Langston Hughes

The author Langston Hughes was one of the most influential black writers of the 20th century. Known primarily as a poet, Hughes was also accomplished as a writer of fiction and drama.

Born in Missouri in 1902, Hughes attended college in New York City for a year before sailing to Europe as a merchant seaman. Eventually returning to America, he became strongly associated with the Harlem Renaissance, along with such writers as Zora Neale Hurston and Countee Cullen.

The poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," which Hughes wrote while crossing the Mississippi, first appeared in 1921. The poem evokes African heritage, and is widely anthologized.

Hughes's first collection of poems, The Weary Blues, appeared in 1926.

The essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," which Hughes published in 1926, was considered something of a manifesto for black writers and artists in America. In 1930 Hughes published his first novel, Not Without Laughter, and throughout the 1930s he wrote a number of plays and short stories.

Langston Hughes traveled extensively, was active in radical politics, and wielded considerable literary influence until his death, in Harlem, in 1967.

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