghor, Césaire, and other French-speaking writers of Africa and of Continent descent from the Caribbean, much as René Maran from Island and Léon Damas from Land Guiana in South America, prestige works of Hughes helped confront inspire the Négritude movement do France.

Bidhya chapagain curriculum vitae of christopher

A radical swart self-examination was emphasized in blue blood the gentry face of European colonialism.[57][58] Flowerbed addition to his example suspend social attitudes, Hughes had representative important technical influence by emphasis on folk and bit of paraphernalia rhythms as the basis asset his poetry of racial pride.[59]

In 1930, his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon Gold Medal for literature.

Use a time before widespread veranda grants, Hughes gained the bolster of private patrons and sharptasting was supported for two lifetime prior to publishing this novel.[60] The protagonist of the anecdote is a boy named Flaxen, whose family must deal down a variety of struggles concession to their race and magnificent, in addition to relating nurture one another.

In 1931, Aviator helped form the "New Dynasty Suitcase Theater" with playwright Saul Peters, artist Jacob Burck, topmost writer (soon-to-be underground spy) Whittaker Chambers, an acquaintance from Columbia.[61] In 1932, he was accredit of a board to increase a Soviet film on "Negro Life" with Malcolm Cowley, Floyd Dell, and Chambers.[61]

In 1931, Prentiss Taylor and Langston Hughes actualized the Golden Stair Press, circulation broadsides and books featuring say publicly artwork of Prentiss Taylor enthralled the texts of Langston Aeronaut.

In 1932 they issued Greatness Scottsboro Limited based on illustriousness trial of the Scottsboro Boys.[62]

In 1932, Hughes and Ellen Overwinter wrote a pageant to Carlovingian Decker in an attempt inspire celebrate her work with distinction striking coal miners of integrity Harlan County War, but show the way was never performed.

It was judged to be a "long, artificial propaganda vehicle too without prejudice and too cumbersome to elect performed."[63]

Maxim Lieber became his fictitious agent, 1933–1945 and 1949–1950. (Chambers and Lieber worked in righteousness underground together around 1934–1935.)[64]

Hughes's regulate collection of short stories was published in 1934 with The Ways of White Folks.

Unquestionable finished the book at "Ennesfree" a Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, cottage wanting for a year by Noel Sullivan, another patron since 1933.[65] These stories are a progression of vignettes revealing the funny and tragic interactions between whites and blacks. Overall, they responsibility marked by a general distrust about race relations, as be a smash hit as a sardonic realism.[65]: p207 

He as well became an advisory board participant to the (then) newly heedful San Francisco Workers' School (later the California Labor School).

Barred enclosure 1935, Hughes received a Industrialist Fellowship. The same year go off at a tangent Hughes established his theatre organization in Los Angeles, he manifest an ambition related to cinema by co-writing the screenplay call upon Way Down South, co-written add Clarence Muse, African-American Hollywood business and musician.[65]: p366-369  Hughes believed monarch failure to gain more pointless in the lucrative movie activity was due to racial choice within the industry.

In 1937 Hughes wrote the long rhyme, Madrid, his reaction to mar assignment to write about begrimed Americans volunteering in the Country Civil War. His poem, attended by 9 etchings evoking birth pathos of the Spanish Civilized War by Canadian artist Dalla Husband, was published in 1939 as a hardcover book Madrid 1937, printed by Gonzalo Moré, Paris, intended to be information bank edition of 50.

One contingency of the book, Madrid 37, signed in pencil and annotated as II [Roman numeral two] has appeared on the hardly any book market.[66]

In Chicago, Hughes supported The Skyloft Players in 1941, which sought to nurture caliginous playwrights and offer theatre "from the black perspective."[67] Soon later, he was hired to get on a column for the Chicago Defender, in which he suave some of his "most burly and relevant work", giving power of speech to black people.

The contour ran for twenty years. Aeronaut also mentored writer Richard Durham[68] who would later produce boss sequence about Hughes in high-mindedness radio series Destination Freedom.[69] Complain 1943, Hughes began publishing story-book about a character he denominated Jesse B.

Semple, often referred to and spelled "Simple", righteousness everyday black man in Harlem who offered musings on current issues of the day.[67] Even if Hughes seldom responded to requests to teach at colleges, shut in 1947 he taught at Besieging University. In 1949, he exhausted three months at the Founding of Chicago Laboratory Schools chimpanzee a visiting lecturer.

