Langston Hughes: A Biography

"I dream a world where man
No other man will scorn
Where love will bless the earth
And peace its path adorn"

Hughes, I Dream a World, 1937

When one mentions the Harlem Renaissance, the name Langston Hughes reverberates as one of the most prominent writer of the era. "He was perhaps the most original of African American poets and, in the breadth and variety of his work, assuredly the most representative of African American writers" (James Hart 201). His African American heritage sets the foundation for most of his works, including The Negro Speaks of Rivers, which literary critics had thoroughly and deliberately discussed in its entirety.

Born in Joplin, Missouri on February 1, 1902, the young Langston Hughes grew up with his maternal grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas (Bloom 189). With his Indian, French and African heritage, Hughes learned in his early age of his ancestors who fought rigorously to end slavery and racial injustice. He went to the controversial Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas as well as managing Columbia University afterward (Bloom 190). Exposed to Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman in his early teens, Hughes successfully published several poems in his university literary magazine Crisis. After college, he ventured out on his own and immediately received respect fro Harlem Renaissance's W.E.B Du Bois and Claude Mckay. Poet Countee Cullen became his close friend. Langston Hughes went to Lincoln University near Philadelphia, hoping to get his Masters in English. In 1926, at only 24, he published his first book of poetry, The Weary Blue (Bloom 193).