# data[].attributes.body
As an older man in the 1950s

# data[].attributes.body
As a young man in the 1920s

# data[].attributes.body
Watch the video from Biography.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Langston Hughes - House in Harlem | Biography

# data[].attributes.body
Watch Langston Hughes read his poems on a
TV program in 1958

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Langston Hughes - "The Weary Blues" on CBUT, 1958

# data[].attributes.body
Learn more about Langston Hughes' home in Manhattan, now a New York City landmark

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Langston Hughes portrait
Photo by Carl Van Vechten Photographs courtesy of Library of Congress: LOT 12735, no. 539

The Langston Hughes House is historically significant as the home of James Langston Hughes (1902-1967), author and poet and one of the foremost figures in the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was a literary movement of the 1920s-30s that focused on the question of African American identity. Born in Joplin, Missouri, the son of James Nathaniel Hughes and Carrie Mercer Langston Hughes, James and his family moved frequently when he was young; he attended grammar school in Lincoln, Illinois, and high school in Cleveland, Ohio. The year 1921 was a crucial one for Hughes. He traveled to Mexico to be with his father, who worked for an electric company in Toluca, Mexico. He taught English in two Mexican schools and published his first prose piece, "Mexican Games" in The Brownies Book and his now famous 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers' in The Crisis. In 1921 Hughes left Mexico for New York to attend Columbia University. Although he remained at Columbia for a year, later continuing his studies at Lincoln University in Philadelphia, Hughes' days at Columbia were crucial to his future. It was during this time he established friendships with young writers who were participants in the Harlem Renaissance and who would greatly influence his writing. He voyaged to Europe and Africa in 1922 and 1923 and in 1924 returned to the United States to live with his mother in Washington, D.C. In 1925 the "busboy poet" was discovered by Vachel Lindsay, an American poet. Hughes' book about the blues and jazz scene, The Weary Blues, was published in 1926. In order to understand race relations under communism he spent a year in the Soviet Union in 1932, although he never joined the Communist Party himself. Later in life he veered away from radical politics, but did advise the up and coming African American writers and poets of the 1960s, who looked on him with respect. Hughes served as the Madrid correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American in 1937.

Langston Hughes House

Photo courtesy of caribbeanfreephoto on Flickr

Although frequently away, he always returned to Harlem. His poetry and prose are dominated by images of Harlem. Nicknamed the "Poet-Laureate of Harlem" Hughes depicts Harlem best in his most notable volume of verse, Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951.) In early works he emphasized blues forms, but stylistically he grew to embrace the ballad form, dance rhythms, and jazz forms. He was a pioneer in the poetry-to-jazz movement. Although he is primarily considered a poet, Hughes was also a prolific novelist, playwright, and songwriter. He also established the Harlem Suitcase Theater in 1935, a showcase for plays by African American writers with African American actors, directors, and production staff. Among the honors accorded him were the Anisfeld-Wolfe Award in 1953 for the year's best book on race relations and the Springarn medal in 1960. He was elected to the National Institute for Arts and Letters in 1961. Langston Hughes died in May 22, 1967 in New York City.

Misery

- Langston Hughes

The house on East 127th Street in Harlem where he lived the last 20 years of his life is the only residence he occupied for any significant length of time and is the most tangible symbol of his association with Harlem, so vital to his literary career. The Langston Hughes House, a rowhouse which is 20 feet wide and 45 feet deep, is three stories high above a basement and is faced with brownstone. It occupies an East Harlem block with similar rowhouses. Built in 1869, the house was designed in the Italianate style by architect Alexander Wilson, typical of rowhouses built in Harlem during the period shortly after the Civil War. The Langston Hughes House was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on October 29, 1982.

The Langston Hughes House is located at 20 East 127th Street, Harlem, NY. You can visit the website for more information or call 212-927-3413.

Arna Wendell Bontemps House | Langston Hughes House| Paul Laurence Dunbar House
Featured Park | African American Feature Page Home | NR Home

National Park Service | U.S. Department of the Interior | Comments or Questions USA.gov | Privacy & Disclaimer | FOIA

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Celebrate African American History Month 2005--A National Register of Historic Places Feature

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Langston Hughes portrait Photo by Carl Van Vechten Photographs courtesy of Library of Congress: LOT 12735, no. 539 The Langston Hughes House is historically significant as the home of James Langston Hughes (1902-1967), author and poet and one of the foremost figures in the Harlem Renaissance.

