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Langston Hughes - A Literary Genius Langston Hughes (1902-1967), one of the most prominent figures in the world of Harlem, has come to be an African American poet
Langston Hughes Langston Hughes: Life and Work Hughes, an African American, became a well known poet, novelist, journalist, and playwright. During the Harlem Renaissance,
LANGSTON HUGHES James Mercer Langston Hughes, an African American, became a well known poet, novelist, journalist, and playwright. During the Harlem Renaissance,
Langston Hughes Langston Hughes was a man that can be known for his insight into urban life on the streets of Harlem. He struggles though opposition because of his
Langston Hughes Leonard Crowther English 156 1 November 2005 On February 1st, 1902, arguably the greatest African-American poet of all time was born. He spoke for
Submitted by oppapers on April 17, 2002
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Early Years
James Mercer Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, on February 1, 1902, to James Nathaniel Hughes, a lawyer and businessman, and Carrie Mercer (Langston) Hughes, a teacher. The couple separated shortly thereafter. James Hughes was, by his son's account, a cold man who hated blacks (and hated himself for being one), feeling that most of them deserved their ill fortune because of what he considered their ignorance and laziness. Langston's youthful visits to him there, although sometimes for extended periods, were strained and painful. He attended Columbia University in 1921-22, and when he died he, left everything to three elderly women who had cared for him in his last illness, and Langston was not even mentioned in his will.
Hughes mother went through protracted separations and reconciliations in her second marriage (she and her son from this marriage would live with him off and on in later years. He was raised by alternately by her, by his maternal grandmother, and, after his grandmother's death, by family friends. By the time he was fourteen, he had lived in Joplin; Buffalo; Cleveland; Lawrence, Kansas; Mexico City; Topeka, Kansas; Colorado Springs; Kansas City; and Lincoln, Illinois. In 1915, he was class poet of his grammar-school graduating class in Lincoln. From 1916 to 1920, he attended Central High School in Cleveland, where he was a star athlete, wrote poetry and short stories (and published many of them in the Central High Monthly), and on his own read such modern poets as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Edgar Lee Masters, Vachel Lindsay, and Carl Sandburg. His classmates were for the most part the children of European immigrants, who treated him largely without discrimination and introduced him to leftist political ideas.
After graduation in 1920, he went to Mexico to teach English for a year. While on the train to Mexico, he wrote the poem "the Negro Speaks of...
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