Langston Hughes Research Paper

Langston Hughes, born in 1902, live through the most divisive part of American history. Hughes grew up during such a time when Jim Crow laws still existed in the South, prohibiting African Americans from mixing with Whites in public places. He was able to live through this and see the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movements. Compared to other poets before and of his era, who were predominantly White, Hughes is able to provide insight on the race relations between Whites and Blacks based on his experiences. While other poets, such as Walt Whitman, might have expressed disgust in their poetry in regard to the mistreatment of African Americans, it does not seem as genuine coming from them as it does coming from Hughes. Hughes was able to provide

Langston hughes is an american poet who was born in 1902 to a country that segregated him and a county he loved, such love comes from his amazing poem I Too.

Langston Hughes was an American poet who spent a majority of his life growing up in Cleveland, Ohio as well as Lincoln, Illinois. Hughes was able to travel across the states and to several different countries which allowed him to experience diversity and hardships like poverty and racial discrimination. His teenage years was around the time that he would start to write poetry. The poetry that he wrote throughout his life incorporated Black culture and revealed his deeper views on humans as a whole and as an individual. A trait as simple as the color of his skin is what set him apart from the rest of the people who surrounded his everyday life, and it also is what set him to explore themes that are modern today and the

Langston Hughes was an influential poet in the 1920’s, during the Harlem Renaissance. His writing was heavily influenced by race and life during the 20’s. This influence shows through in poems like “I, too,” “Let America be America Again,” and “As I Grew Older.” He uses different literary devices like metaphors, personification, and similes to convey these messages. His poetry is about the lives of African Americans living in the U.S. and more specifically the life of Hughes himself. Langston Hughes writes about the hardships of being black and life during the Harlem renaissance, depicting the impact his environment had on his writing, specifically in the poem “As I Grew Older.”

     Langston Hughes’s writing showcases a variety of themes and moods, and his distinguished career led his biographer, Arnold Rampersad, to describe him as “perhaps the most representative black American writer.” Many of his poems illustrate his role as a spokesman for African American society and the working poor. In others, he relates his ideas on the importance of heritage and the past. Hughes accomplishes this with a straightforward, easily understandable writing style that clearly conveys his thoughts and opinions, although he has frequently been criticized for the slightly negative tone to his works.

Langston Hughes expresses creative literary devices in his poem to create societal change. The variety of devices that he uses are metaphors, smilies, imagery, and more. For example, “Hughes’s body of work, written in various genres, led to his being the most versatile African American writer of his day. Using free verse, black music, dialect, and prose, Hughes depicted black pride and life in America with candor, humor, and deceptively simple language”(Carney 20). Hughes’ writing is very diverse and skillful according to Jonathan Scott, the author of Advanced, Repressed, and Popular: Langston Hughes During the Cold War. Also, in Hughes poem he says, “Let America be America again.|Let it be the dream it used to be.|Let it be the pioneer on the plain|Seeking a home where he himself is free”(Hughes 1-4). These first four lines of the poem already creatively state the topic of his poem using a metaphor, and they announce a change for American society. In fact, one author stated, “For Hughes, the task was to attract American workers to civil rights struggle and social democracy with an advanced literary aesthetic and a steady diet of aesthetic forms and structures that raised their standards, that met their own desires, and that mirrored their own way of seeing and feeling the world”(Scott33-34). This shows Hughes’ literary role and how big it was during the civil rights. Hughes’ personal background in America as an African American gives more depth into his lines about societal struggles.

In 1902, Langston Hughes was born to an African American woman and a bi-racial man, who had later abandoned them and settled in Mexico to become a lawyer. His grandmother raised him in Joplin, Missouri, while his mother worked long hours at multiple jobs to earn a living. Later on, his mother remarried and moved them to Cleveland, Ohio, were Hughes went to high school and was an excellent student. During this time, Hughes began to elaborate on the stories of African American life in the south that his grandmother used to tell him. He grows passion for writing and develops a number of poems telling the hardships of blacks, how they have overcome yet still are suffering. Through his works such as “The Negros Speaks of Rivers,” “Harlem” and “I Too, Sing America,” Hughes is able to reveal and describe the lives of African Americans early in the 20th century.