# data[].attributes.body
Listen to Langston Hughes read his poems

# data[].attributes.body
Article

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The writer Langston Hughes was an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance. This was a period of great creativity among African American artists. Hughes wrote about the…

# data[].attributes.body
Facts and images

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Langston Hughes (1902 - May 22, 1967) was an American poet, novelist, playwright and short story writer. Hughes was one of the writers and artists whose work was called the Harlem Renaissance.

Hughes grew up as a poor boy from Missouri, the descendant of African people who had been taken to America as slaves. At that time, the term used for African-Americans was " negro" which means a person with black skin. Most "negroes" did not remember or think about their link with the people of Africa, even though it was a big influence on their culture and, in particular, their music. Hughes was unusual for his time, because he went back to West Africa to understand more about his own culture. Through his poetry, plays, and stories, Hughes helped other black Americans to see themselves as part of a much bigger group of people, so that now the term "African-American" is used with pride.

Hughes became a famous writer, but all his life he remembered how he started out, and he helped and encouraged many other struggling writers.

Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. His parents were James Hughes and Carrie Langston Hughes who was a teacher. Langston's father, James Hughes, was so upset about the racism towards African-Americans that he left his family and moved to Mexico. During his childhood, Hughes was cared for by his grandmother, in Lawrence, Kansas while his mother worked to support the family. Langston's grandmother was a great story teller. She told stories that made him feel proud to be an African-American.

After his grandmother died, Hughes and his mother moved about 12 times until settling in Cleveland, and then, as a teenager went to live in Lincoln, Illinois with his mother, who had remarried. He was often left alone because his mother was at work. Even though his childhood was difficult and had lots of changes, he was able to use these things in the poetry that he started to write while he was at school. He never forgot the stories of his grandmother and tried to help other African-Americans when they were having problems. These were the people that he later wrote about in his own stories.

When Hughes went to school in Lincoln, there were only two African-American children in the class. The teacher talked to them about poetry. She said that what a poem needed most was rhythm. Langston later said that he had rhythm in his blood because, "as everyone knows", all African-Americans have rhythm. The children made him the "class poet".

At high school in Cleveland, Ohio, Langston learned to love reading. He loved the poetry of the American poets Paul Laurence Dunbar and Carl Sandburg. He wrote articles for the school newspaper, he edited the school yearbook and he wrote his first short stories and plays.

Hughes' father and Columbia University

When Langston Hughes was 17, he went to spend some time with his father in Mexico. He was very unhappy there. Hughes could not understand how his father felt. He said: "I had been thinking about my father and his strange dislike of his own people. I didn't understand it, because I was a Negro, and I liked Negroes very much!"
Hughes later wrote this poem:

When he was finished at high school in Lincoln in 1920, he went back to Mexico, to ask his father to pay for him to go to university. Hughes' father was a lawyer and a wealthy landowner. He could afford to send his son to university but he made difficulties about it. He said that Hughes could only go to university if he went overseas and studied engineering. Hughes wanted to go to a university in the US. After a time, they made an agreement that he should go to Columbia University but study engineering, not an arts degree. He went to Columbia in 1921 but left in 1922, partly because of the racism in the university.

Until 1926 Hughes did many different types of work. In 1923 he went as a crewman on the ship "S.S.Malone" and went to West Africa and Europe. He left the ship and stayed for a short time in Paris where he joined several other African-Americans who were living there. In November 1924, Hughes returned to the U.S. to live with his mother in Washington, D.C.. In 1925 he got a job as an assistant to Carter G. Woodson who worked with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Hughes did not enjoy his work because he did not have enough time to write, so he left and got a job as a "busboy", wiping tables and washing dishes at a hotel. Hughes is sometimes called "The Busboy Poet". Meanwhile, some of his poems were published in magazines and were being collected together for his first book of poetry. While he was working at the hotel he met the poet Vachel Lindsay, who helped to make Hughes known as a new African-American poet.

In 1926 Hughes began studying at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania. He had help from patrons, Amy Spingarn, who gave him $300 and "Godmother" Charlotte Osgood Mason. Hughes graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1929 and became a Doctor of Letters in 1943. He was also given an honorary doctorate by Howard University. For the rest of his life, except when he travelled to the Caribbean or West Indies, Hughes lived in Harlem, New York.

