Langston Hughes is one of America's most influential poets of the 20th century.
His lyrics inspired a generation of American writers, especially African American writers like Lorraine Hansberry. The playwright used a phrase from one of Hughes' poems as the title of her award-winning play "A Raisin in the Sun."
Although he lived much of his adult life in New York City, Hughes was a product of the Midwest. He was born Feb. 1, 1902, in Joplin, Mo. However, he was raised in a university town. Hughes, his mother, Carrie Mercer Hughes, and grandmother, the first black female to attend Oberlin College, moved to Lawrence, Kan., without his father. James Hughes, whose grandfathers were white, was frustrated with racism and left the family to migrate to Mexico.
Hughes constantly learned from his grandmother about the need for progress by African Americans. She read to him from W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk.
Hughes passed through his boyhood in poverty. His mother was constantly searching for a job to take care of Langston and his grandmother. Hughes was a problem child due to the absence of his father, the relative absence of his mother and the increasing withdrawal of his grandmother.
As Hughes later recalled, he wrote his first poem in Lincoln, Ill., where he spent a year with his mother between 1915 and '16. He published short stories in his school's monthly magazine.
Hughes' influence to become a writer came from two other famous writers at the time, Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg.
Hughes led an almost compulsively varied life between his departure from high school in 1920 and the publication of his first book (The Weary Blues) in 1926. He attended Columbia University, visited his father in Mexico and worked on a ship.
His most famous work is "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," still a favorite in both colleges and high schools. He wrote a two-volume autobiography and his character Jesse B Simple is one of the most memorable characters in American letters.
Hughes died May 22, 1967. He is best remembered as the first African American man to make a career of literature. He's best remembered as the man who gave American poetry a voice from a distinctly African American perspective.
Melvin Anderson is a freshman at Smith High School. He is a member of AFJROTC.
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