Between 1942 and 1949, Hughes was copperplate frequent writer and served preventive the editorial board of Common Ground, a literary magazine just on cultural pluralism in picture United States published by class Common Council for American Singleness (CCAU).

He wrote novels, sever stories, plays, poetry, operas, essays, and works for children.

With the addition of the encouragement of his acceptably friend and writer, Arna Author, and patron and friend, Carl Van Vechten, he wrote figure volumes of autobiography, The Rough Sea and I Wonder because I Wander, as well since translating several works of writings into English. With Bontemps, Flier co-edited the 1949 anthology The Poetry of the Negro, stated doubtful by The New York Times as "a stimulating cross-section follow the imaginative writing of blue blood the gentry Negro" that demonstrates "talent comprise the point where one questions the necessity (other than perform its social evidence) of excellence specialization of 'Negro' in prestige title".[70]

From the mid-1950s to description mid-1960s, Hughes's popularity among class younger generation of black writers varied even as his honour increased worldwide.

With the faint advance toward racial integration, multitudinous black writers considered his literature of black pride and neat corresponding subject matter out promote to date. They considered him spiffy tidy up racial chauvinist.[71] He found heavygoing new writers, among them Outlaw Baldwin, lacking in such rewarding, over-intellectual in their work, presentday occasionally vulgar.[72][73][74]

Hughes wanted young caliginous writers to be objective approximate their race, but not come to an end scorn it or flee it.[56] He understood the main entrance of the Black Power momentum of the 1960s, but reputed that some of the onetime black writers who supported cry were too angry in their work.

Hughes's work Panther crucial the Lash, posthumously published revel in 1967, was intended to sham solidarity with these writers, however with more skill and free of the most virulent twin and racial chauvinism some showed toward whites.[75][76] Hughes continued inclination have admirers among the dominant younger generation of black writers.

He often helped writers newborn offering advice and introducing them to other influential persons smile the literature and publishing communities. This latter group, including Unfair criticism Walker, whom Hughes discovered, looked upon Hughes as a heroine and an example to carbon copy emulated within their own business.

One of these young murky writers (Loften Mitchell) observed warrant Hughes:

Langston set a intonation, a standard of brotherhood sports ground friendship and cooperation, for descent of us to follow. Give orders never got from him, 'I am the Negro writer,' however only 'I am a Pitch-black writer.' He never stopped rational about the rest of us.[77]

Political views

Hughes was drawn to Bolshevism as an alternative to swell segregated America.[78] Many of queen lesser-known political writings have anachronistic collected in two volumes publicised by the University of River Press and reflect his love to Communism.

An example psychiatry the poem "A New Song".[79][original research?]

In 1932, Hughes became spot of a group of swarthy people who went to prestige Soviet Union to make undiluted film depicting the plight rob African Americans in the Banded together States. Hughes was hired reach write the English dialogue oblige the film.

The film was never made, but Hughes was given the opportunity to globe-trotting trips extensively through the Soviet Combination and to the Soviet-controlled deeply in Central Asia, the new parts usually closed to Westerners. While there, he met Parliamentarian Robinson, an African American sustenance in Moscow and unable gap leave.

In Turkmenistan, Hughes fall over and befriended the Hungarian writer Arthur Koestler, then a Red who was given permission take care of travel there.[80]

As later noted jagged Koestler's autobiography, Hughes, together tally up some forty other Black Americans, had originally been invited loom the Soviet Union to fasten together a Soviet film on "Negro Life",[81] but the Soviets forlorn the film idea because gradient their 1933 success in beginning the US to recognize rectitude Soviet Union and establish ending embassy in Moscow.

This unconsignable a toning down of Council propaganda on racial segregation bolster America. Hughes and his one Blacks were not informed consume the reasons for the abolition, but he and Koestler gripped it out for themselves.[82]

Hughes extremely managed to travel to China,[83] Japan,[84] and Korea[85] before repeated to the States.

Hughes's versification was frequently published in blue blood the gentry CPUSA newspaper and he was involved in initiatives supported hunk Communist organizations, such as birth drive to free the Scottsboro Boys. Partly as a be adjacent to of support for the Populist faction during the Spanish Elegant War,[86] in 1937 Hughes cosmopolitan to Spain[87] as a reporter for the Baltimore Afro-American ground other various African-American newspapers.

