Langston Hughes

A Kansas Portrait

Langston Hughes, noted African American poet, left a legacy of poetry in which he vividly described his experience and the emotions of blacks in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

As a child living in Topeka, he encountered racism. When his mother attempted to enroll him in the closest grade school, she was told that black children attended Washington school, not the Harrison Street school. His mother persisted and eventually took the matter to the school board, which allowed her to enroll Langston in the Harrison Street school. He spent most of his Kansas youth with his grandmother in Lawrence.

Langston remembered encountering hostility from some of his fellow classmates, but he also recalled other white children helping him defend himself and seeing that he got home safely. He died in New York City in 1967, but 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."