We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line. ~ Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes overcame the censorship and blacklisting that plagued many of America’s African-American authors in the pre-Civil Rights era to become not only the voice of his generation, but perhaps one of the best documentarians of life as an African-American in the early-to-mid twentieth century. With his prose, plays, and especially his poems, Hughes continues to teach other cultures what it means to be an African-American, which reflecting for those of his own culture the qualities that make them unique.

James Langston Hughes was born in 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced, leaving him to be raised by his grandmother until reuniting with his mother and stepfather at the age of 13. Hughes began writing poetry as a teenager, and although he attended Columbia University for a time, he left to travel the world, working an assortment of jobs.

In 1926, Hughes’ saw his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, published. He continued his education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, continuing to write, winning the Harmon Gold Medal for literature in 1930 for his first novel Not Without Laughter.

Hughes relocated to New York City, where he became associated with the Harlem Renaissance, a movement of African-American writers and artists that included authors such as Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, and Claude McKay. His writing – which included poetry, novels and short story, prose and plays – reflected the excitement that both he and the other writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance found growing in the African-American community in Harlem, while also recognizing the roadblocks that still stood in their paths. He celebrated cultural elements unique to African-American culture, such as jazz, while also preserving African-American dialects in his work.

By the 1950s and 1960s, Langston Hughes was among the most celebrated authors of his generation. His poems, in particular, were well-read and received, becoming standard reading in high school curriculum. At his death in 1967, Hughes was considered the leading light not only of the Harlem Renaissance, but of American poetry, and as such, his home at East 127th Street in Harlem, New York City, was granted the status of a landmark, the street itself renamed “Langston Hughes Place.”

Poems by Langston Hughes:

I, Too, Sing America

Theme for English B

The Weary Blues