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Langston Hughes

James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was very small, and his father (who found American racism made his desires to be a lawyer impossible) left the family and emigrated to Mexico. Hughes' mother moved with her child to Lawrence, Kansas, so she and he could live with his grandmother, Mary Langston.
Langston Hughes' mother moved to Topeka in 1907, leaving the five-year-old with his grandmother. Langston came from a family of African-American activists. His mother's first husband had been killed at Harper's Ferry. Her second husband, Charles Langston (Langston Hughes' grandfather), had taken part in political activism on behalf of a slave. Charles Langston's brother, John Mercer Langston, had been a member of the United States House of Representatives (from Virginia) in the 1890s, as well as a diplomat, lawyer, and educator. Though her past had been vivid and important, Mary Langston's presence was not enough to keep the young Langston Hughes form deep loneliness, and he found life in books. She died in 1915, and the boy, then 13 years old, moved to Illinois to join his mother and her new husband. He began the eighth grade in Illinois.
Langston Hughes was successful in high school in Cleveland, Ohio; by 1918 he was publishing poetry and stories in the Central High Monthly Magazine and taking part in track events. He was elected class poet and editor of the annual his senior year. His first major publication was in 1921, when he was 19, with "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." He went to Columbia University and met two important writers: W. E. B. Dubois, editor of the The Crisis, the journal that published "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"; and Countee Cullen, a young Harlem poet.
In 1922 Hughes left Columbia University after having taken only a few classes. He moved to Harlem, part of upper Manhattan near the Columbia campus, in November 1924. Harlem was becoming famous for its rich...