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Langston Hughes

I feel comfortable in stating that Langston Hughes was the narrator of black life in the early to mid nineteen hundreds. Not simply because he wrote about the lifestyle of the black Jazz movement, not only because he wrote about the oppression and struggles, but because he lived it, and brought it to a main stage for all to live the experiences through his writings. Langston Hughes' role as a writer is vital to the history of black and American culture and I think he understood this role and embraced it.
Langston Hughes was a well educated black man. Attending Columbia and leaving with a B average, and finally graduating from Lincoln University, not typical for black men, but this did not separate him from his people. It gave him the opportunity to have the voice of his people heard. His life came with the same problems many other blacks dealt with. Hughes' parents divorced when he was young. His father moved to Mexico and Langston was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen. At this young age he began his career as a writer. At the end of his grammar school days he was elected class poet. He was not elected because of a great ability to write, but because he was black, blacks have rhythm and poetry needs rhythm. [Meltzer] Nonetheless, this position would give way to a great career as a writer.
His first poems were attempts at the blues, stories of struggle. Hughes had been through the struggles himself. Many of his poems had a theme of poverty. Such as the stories of Po' Boy.

I fell in love with
A gal I thought was kind.
Fell in love with
A gal I thought was kind.
She made me lose ma money
An' almost lose ma mind.
[poemhunter]
Some might think that because Langston Hughes was such a successful writer he did not have issues with poverty, but he had them just the same as most other black people. As a student at Columbia, Langston dealt with money issues. His mother split from her husband and moved to New York so while...