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

Hughes' life and work were an important part of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, alongside those Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Countee Cullen, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Aaron Douglas, who together started a magazine Fire!! Devoted to Younger Negro Artists. Hughes and these friends did not always agree with the ideas of some of the other African-American writers who were also part of the Harlem Renaissance because they thought their ideas were Middle class and that they treated others who had darker skin, less education and less money with discrimination. All his life, Hughes never forgot the lessons that he learned about poor and uneducated African-Americans in the stories that his grandmother told.

In 1960, the NAACP awarded Hughes the "Spingarn Medal" for "distinguished achievements by an African American". Hughes became a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1961. In 1973, an award was named after him, the "Langston Hughes Medal", awarded by the City College of New York.

Hughes became a famous American poet, but he was always ready to help other people, particularly young black writers. He was worried that many young writers hated themselves, and expressed these feelings to the world. He tried to help people feel pride, and not worry about the prejudice of other people. He also tried to help young African-Americans not to express hatred and prejudice towards white Americans.
Hughes wrote:

"The younger Negro artists who create now intend to express

our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame.

If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not,

it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly, too.

The tom-tom cries, and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people

are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure

doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow,

strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain

free within ourselves."
(A tom-tom is an African drum)

On May 22, 1967, Hughes died in New York City at the age of 65 after having surgery for prostate cancer. His ashes are buried under the floor of the Langston Hughes Auditorium in the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. Over his ashes is a circle with a beautiful African design called "Rivers." At the centre of the design are words from a poem by Hughes: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers."

The Weary Blues. Knopf, 1926

Fine Clothes to the Jew. Knopf, 1927

The Negro Mother and Other Dramatic Recitations, 1931

Dear Lovely Death, 1931

The Dream Keeper and Other Poems. Knopf, 1932

Scottsboro Limited: Four Poems and a Play. N.Y.: Golden Stair Press, 1932

Shakespeare in Harlem. Knopf, 1942

Freedom's Plow. 1943

Fields of Wonder. Knopf,1947

One-Way Ticket. 1949

Montage of a Dream Deferred. Holt, 1951

Selected Poems of Langston Hughes. 1958

Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz. Hill & Wang, 1961

The Panther and the Lash: Poems of Our Times, 1967

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. Knopf, 1994

Let America Be America Again 2005

Not Without Laughter. Knopf, 1930

The Ways of White Folks. Knopf, 1934

Simple Speaks His Mind. 1950

Laughing to Keep from Crying, Holt, 1952

Simple Takes a Wife. 1953

Sweet Flypaper of Life, photographs by Roy DeCarava. 1955

Simple Stakes a Claim. 1957

Tambourines to Glory (book), 1958

The Best of Simple. 1961

Simple's Uncle Sam. 1965

Something in Common and Other Stories. Hill & Wang, 1963

Short Stories of Langston Hughes. Hill & Wang, 1996

Non-fiction

The Big Sea. New York: Knopf, 1940

Famous American Negroes. 1954

Marian Anderson: Famous Concert Singer. 1954

I Wonder as I Wander. New York: Rinehart & Co., 1956

A Pictorial History of the Negro in America, with 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, in 1950)

Troubled Island, with William Grant Still. 1936

Little Ham. 1936

Emperor of Haiti. 1936

Don't You Want to be Free? 1938

Street Scene (opera)|Street Scene, contributed lyrics. 1947

Tambourines to 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, with Arna Bontemps. 1932

The First Book of the Negroes. 1952

The First Book of Jazz. 1954

The First Book of Rhythms. 1954

The First Book of the West Indies. 1956

First Book of Africa. 1964

Related pages

Images for kids

Hughes at Lincoln University in 1928

Hughes's ashes are interred under a cosmogram medallion in the foyer of the Arthur Schomburg Center in Harlem

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

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Langston Hughes (1902 - May 22, 1967) was an American poet, novelist, playwright and short story writer. Hughes was one of the writers and artists whose work was called the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes grew up as a poor boy from Missouri, the descendant of African people who had been taken to America as slaves.

# data[].attributes.body
Click on it to play,
then enter "full screen"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Educational Videos for Students (Cartoons on Bullying, Leadership & More)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Who is Langston Hughes | Fun Facts for Students | Black History Month Videos for Students

# data[].attributes.body
Article