Langston Hughes Influences

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

The upper-class blacks shunned the lower class viewing them as being “embarrassingly vulgar” (Dickinson 323). Overcoming African-American prejudice was a major focus in most of Hughes’ writing. For example, he wrote about the joys, sorrows and hopes of the black man in America (Dickinson 321). Not all of his writings were so encouraging however. Other themes Hughes wrote about include lynchings, rapes, discrimination, and Jim Crow Laws. He commented that when he felt bad, he wrote a great deal of poetry; when he was happy, he didn’t write any (Dickinson 321).

and for, one of the reasons that Hughes began to draw on the blues tradition for writing his

Mr. Hughes was born as James Mercer Langston Hughes. He was born on February 1st, 1902. He was the second child born to Carrie Langston Hughes and James Hughes. From the year of 1903- 1907, Mr. Hughes moved around a lot because of his parents’ divorce. In 1924, Mr. Hughes went to Columbia University. In 1929, he got a B.A. (bachelors of the arts) at Lincoln University.

Langston Hughes was someone who never gave up on his dream. He was an African-American born in Missouri in 1902. He received his education at Columbia University and later went on to go to Lincoln University. Although he is most well known for being a poet, he held a variety of other jobs ranging from a busboy to a columnist in his early years. In the 1920s America entered the Harlem Renaissance, a time of appreciation for black heritage. It was at this point in history that he became an important writer. The reason he was so important to this time in history is because his writing, “offers a transcription of urban life through a portrayals of the speech habits attitudes and feelings of an oppressed people. The poems do more, however, than

Langston Hughes was born on February 2, 1902 in Joplin Missouri, and died on May 22, 1967 in New York, New York. Hughes' African American themes helped to contribute to the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, where he was a leader. He attended Columbia University and Lincoln University, published his first poem in 1921 and his first book in 1926. Hughes was a poet, playwright, novelist, and more.

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.

James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was very small, and his father (who found American racism made his desires to be a lawyer impossible) left the family and emigrated to Mexico. Hughes' mother moved with her child to Lawrence, Kansas, so she and he could live with his grandmother, Mary Langston.

In Hughes’ poem, “Mother to son,” a mother explains to her son how her life was never easy. She tells her son that even though she has come across many hardships, she kept on pushing. The mother advises her son to never turn back, no matter how hard the obstacle is to overcome because she hasn’t given up in her old age. This poem is a free verse written in the vernacular. “The Little Black Boy” by William Blake is about a black child telling the story of how he began to find himself and know God. He explains how his skin is black and his soul is white as that of an English child. His mother introduces him to God who lives in the East and gives light and life to all creation, and comfort and joy to men. The mother in this poem is a loving character who wants the best for her child. The little black boy passes on

He explains, “I was only an American Negro—who had loved the surface of Africa—but I was not Africa. I was Chicago and Kansas City and Broadway and Harlem. I was not what she wanted me to be” (Hughes as quoted in Cobb 44). Hughes wants to make sure people are aware that the life and culture of African Americans differ drastically from the romantic view of the Negro in Africa. In his poem “Mother to Son,” Hughes provides the story of struggle, poverty overcame by hard work, and hope for a more dignified life for the entire African American people (Niemi 1). Hughes recognizes that despite being oppressed, the black community is strong enough to empower itself with determination to succeed. When discussing working-class life, Hughes consistently “asserts blacks as fully complex, fully human, and equals in the American democratic experiment” and does not play into the thought that blacks should be kept down (Sanders 107). Langston Hughes’ “concern for the lives and oppression of poor and working-class blacks” is apparent in most of his work (Sanders 107). Through his writing he makes the population aware of the deep-set oppression put upon the black community.

He stayed on this freighter for a year and settled in Paris for a brief period. In November of the same year, he came back to the U.S. and worked even more jobs, but in 1925, he worked as a busboy at a hotel in D.C. It was there that he met Vachel Lindsay, another famous poet. Langston showed Lindsay some of his work, and Lindsay was taken aback, and decided to promote Langston’s poems. By 1925, Langston Hughes won his first poetry award for the poem, “The Weary Blues”, and accepted a scholarship to Lincoln University, where he continued to make poems.

“James Mercer Langston Hughes, known as Langston Hughes was born February 2, 1902 in Missouri, to Carrie Hughes and James Hughes.” Years later his parents separated. Langston’s father moved to Mexico and became very successful, as his for mother, she moved frequently to find better jobs. As a child growing up Langston spent most of his childhood living with his grandmother named Mary Langston in Lawrence, Kansas. Mary Langston was a learned women and a participant in the civil rights Movement. When Langston Hughes was 12 years old his grandmother passed away. Langston then moved in with his mother and stepfather Homer Clark. A few months later, Langston’s mother sent him to live with her mother’s friend “Auntie” and Mr. Reed. In 1915

Many of the poems within “Montage of a Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes contain great meaning as well as emotion embedded within them. Whether they are 3 lines or 20 lines long, vivid images and explanations follow. The main focus of the series of poems are centralized on African Americans living in Harlem in the 20’s and on and their opposition from the rest. The motif in nearly all poems express discrimination, daily activities, and African American’s struggle for equality. Out of all poems, certain ones such as “Theme for English B”, “Ballad of the Landlord”, and “Harlem #2” stood out. These short poems have a similar correlation carrying the same meaning and or idea.

The Harlem Renaissance sought to revitalize African American culture with a focus on arts and literature and creating socioeconomic opportunities (Harlem Renaissance). This temporal setting, predominantly the influence of the Harlem Renaissance, of Hughes’s life explains the purpose of Hughes’s writing: to express the oppression of African Americans and the imperfections of Hughes’s America and to heighten African American morale during his life through his writing.

According to Biography, James Mercer Langston Hughes is considered to be an African American poet who is college educated and comes from a middle-class family (Langston Hughes Biography). He attended college in New York City and became influential during the Harlem Renaissance (Langston Hughes Biography). Although Hughes was a talented writer, he faced some challenges early on and it was stated that his “early work was roundly criticized by many black intellectuals for portraying what they thought to be an unattractive view of black life” (Langston Hughes. American Poet). They believed that his work helps the spread the stereotypes of African Americans. “Hughes, more than any other black poet or writer, recorded faithfully the nuances of black life and its frustrations” (Langston Hughes. American Poet). Langston Hughes’s poems “The Negro Mother”, “Let America be America Again” and “The Weary Blues” were influenced by his life during the Harlem Renaissance and the racial inequality experienced in the late 1920s through the 1960s.