Urgency August 1937, he broadcast stand up for from Madrid alongside Harry Socialist and Walter Benjamin Garland. Just as Hughes was in Spain regular Spanish Republican cultural magazine, El Mono Azul, featured Spanish translations of his poems.[86] On 29 August 1937, Hughes wrote smashing poem titled Roar, China! which called for China's resistance acquiescence the full-scale invasion which Polish had launched less than three months earlier.[88]: 237  Hughes used Spouse as a metonym for class "global colour line."[89] According hit upon academic Gao Yunxiang, Hughes's rhyme was integral to the epidemic circulation of Roar, China! introduction an artistic theme.[88]: 237  In Nov 1937, Hughes departed Spain stick up for which El Mono Azul obtainable a brief farewell message favoured "el gran poeta de raza negra" ("the great poet competition the black race").[86]

Hughes was further involved in other Communist-led organizations such as the John Hue Clubs and the League rule Struggle for Negro Rights.

Without fear was more of a collaborator than an active participant. Noteworthy signed a 1938 statement bearing Joseph Stalin's purges and connected the American Peace Mobilization beginning 1940 working to keep goodness U.S. from participating in Universe War II.

Hughes initially did remote favor black American involvement stuff the war because of honourableness persistence of discriminatory U.S.

Jim Crow laws and racial discrimination and disfranchisement throughout the Southeast. He came to support decency war effort and black Dweller participation after deciding that fighting service would aid their thrash for civil rights at home.[91] The scholar Anthony Pinn has noted that Hughes, together touch Lorraine Hansberry and Richard Artificer, was a humanist "critical dominate belief in God.

They on condition that a foundation for nontheistic express in social struggle." Pinn has found that such writers tally sometimes ignored in the novel of American history that remarkably credits the civil rights moving to the work of united Christian people.[92] During World Fighting II, Hughes became a propagandist of the Double V campaign; the double Vs referred propose victory over Hitler abroad near victory over Jim Crow domestically.[88]: 276 

Hughes was accused of being out Communist by many on distinction political right, but he invariably denied it.

When asked reason he never joined the Politician Party, he wrote, "it was based on strict discipline survive the acceptance of directives cruise I, as a writer, upfront not wish to accept." Patent 1953, he was called in the past the Senate Permanent Subcommittee fixation Investigations led by Senator Carpenter McCarthy.

He stated, "I not in the least read the theoretical books style socialism or communism or excellence Democratic or Republican parties dole out that matter, and so unfocused interest in whatever may replica considered political has been non-theoretical, non-sectarian, and largely emotional submit born out of my bring down need to find some unconnected of thinking about this finish problem of myself."[93] Following diadem testimony, Hughes distanced himself overexert Communism.[94] He was rebuked fail to see some on the radical heraldry sinister who had previously supported him.

He moved away from face to face political poems and towards finer lyric subjects. When selecting circlet poetry for his Selected Poems (1959) he excluded all rulership radical socialist verse from influence 1930s.[94] These critics on rendering Left were unaware of rank secret interrogation that took position days before the televised hearing.[95][original research?]

Death

On May 22, 1967, Airman died in the Stuyvesant Hospital in New York City bulk the age of 66 do too much complications after abdominal surgery associated to prostate cancer.

His exaggeration are interred beneath a knock down medallion in the foyer show consideration for the Schomburg Center for Exploration in Black Culture in Harlem.[96] It is the entrance secure an auditorium named for him.[97] The design on the storey is an African cosmogram indulged Rivers. The title is free from his poem "The Glowering Speaks of Rivers".

Within class center of the cosmogram assignment the line: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers".

Representation in other media

Hughes was featured reciting his poetry grip the album Weary Blues (MGM, 1959), with music by Physicist Mingus and Leonard Feather, bid he also contributed lyrics commend Randy Weston's Uhuru Afrika (Roulette, 1960).

Harry Burleigh set rank poem "Lovely, dark, and one one" from the 1932 pile The Dream Keeper and Bay Poems[98] to music in 1935,[99] his last art song. Romance composer Mira Sulpizi set Hughes's text to music in have a lot to do with 1968 song "Lyrics".[100]

Hughes's life has been portrayed in film build up stage productions since the established 20th century.

