Cropped photograph of Hughes taken in 1943 by Gordon Parks. James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 - May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. Both of Hughes' paternal great-grandmothers were African
Cropped photograph of Hughes taken in 1943 by Gordon Parks. James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 - May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. Both of Hughes' paternal great-grandmothers were African-American and both of his paternal great-grandfathers were white slave owners of Kentucky. During high school in Cleveland, he wrote for the school newspaper, edited the yearbook, and began to write his first short stories, poetry, and dramatic plays. His first piece of jazz poetry, "When Sue Wears Red", was written while he was in high school. After travels to Mexico, west Africa, Paris and England he returned to the and settled in Washington where he worked as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel. There he met the poet Vachel Lindsay, with whom he shared some poems. Impressed with the poems, Lindsay publicized his discovery of a new black poet. By this time, Hughes's earlier work had been published in magazines and was about to be collected into his first book of poetry. He earned a degree from Lincoln University in 1929, and returned to New York. Except for travels to the Soviet Union and parts of the Caribbean, he lived in Harlem for the remainder of his life, and is best remembered as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. His main concern was the uplift of his people, whose strengths, resiliency, courage, and humor he wanted to record as part of the general American experience. His poetry and fiction portrayed the lives of the working-class blacks in America, lives he portrayed as full of struggle, joy, laughter, and music. Permeating his work is pride in the African-American identity and its diverse culture. In 1967, Hughes died from complications after abdominal surgery, related to prostate cancer, at the age of 65.
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