Poet, playwright, and novelist Langston Hughes was a primary contributor to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Born in Joplin, MO on February 1, 1902, his first poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" was published in The Crisis magazine a year after his high school graduation in 1920. He enrolled at Columbia University in 1921and became a part of Harlem's burgeoning cultural movement. He dropped out of college, took a variety of jobs and ultimately signed on as a steward, travelling to Africa and Spain. After leaving the ship in 1924, Hughes lived in Paris and continued to work on his poetry. Over the next decades, Hughes finished his education at Lincoln University, continued his life of letters, traveled extensively and was commercially successful. He went on to write countless works of poetry, prose and plays, even a column for the Chicago Defender.
On May 22, 1967, Langston Hughes died from complications of prostate cancer. A tribute to his poetry, his funeral contained little in the way of spoken eulogy, but was filled with jazz and blues music. Hughes' ashes were interred beneath the entrance of the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black culture in Harlem. The inscription marking the spot features a line from Hughes's poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." It reads: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers."
Hughes's Harlem home, on East 127th Street, received New York City Landmark status in 1981 and was added to the National Register of Places in 1982. Volumes of his work continue to be published and translated throughout the world.
Everyone seems to have a favorite Langston Hughes poem, i.e. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" or "Mother to Son" (Life for me ain't been no crystal stairs...). My favorite is "I, too am America".
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
A
nd be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
Langston Hughes 1902-1967
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