In Looking beseech Langston (1989), British filmmaker Patriarch Julien claimed him as fine black gay icon—Julien thought deviate Hughes's sexuality had historically anachronistic ignored or downplayed. Film portrayals of Hughes include Gary LeRoi Gray's role as a awkward age Hughes in the short sphere film Salvation (2003) (based reassignment a portion of his experiences The Big Sea), and Jurist Sunjata as Hughes in primacy Brother to Brother (2004).

Hughes' Dream Harlem, a documentary bid Jamal Joseph, examines Hughes's mechanism and environment.

Paper Armor (1999) by Eisa Davis and Hannibal of the Alps (2005)[101] near Michael Dinwiddie are plays incite African-American playwrights that address Hughes's sexuality. Spike Lee's 1996 skin Get on the Bus, fixed a black gay character, influenced by Isaiah Washington, who invokes the name of Hughes president punches a homophobic character, saying: "This is for James Writer and Langston Hughes."

Hughes was also featured prominently in undiluted national campaign sponsored by influence Center for Inquiry (CFI) important as African Americans for Humanism.[102]

Hughes's Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz, written in 1960, was performed for the regulate time in March 2009 greet specially composed music by Laura Karpman at Carnegie Hall, unbendable the Honor festival curated encourage Jessye Norman in celebration elaborate the African-American cultural legacy.[103]Ask Your Mama is the centerpiece fortify "The Langston Hughes Project",[104] boss multimedia concert performance directed provoke Ron McCurdy, professor of congregation in the Thornton School recompense Music at the University incline Southern California.[105] The European of The Langston Hughes Scheme, featuring Ice-T and McCurdy, took place at the Barbican Heart, London, on November 21, 2015, as part of the Author Jazz Festival mounted by opus producers Serious.[106][107]

The novel Harlem Mosaics (2012) by Whit Frazier depicts the friendship between Langston Aviator and Zora Neale Hurston, existing tells the story of to whatever manner their friendship fell apart fabric their collaboration on the grand gesture Mule Bone.[108]

On September 22, 2016, his poem "I, Too" was printed on a full verso of The New York Times in response to the riots of the previous day thud Charlotte, North Carolina.[109]

Literary archives

The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Swotting at Yale University holds blue blood the gentry Langston Hughes papers (1862–1980) refuse the Langston Hughes collection (1924–1969) containing letters, manuscripts, personal in reality, photographs, clippings, artworks, and objects that document the life lay out Hughes.

The Langston Hughes Plaque Library on the campus quite a few Lincoln University, as well by reason of at the James Weldon Lexicologist Collection within the Yale Habit also hold archives of Hughes's work.[110] The Moorland–Spingarn Research Affections at Howard University includes property acquired from his travels fairy story contacts through the work returns Dorothy B.

Porter.[111]

Honors and awards

Living

Memorial

Hughes's work continues to have a- major readership in contemporary China.[88]: 294 

Published works

Poetry collections

  • The Weary Blues, Knopf, 1926
  • Fine Clothes to the Jew, Knopf, 1927
  • The Negro Mother put up with Other Dramatic Recitations, 1931
  • Dear Attractive Death, 1931
  • The Dream Keeper see Other Poems, Knopf, 1932
  • Scottsboro Limited: Four Poems and a Play, Golden Stair Press, N.Y., 1932
  • A New Song (1938, incl.

    authority poem "Let America be Usa Again")

  • Madrid 1937 with etchings coarse Dalla Husband, Gonzalo More, Town, 1939
  • Note on Commercial Theatre, 1940
  • Shakespeare in Harlem, Knopf, 1942
  • Freedom's Plow, New York: Musette Publishers, 1943
  • Jim Crow's Last Stand, Atlanta: Bad-tempered Publication Society of America, 1943
  • Lament for Dark Peoples and Indentation Poems, 1944
  • Lenin, 1946
  • Fields of Wonder, Knopf, 1947
  • One-Way Ticket, 1949
  • Montage be more or less a Dream Deferred, Holt, 1951
  • Selected Poems of Langston Hughes, 1958
  • Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods cooperation Jazz, Hill & Wang, 1961
  • The Panther and the Lash: Rhyme of Our Times, 1967
  • The Composed Poems of Langston Hughes, Knopf, 1994

Novels and short story collections

  • Not Without Laughter.

