Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes, one of America's best-known poets, left a legacy which he vividly described his experience and the emotions of African Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

James Mercer Langston Hughes, born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri, spent his early years living with his mother or grandmother in Lawrence and Topeka.

Early in his life in Topeka, Hughes encountered racism. Although he grew up being identified as African American, his ancestry also included American Indian heritage. When his mother attempted to enroll him at Harrison Street School, the closest grade school, she was told that black children attended the Washington school. His mother persisted and eventually took the matter to the school board, which allowed her to enroll Hughes in the Harrison Street school. Langston remembered encountering hostility from some of his fellow classmates, but he also recalled other white children defending him and seeing that he got home safely.

Hughes spent most of his Kansas youth with his grandmother in Lawrence. He remembered curling up in his grandmother's lap as she wrapped him with a bullet-riddled shawl. He stroked the tattered shawl and listened as Grandmother Langston told how her first husband, Sheridan Leary, had gone to support John Brown at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859. Leary, a freeman, died at Brown's side, fighting for the freedom of others, leaving the shawl behind as a symbol of his commitment to the cause.

Through Grandmother Langston's stories Hughes learned to be courageous and to fight for his beliefs. She taught him to judge a man by his actions, not by the color of his skin, and that all people deserved to be free.

Hughes' childhood was lonely and he fought the loneliness by reading books and writing poetry. Because of the discrimination and segregation that was present in Kansas during this time, Hughes left Kansas for Chicago in 1915 and continue his writing. One of his early poems, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," was published by Crisis magazine when Hughes was 19.

He moved to New York City where he built his artistic reputation as part of New York's Harlem Renaissance. Words became his weapons as he developed his poems and essays, many were published during the 1920s and 1930s. One of Hughes's most noted works, Not Without Laughter, was published in 1930 and is a novel about a boy growing up in a small Kansas town. Hughes created the fictional character of Jesse B. Semple, who became known to readers of the Chicago Defender in a series of short stories. Semple became a voice for the frustrations and triumphs of African Americans in the early 1940s through his common language and simple ways. The social commentary Semple espoused earned Hughes the reputation of a rebel.

Hughes traveled the world, wrote of his experiences, and shared his poetry with the common man. For a time he worked on a film project in the Soviet Union and wrote for a soviet newspaper. In 1937 he covered news from the Spanish Civil War for the American press.

In later years he served as cultural emissary for the United States to Europe and Africa. "An artist," Hughes said, "must always be free to choose what he does, certainly, but must also never be afraid to do what he might choose."

Hughes died May 22, 1967, in New York City. He never abandoned the dream of racial equality as a fellow poet stated:

"There's a world I dream, where blacks and whites whatever race to be,
will share the abundance of earth and every man is free.
Where wickedness will hang his head and
Joy like a pearl attend the needs of mankind of such
I dream, my world."

Two articles from Kansas History are available: Mark Scott's "Langston Hughes of Kansas" and Richard B. Sheridan's "Charles Henry Langston and the African American Struggle in Kansas."