Langston Hughes was born during a time of blatant racism and discrimination. He was a voice for black America in the 1920s, and his poems have endured with a never-ending passion for justice and racial equality. His poems have a strong positive message, albeit his frustration for his country, which did not allow him to sit at the table of his white counterparts, as in “I, Too.” Hughes wanted to live equally among others, to feel an undeniable part of the free America he loved.

Langston Hughes remains known as the most impressive, durable Negro writer in America. His tone of voice is as sure, and the manner he speaks with is original. During the twenties when most American poets were turning inward, writing obscure and esoteric poetry, Hughes was turning outward using language and themes, attitudes, and ideas familiar to anyone who had the ability simply to read. He often employs dialect distinctive of the black urban dweller or the rural black peasant. Throughout Langston Hughes career, he was aware of injustice and oppression, and used his poetry as a means of opposing them. James D. Tyms says, “Hughes writes lyric poems. But his “lyric” persona is often able to copy this social convention of the Negro Folk. Their use of the method of the ballad, to tell others how they feel” (191). Hughes lived as an

James Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Mississippi and eventually moves to Lawrence, Kansas to be with his grandmother, Mary Langston his father lived in Cuba, and was not present often throughout the early years of his life. Hughes spent the most time with his granmother, while his mother worked (Tracy). By the time Hughes’ reached the eighth grade, he developed an aptitude for poetry, and was elected the class poet. His father was not very supportive of his artistic dreams, and ecouraged him to enter a more pratical career. He enrolled his son into classes at Columbia with a major in engineering. Due to his lack of passion for engineering, Hughes eventually dropped out of Columbia, with a B+ average. His first of many famous poems, “The

Langston Hughes, one of the most influential poets of his time, was born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin Missouri. Hughes spent most of his childhood living with his grandmother, Mary Sampson Patterson Leary Langston in Lawrence, Kansas. Langston Hughes grew up to eventually become one of the most significant writers of the Harlem Renaissance, “an outpouring of literary, musical, and artistic talent by blacks” (Evans). Langston Hughes wrote moving and influential masterpieces, broke barriers and paved the way for black artists to follow, exhibited great racial pride in his writings, and demonstrated what a little bit of hard work and determination can do for someone.

James Mercer Langston Hughes, an was born February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. He was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playright and columnist. He represented Afro-American themes in his poems. The most common themes in his poems were race, equality and suffrage, which he felt needed to be analyzed and compared with each other.

The well known poet Langston Hughes was an inspiring character during the Harlem Renaissance to provide a push for the black communities to fight for the rights they deserved. Hughes wrote his poetry to deliver important messages and provide support to the movements. When he was at a young age a teacher introduced him to poets Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman, and they inspired him to start his own. Being a “darker brother,” as he called blacks, he experienced and wanted his rights, and that inspired him. Although literary critics felt that Langston Hughes portrayed an unattractive view of black life, the poems demonstrate reality. Hughes used the Blues and Jazz to add effect to his work as well as his extravagant word use and literary

Langston Hughes, a poet, playwright, and novelist, was born on the first day of February in the year 1902 in Missouri. His parents separated after birth. After his maternal grandmother who raised him died in his teens, he and his mom moved around several times until she decided to settle in Cleveland. This marks the beginning of Hughes’s career in poetry. Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg where the main inspirations to his poetry. After graduating high school, Hughes wrote his first published poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” on a train ride to his father and Mexico. It was published in the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), The Crisis. He lived in Mexico for one year. He left for one

Langston Hughes who is full name is James Mercer Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri, The son of American teacher Carrie(Carolina) mercer (1872/3-1938) and James Nathaniel Hughes (1871-1934).Hughes parents separated soon after this birth. Hughes’s father left the family, divorced Carrie, moved to Cuba, and then to Mexican, to escape the racism prevalent in the united states. This mother also moves around.Hughes was raised primarily by this maternal grandfather, mary. Langston's grandmother, mary died in his early teens and then he moved with his mother. Langston and his mother moved around to several different cities until they settled in Cleveland Ohio, it was then when Langston began to write poetry. One day