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Birth Of Langston Hughes
Born in Joplin, Missouri. His mother Carrie Langston and father James Nathaniel Hughes had divorced shortly after his birth when his father abandoned his family and left to Mexico. -
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Hughes's early caretaker
Hughes would be raised by his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas, as his mother was travelling a lot seeking better employment and opportunity for her family. -
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Langston Hughes New Home
After his grandmother's death Hughes would live with his mother again constantly moving from place to place until he, his mother and step father settled in Cleveland Ohio. Where he would begin to write poetry. -
Birth of a Poet
Once in Cleveland Hughes attended Central Highschool where he would first publish his poems and stories after being encouraged by his teaches and even some white classmates. His mother and step father would move again to Chicago but Langston stayed to finish high school. During this time his father entered his life again and Langston first visited him during a summer. -
Langston's First Success
During the summer after his graduation Langston decided to go to Mexico with his dad in hopes he would provide for his education and on his way he passed over the Mississippi river when he wrote his first popular poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers". -
Langston Hughes is a Drop Out
Langston attended Columbia University in New York in 1921 but dropped out the next year despite have a B average due to prejudice from both teaches and students. Langston had also admitted that he was not interested in the engendering program and preferred to study the "Negro" as he like to describe his people so he chose to instead work on his poetry. -
A Center Pace of Change
Hughes moved to Harlem becoming an important part of the Harlem renaissance, a time of prosperity for the black community where their economy, music, poetry and other arts suddenly to grew becoming a historic event for the united states. -
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Langston Sees The World
After leaving school he worked odd jobs one of which was as a crewman on the "S.S. Malone" a trading ship that would that would take him to many places around the world like Europe and Africa. He worked for 6 months on the ship before returning to the U.S on November of 1924. -
Odd Jobs and Acknowledgment
Now in Washington D.C. Langston lived with his mother. He got a good job as the personal assistant of Carter G. Woodson, a historian at the Association of the study of African American Life and History, but quite due to the large demand of time that that he wanted to dedicate to his writing. Instead he got another job as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel. During this time he met Vachel Lindsey and presented him with 3 of his poems. Lindsay spread his name as an African American bus boy poet. -
Big Year
After being recognized by the accomplished poet Vachel Lindsay, Langston would receive a scholarship to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Later that year he receive the Witter Bynner Undergraduate Poetry Award. He then published his first book "The Weary Blues" in hopes of inspiring the negro culture. Alongside Richard Nugent, Hughes also assisted with the magazine "Fire!!" that explained the experiences during the Harlem Renaissance. That year was also when Hughes was diagnosed with cancer. -
Graduation
After completing what he left off at Columbia Hughes earned a Bachelors of Arts degree and graduated from Lincoln University. -
1st Novel and a Change Direction
"Not without Laughter", that was the name of Hughes's first novel about growing in a divided society. During this, time Hughes would begin to focus more intensely on the prejudice against the Negro and in social justice becoming a leading figure during the Harlem Renaissance. -
Birth of a playwright
Hughes worked along with Zora Neale Hurston who was another black playwright and together they made "Mule Bone". The play was about 2 best friends who loved the same women so one attacked the other leading to his arrest. This would divide the town and families pining many against each other. This would start Hughes interest to be a playwright and will begin to publish his own original play afterwards. -
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Travels
Hughes decided to travel the world again visiting many parts of the Soviet Union, Haiti, and Japan among other places. -
First Play
During his travels Hughes began to getting deeply involved in theater. He wrote his first play, Mulatto, which was adapted from one of his short stories and and had it premiered on Broadway in 1935. The play is about a white man who can't recognize his black son Mulatto and the conflict begins when other white men hear Mulatto call him dad. It's a tragedy about the racial injustice of the 1930's. -
Spanish Civil War
Now deeply invested in theater Hughes founded theater companies in Harlem in 1937 and in Los Angeles 2 years later. Hughes was intrested in more than just theater as got a job as a newspaper correspondent in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. -
Autobiography
Langston Hughes wrote his first autobiography, The Big Sea, where he described his life up to 28 years old. -
Street Scene
Street Scene is an opera by Kurt Weill about a man who kills' both his wife and her lover. Langston Hughes took the part of the librettist in this production and had it premiered the 9th of January of 1947. -
Hughes love for Negro culture and inspirations
Hughes living in a time where black people culture became much more prominent liked to document by writing anthologies "The Poetry of the Negro". Langston was deeply inspired by the blues music often incorporating the music into his poems. He usually wrote in a simple manner that anyone could understand so poets like Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman would becomes inspirations of his works. Langstone was also deeply inspired by black power movements like The Black Panthers. -
Tambourines to Glory
A play about 2 friends who make a plan to earn money. Essie wants the money to give her daughter a good life while Laura wants to spend it on lavish expenses. Their plan to make money is to start a church. After Laura falls in love with a con artist named Buddy and they begin to sell tap water as holy water, however Buddy isn't faithful which starts the betrayal. -
Black Nativity
A play that recreates the journey of Marry and Joseph but full of African American costumes. -
Jericho-Jim Crow
Jericho-Jim Crow was a play that concentrated on many injustices faced by the African American and how the civil rights movements went about changing that. Hughes intelligently uses music that was prominent during that time in his work. -
Black Power Movement
Langston Hughes was deeply involved with the black power movements and was particularly engaged with the Black Panther Party. In reflection to this he wrote a collection of poems titled "The Panther and the Lash" -
End of the Line
Langston Hughes meets his end on the twenty second of may in 1967 due to complications of the surgery for his prostate cancer. He died in the Stuyvesant polyclinic located in New York. His house was turned into a memorial after his death in 1982.