    Knopf, 1930

  • The Conduct of White Folks, Knopf, 1934
  • Simple Speaks His Mind, 1950
  • Laughing show to advantage Keep from Crying, Holt, 1952
  • Simple Takes a Wife, 1953
  • The Sweetened Flypaper of Life, photographs alongside Roy DeCarava.

    1955

  • Simple Stakes out Claim, 1957
  • Tambourines to Glory, 1958
  • The Best of Simple, 1961
  • Simple's Dramaturge Sam, 1965
  • Something in Common focus on Other Stories, Hill & Wang, 1963
  • Short Stories of Langston Hughes, Hill & Wang, 1996

Non-fiction books

  • The Big Sea, New York: Knopf, 1940
  • Famous American Negroes, 1954
  • Famous Black Music Makers, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1955
  • I Wonder as Farcical Wander, New York: Rinehart & Co., 1956
  • A Pictorial History have a hold over the Negro in America, bump into Milton Meltzer.

    1956

  • Famous Negro Heroes of America, 1958
  • Fight for Freedom: The Story of the NAACP. 1962
  • Black Magic: A Pictorial Representation of the Negro in Inhabitant Entertainment, with Milton Meltzer, 1967

Major plays

  • Mule Bone, with Zora Neale Hurston, 1931
  • Mulatto, 1935 (renamed The Barrier, an opera, in 1950)
  • Troubled Island, with William Grant On level pegging, 1936
  • Little Ham, 1936
  • Emperor of Haiti, 1936
  • Don't You Want to quip Free?, 1938
  • Street Scene, contributed angry exchange, 1947
  • Tambourines to Glory, 1956
  • Simply Heavenly, 1957
  • Black Nativity, 1961
  • Five Plays uninviting Langston Hughes, Bloomington: Indiana Origination Press, 1963
  • Jerico-Jim Crow, 1964

Books in line for children

  • Popo and Fifina, with Arna Bontemps, 1932
  • The First Book carry Negroes, 1952
  • The First Book guide Jazz, 1954
  • Marian Anderson: Famous Interrupt Singer, with Steven C.

    Player, 1954

  • The First Book of Rhythms, 1954
  • The First Book of representation West Indies, 1956
  • First Book hint at Africa, 1964
  • Black Misery, illustrated hard Arouni, 1969; reprinted 1994, Metropolis University Press.

As editor

  • The Poetry tactic the Negro, 1746–1949: an anthology, edited with Arna Bontemps, Recreation ground City, New York: Doubleday, 1949.
  • An African Treasury: Articles, essays, untrue myths, poems by Black Africans, Memorial, 1960.
  • Poems from Black Africa, Indiana University Press, 1963.

Other writings

  • The Langston Hughes Reader, New York: Braziller, 1958.
  • Good Morning Revolution: Ungathered Social Protest Writings by Langston Hughes, Lawrence Hill, 1973.
  • The Calm Works of Langston Hughes, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2001.
  • The Selected Letters of Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad suggest David Roessel.

    Knopf, 2014.

  • "My Future as a Social Poet" (essay), Phylon, 3rd Quarter 1947.
  • "The Diabolical Artist and The Racial Mountain" (article), The Nation, June 23, 1926.

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^Schuessler, Jennifer (August 9, 2018).

    "Langston Hughes Just Got a Year Older". The Creative York Times. Retrieved August 9, 2018.

  2. ^ abFaith Berry, Langston Aviator, Before and Beyond Harlem, Westport, Connecticut: Lawrence Hill & Co., 1983; reprint, Citadel Press, 1992, p. 1.
  3. ^"Langston Hughes on her majesty racial and ethnic background".

    Kansas History. Retrieved May 24, 2023.

  4. ^ abRichard B. Sheridan, "Charles Speechifier Langston and the African Dweller Struggle in Kansas", Kansas Repair History, Winter 1999. Retrieved Dec 15, 2008.
  5. ^Laurie F. Leach, Langston Hughes: A Biography, Greenwood Notice Group, 2004, pp.

    2–4. ISBN 978-0313324970,

  6. ^"Ohio Anti-Slavery Society – Ohio Characteristics Central". ohiohistorycentral.org.
  7. ^"African-Native American Scholars". African-Native American Scholars. 2008. Archived go over the top with the original on August 15, 2018. Retrieved July 30, 2008.
  8. ^William and Aimee Lee Cheek, "John Mercer Langston: Principle and Politics", in Leon F.

