Background information on Langston Hughes
The experience of reading is enriched when the reader feels a kinship with the writer. This knowledge adds texture to the experience. I am presenting an overview of the pertinent events in the life of Langston Hughes. He had a rich, and eventful life filled with sorrow and pain, especially in his formative years. What is so remarkable about this virtuoso of a human being is that with all the turbulence and rejection he experienced he was able to find beauty in his surroundings. That beauty lives on as enduring poetry that resonates with us today.
James Mercer Langston Hughes (Feb.1, 1902-May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, play write, and columnist known as the poet Laureate of African Americans. He was the first and most successful writer to incorporate African American musical traditions like jazz, blues, and spirituals into literature, known as Jazz Poetry. He was one of the central artistic figures of the Harlem Renaissance and given the nickname "Shakespeare of Harlem."
He was born in Joplin, Missouri, to Carrie Mercer Langston and James Nathaniel Hughes. There was strife between the couple early in Langston's life. Hughes's father left mother and son when Langston was only 2 years old. He flew to Cuba and later Mexico in search of a more racially tolerant life. Due to the lack of consistent employment Mrs. Hughes and her son did not have an easy life. Langston was often left with babysitters, or left alone sleeping in their apartment while his mother worked at night. This situation led Mrs. Hughes and Langston to travel to Mexico in an attempt at reconciliation with her husband. The trip was not a success and the couple split. Mother and son returned to the States and due to transiency in her employment, Langston was sent to live with his maternal grandmother Mary Patterson Langston. It is 1909 and he is seven years old.
Mary Patterson was a strong influence in his life. She was a storyteller in the African American tradition and planted the seeds of racial pride in young Langston. She and her husband had been active in the Abolitionist movement, and Mrs. Patterson's husband was killed in John Brown's famous raid on Harper's Ferry.
During this next six-year period Langston ricocheted back and forth between his mother and grandmother, finally settling in Topeka, Kansas, with his grandmother until her death in 1915. It was amidst this uncertainty, and separated from his mother, that Langston developed his love of reading. He remembered:
The silence of the library, the big chairs, and long tables, and the fact that the
library didn't have a mortgage on it, or any sort of insecurity about it –all that
made me love it. And right then,…books began to happen for me, so that after a while , there came a time
when I believed in books more than in people.(5)
He was later reunited with his mother and his stepfather in Lincoln, Illinois. It was during eighth grade that he was nominated Class Poet. He then entered Central High School in Cleveland, Illinois. He began to hone his writing skills on the school newspaper, yearbook, and started the composition of his first of his poetry and plays. He wrote his first piece of Jazz Poetry, " When Sue Wears Red,"
When Susanna Jones wears red
her face is like an ancient cameo
turned brown by the ages.
It is important to mention the rocky relationship that Langston had with his father. James Langston Hughes did not approve of young Langston becoming a writer, and it was only under the condition that Langston major in Engineering that he would finance his college education at Columbia University in New York. Langston managed good grades at Columbia, but left due to the prejudice he experienced in 1922. Instead he was more interested in the burgeoning culture of Harlem and its vibrant "scene." This was to be the beginning of the rest of a prolific and multifaceted life.
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