Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes was the best writer during the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes helps establish African American Identity by being the honest voice of African American writers during a time when it was not safe or popular to do so. Langston Hughes once proclaimed, "We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves." Hughes was greatly influenced by the sights and sounds of Harlem. Langston Hughes was noticed by fellow writers, not just a "black artist," but also simply an "artist." He was the breaking point to open the other doors for other artists.

In the decades that immediately followed World War I, huge numbers of African Americans migrated towards the North, leaving the economically depressed South. Langston Hughes was born as James Mercer Langston Hughes in Joplin, Missouri in February 1, 1902. The early life of Hughes was very unstable. His parents divorced when he was a very small child. His father abandoned the family after he was prevented from taking the bar exam because of his race. His father also moved to Mexico where he practiced law to avoid the practices of Jim Crow in the U.S. This left Hughes with an artistic, although ailing mother, Carrie Mercer Langston Hughes. She was a teacher and also a poetry writer who also took her son to plays and literary meetings (Patton and Maureen, 458).

After his parents separated, his mother migrated from city to city looking for work, dragging young Langston behind to such places for example Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Indiana, New York and Illinois. It was in Illinois, the county of Lincoln, that Hughes started writing poetry. As a child, Hughes enjoyed poetry by Carl Sandburg and Paul Laurence Dunbar. He begun to write and was assigned the class poet following his graduation from the grammar school in Illinois. He also wrote school papers, short stories, poetry and plays shortly later at the Central High School based in Cleveland, Ohio. Certainly, Hughes was greatly influenced by the sights and sounds of Harlem. This is what made him to leave Columbia University in New York City, where he had earlier on agreed to study engineering, according to the wishes of his father. Immediately after leaving Columbia he wrote a poem "The South", which was published in the Crisis, on June 1922. Crisis also published the poem "When Sue Wears red", Hughes' poem, in February 1923. He also wrote his first story, the Mexican Games, which was later on published in Brownie's Book, a journal for African-American children (Smith 129; Balshaw, 307).

Hughes worked in various odd jobs, for example working as a mess boy on a port's freighter and as a florist's delivery boy. He also joined the S.S. Malone's crew in 1923 and travelled, for a total six months, to various countries, including Holland, West Africa, France and Italy. It was in these travels that he witnessed Senegal's folklife firsthand, giving him a perspective of African folk life firsthand. It was also in Paris, France that he listened to Jazz and Blues contributions of black expatriate singers in their nightclubs. In 1924 he returned to America, and went to live with his mother in Washington D.C. Here, Hughes worked as a clerk for Carter Godwin Woodson's Association for the study of Negro life. Woodson was the founding father of Negro History and was also responsible for editing the Journal of Negro History and for creating the negro History Week, now referred to as the Black History Month (Nadell 12; Watts, 19).

Between 1925 and 1930, Hughes published prose in Philip Randolph's Messenger as well as activist Marcus Garvey's Negro World. It was in this time that he wrote the poem The Weary Blues. This is considered one of the most famous poems written by Hughes, claimed by many critics that it is a combination of jazz and blues with a personal experience (Knapp, 1-5). Following its publication in the magazine Opportunity, a magazine by the Urban League, The Weary Blues was awarded the poem of the year in 1925. The voice of the African American is embodied in this poem, considering the references to the context within which it was written. For example, the piano player is termed a "Negro". During the 1920s, Negro was not a word of reverence. Rather, it was considered a word of submission and servitude. This word, therefore, identified the status of the musician in society. The speaker also notices the piano player's hands on the keys. Considering that this was a time when whites and blacks were often segregated, Hughes allowed these two to interlink. The speaker also noticed the piano player's "ebony words on each ivory key". The piano was also a very important symbol in this poem, as it represented the forbidden relationship between whites and blacks. This message evoked the duality of white and black. The line on ebony hands is certainly a powerful line that made a political statement and more importantly, was a symbol of segregation's intolerance (Richards, 217).

Langston Hughes was not just a "black artist," but also an "artist." He was the breaking point to open the other doors for other artists. More than any other black writer or poet, Hughes recorded the frustrations and nuances of black life, making him a role model to other writers. Worth noting is that while he had trouble with the white as well as back critics, Hughes was the first African American to earn his living just from his writing and his public lectures. One of the reasons he achieved this was because of the love and acceptance he received from the black people, especially the average black people. According to a reviewer for the Black World, commenting on Hughes, "Those whose prerogative it is to determine the rank of writers have never rated him highly, but if the weight of public response is any gauge then Langston Hughes stands at the apex of literary relevance among Black people. The poet occupies such a position in the memory of his people precisely because he recognized that 'we possess within ourselves a great reservoir of physical and spiritual strength,' and because he used his artistry to reflect this back to the people. He used his poetry and prose to illustrate that 'there is no lack within the Negro people of beauty, strength and power,' and he chose to do so on their own level, on their own terms." (Ryan, 1457)

The Negro Artist and the racial Mountain

One of the most famous quotes by Langston Hughes was the quote: "We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves." This was an essay from his essay The Negro Artist