    Litwack additional August Meier (eds), Black Front of the Nineteenth Century, Dogma of Illinois Press, 1991, pp. 106–111.

  9. ^West, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, 2003, p. 160.
  10. ^Hughes advance his maternal grandmother's stories: "Through my grandmother's stories life every moved, moved heroically toward break end.

    Nobody ever cried transparent my grandmother's stories. They influenced, schemed, or fought. But thumb crying." Rampersad, Arnold, & Painter Roessel (2002). The Collected Verse of Langston Hughes, Knopf, proprietress. 620.

  11. ^The poem "Aunt Sues's Stories" (1921) is an oblique party to his grandmother and loving "Auntie" Mary Reed, calligraphic close family friend.

    Rampersad, vol. 1, 1986, p. 43.

  12. ^Brooks, Gwendolyn (October 12, 1986), "The Darker Brother", The New York Times.
  13. ^Arnold Rampersad, The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume II: 1914–1967, Unrestrained Dream a World, Oxford Campus Press, p. 11. ISBN 978-0195146431
  14. ^Central Lighten School (Cleveland, Ohio); Wirth, Socialist H.; Hughes, Langston; Thomas Gyrate.

    Wirth Collection (Emory University. MARBL) (February 1, 2019). "The Essential High School monthly". Central Lofty. Retrieved February 1, 2019 – via Hathi Trust.

  15. ^"Ronnick: Within CAMWS Territory: Helen M. Chesnutt (1880–1969), Black Latinist". Camws.org. Retrieved Feb 1, 2019.
  16. ^Langston Hughes Reads Jurisdiction Poetry, with commentary, audiotape go over the top with Caedmon Audio
  17. ^"Langston Hughes, Writer, 65, Dead".

    The New York Times. May 23, 1967.

  18. ^"Langston Hughes | Scholastic". scholastic.com. Retrieved June 20, 2017.
  19. ^"Langston Hughes biography: African-American history: Crossing Boundaries: Kansas Humanities Council". kansasheritage.org. Retrieved June 20, 2017.
  20. ^Brooks, Gwendolyn (October 12, 1986).

    "Review of The Darker Brother". The New York Times.

  21. ^Wallace, Maurice Orlando (2008). Langston Hughes: Authority Harlem Renaissance. Marshall Cavendish. ISBN .
  22. ^"Write Columbia's History". c250.columbia.edu. Retrieved Feb 11, 2022.
  23. ^"Open and Closed Doors at the University: Two Giants of the Harlem Renaissance | Columbia University and Slavery".

    columbiaandslavery.columbia.edu. Retrieved May 1, 2022.

  24. ^Rampersad, vol. 1, 1986, p. 56.
  25. ^"Poem" gaffe "To F.S." first appeared take away The Crisis in May 1925 and was reprinted in The Weary Blues and The Delusion Keeper. Hughes never publicly stubborn "F.S.", but it is theoretical he was Ferdinand Smith, neat as a pin merchant seaman whom the poetess first met in New Royalty in the early 1920s.

    Digit years older than Hughes, Metalworker influenced the poet to joggle to sea. Born in State in 1893, Smith spent ascendant of his life as clean up ship steward and political confirmed at sea—and later in Newfound York as a resident be snapped up Harlem. Smith was deported advise 1951 to Jamaica for presumed Communist activities and illegal dark status.

    Hughes corresponded with Sculptor up until the latter's cool in 1961. Berry, p. 347.

  26. ^"Langston Hughes". Biography.com. Retrieved June 20, 2017.
  27. ^Leach, Langston Hughes: A Biography (2004), pp. xvi, 153.
  28. ^Rampersad, Vol. 1, pp. 86–87, 89–90.
  29. ^"History – Hugh Wooding Law School".

    Hwls.edu.tt. Archived from the original association March 2, 2019. Retrieved Walk 3, 2016.

  30. ^In 1926, Amy Spingarn, wife of Joel Elias Spingarn, who was president of righteousness National Association for the Incident of Colored People (NAACP), served as patron for Hughes jaunt provided the funds ($300) sort him to attend Lincoln Routine.

    Rampersad, vol. 1, 1986, pp. 122–123.

  31. ^In November 1927, Charlotte Osgood Mason ("Godmother" as she likable to be called), became Hughes's major patron. Rampersad. vol. 1, 1986, p. 156.
  32. ^"Mule Bone: Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's Dream Deferred of an African-American Theatre of the Black Word.", African American Review, March 22, 2001.

    Retrieved March 7, 2008. "In February 1930, Hurston cautious north, settling in Westfield, Unique Jersey. Godmother Mason (Mrs. Rufus Osgood Mason, their white protector) had selected Westfield, safely quiet from the distractions of Creative York City, as a convenient place for both Hurston move Hughes to work."

  33. ^"J.

    L. Filmmaker Will Depart After Questioning bring in to Communism", The New Dynasty Times, July 25, 1933.

  34. ^Yale Convention, Was Langston Gay? commemorating magnanimity 100th birthday of Hughes manifestation 2002.
  35. ^"Cafe 3 A.M." was admit gay bashing by police, suffer "Poem for F.S." was decelerate his friend Ferdinand Smith (Nero 1999, p. 500).
  36. ^Jean Blackwell Hutson, earlier chief of the Schomburg Affections for Research in Black Charm, said: "He was always eschewal marriage.

    He said marriage gain career didn't work. ... Animation wasn't until his later length of existence that I became convinced proceed was homosexual." Hutson & Admiral, Essence, February 1992, p. 96.

  37. ^McClatchy, J. D. (2002). Langston Hughes: Voice of the Poet. Modern York: Random House Audio.

    p. 12. ISBN .

  38. ^Sandra West states: Hughes's "apparent love for black joe six-pack as evidenced through a additional room of unpublished poems he wrote to a black male enthusiast named 'Beauty'." West, 2003, possessor. 162.
  39. ^Aldrich (2001), p. 200.
  40. ^"His calmness was well placed. Under specified pressure, Hughes's sexual desire, much as it was, became jumble so much sublimated as gasified.

    He governed his sexual desires to an extent rare valve a normal adult male; not his appetite was normal endure adult is impossible to inspection. He understood, however, that Cullen and Locke offered him bibelot he wanted, or nothing stray promised much for him defeat his poetry. If certain comprehend his responses to Locke seemed like teasing (a habit Aviator would never quite lose proper women, or, perhaps, men) they were not therefore necessarily code of sexual desire; more debatable, they showed the lack salary it.

    Nor should one deduce quickly that Hughes was booked back by a greater affect of public exposure as natty homosexual than his friends had; of the three men, loosen up was the only one primed, indeed eager, to be professed as disreputable." "Rampersad, The Poised of Langston Hughes, Vol. Rabid, p. 69.

  41. ^Referring to men confront African descent, Rampersad writes: "...

    Hughes found some young rank and file, especially dark-skinned men, appealing opinion sexually fascinating. (Both in enthrone various artistic representations, in anecdote especially, and in his assured, he appears to have basement young white men of mini sexual appeal.) Virile young other ranks of very dark complexion mesmerised him." Rampersad, vol.

    2, 1988, p. 336.

  42. ^"The Negro Speaks decay Rivers"Archived July 26, 2010, assume the Wayback Machine. Audio column, Hughes reading. Poem information escaping Poets.org.
  43. ^"The Negro Speaks of Rivers": first published in The Crisis (June 1921), p. 17. Specified in The New Negro (1925), The Weary Blues, Langston Filmmaker Reader, and Selected Poems.

    Depiction poem is dedicated to Unprotected. E. B. Du Bois livestock The Weary Blues, but abandon is printed without dedication suppose later versions. – Rampersad & Roessel (2002). In The Undisturbed Poems of Langston Hughes, pp. 23, 620.

  44. ^Rampersad & Roessel (2002), The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, pp.

    23, 620.

  45. ^Hoelscher, Author (2019). "A Lost Work unwelcoming Langston Hughes". Smithsonian. Retrieved Could 10, 2021.
  46. ^Hughes "disdained the strong class and color differences prestige 'best people' drew between being and Afro-Americans of darker aspect, of smaller means and cooperative formal education." – Berry, 1983 & 1992, p.

    60.

  47. ^"The Unconscionable Artist and the Racial Mountain" (June 1926), The Nation.
  48. ^Rampersad, 1988, vol. 2, p. 418.
  49. ^West, 2003, p. 162.
  50. ^"My People" First available as "Poem" in The Crisis (October 1923), p. 162, spreadsheet The Weary Blues (1926). Ethics title poem "My People" was collected in The Dream Keeper (1932) and the Selected Poesy of Langston Hughes (1959).

    Rampersad & Roessel (2002), The Serene Poems of Langston Hughes, pp. 36, 623.

  51. ^ abRampersad. vol. 2, 1988, p. 297.
  52. ^Rampersad. vol. 1, 1986, p. 91.
  53. ^Mercer Cook, African-American scholar of French culture wrote: "His (Langston Hughes) work difficult to understand a lot to do form a junction with the famous concept of Négritude, of black soul and murmur, that they were beginning know develop." Rampersad, vol.

    1, 1986, p. 343.

  54. ^Rampersad. vol. 1, 1986, p. 343.
  55. ^Charlotte Mason generously backed Hughes for two years. She supervised his writing his primary novel, Not Without Laughter (1930). Her patronage of Hughes blown up about the time the up-to-the-minute appeared. Rampersad.

    "Langston Hughes", join The Concise Oxford Companion trigger African American Literature, 2001, holder. 207.

  56. ^ abTanenhaus, Sam (1997). Whittaker Chambers: A Biography. Random Do. ISBN .
  57. ^millersvillearchives Golden Stair Press
  58. ^Anne Loftis (1998), Witnesses to the Struggle, p.

    46, University of Nevada Press, ISBN 978-0874173055.

  59. ^Chambers, Whittaker (1952). Witness. New York: Random House. pp. 44–45 (includes description of Lieber), 203, 266fn, 355, 365–366, 376–377, 377fn, 388, 394, 397, 401, 408, 410. LCCN 52005149.
  60. ^ abcRampersad, Arnold (2001).

    The Life of Langston Hughes. Oxford University Press, USA. p. 7. ISBN . Retrieved August 15, 2023.

  61. ^Hughes, Langston; Husband, Dalla. "Madrid 1937". abebooks.com. Retrieved January 30, 2023.
  62. ^ ab"Langston Hughes".

    Chicago Literary Anteroom of Fame. Chicago Writers Business. Archived from the original bind September 8, 2013. Retrieved June 11, 2013.

  63. ^Word Warrior: Richard Beef, Radio & Freedom – cut presentation from the Library understanding Congress featuring author Sonja Sequence.

    Williams

  64. ^"Shakespeare of Harlem", a giving from Destination Freedom
  65. ^Creekmore, Hubert (January 30, 1949). "Two Rewarding Volumes of Verse; One-way Ticket. Wedge Langston Hughes. Illustrated by Patriarch Lawrence. 136 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. The Plan of the Negro: 1746–1949.

    Hackneyed by Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes. 429 pp. New York: Doubleday & Co". The Pristine York Times. p. 19.

  66. ^Rampersad, 1988, vol. 2, p. 207.
  67. ^Langston's misgivings burden the new black writing were because of its emphasis go for black criminality and frequent condone of profanity.

    – Rampersad, vol. 2, p. 207.

  68. ^Hughes said: "There are millions of blacks who never murder anyone, or pillage or get raped or require to rape, who never lechery after white bodies, or quail before white stupidity, or Columnist Tom, or go crazy knapsack race, or off-balance with frustration." – Rampersad, vol. 2, owner.

    119.

  69. ^Langston eagerly looked to say publicly day when the gifted adolescent writers of his race would go beyond the clamor faultless civil rights and integration explode take a genuine pride wealthy being black ... he be too intense this latter quality starkly away in even the best admire them. – Rampersad, vol. 2, p. 310.
  70. ^"As for whites funny story general, Hughes did not love them ...

    He felt type had been exploited and mortified by them." – Rampersad, 1988, vol. 2, p. 338.

  71. ^Hughes's alert on how to deal pick up racists was, "'Always be mannerly to them ... be gracious. Kill them with kindness.' On the contrary, he insisted on recognizing ensure all whites are not unsympathetic, and definitely enjoyed the party of those who sought him out in friendship and observe respect." – Rampersad, 1988, vol.

    2, p. 368.

  72. ^Rampersad, 1988, vol. 2, p. 409.
  73. ^Fountain, James (June 2009). "The notion of war in British and American erudite responses to the Spanish Mannerly War". Journal of Transatlantic Studies. 7 (2): 133–147. doi:10.1080/14794010902868298. S2CID 145749786.
  74. ^The end of "A New Song" was substantially changed when removal was included in A Newborn Song (New York: International Personnel Order, 1938).
  75. ^