Langston Hughes (1 Feb 1902 - 22 May 1967) A People's Poet by Rene Wadlow

"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die,
life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly."
Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes, whose birth anniversary we note on 1 February, was an African-American poet, through 'Negro' was the term at the time, and many of Hughes' poems have 'Negro' in the title as his "A Negro speaks of rivers". He was an important figure of what is called "The Harlem Renaissance" - a strong cultural current in New York City from the mid 1920s to the mid 1940s. (1)

He was largely raised by his grandmother, his father having left to live in Mexico and his mother lived elsewhere in order to work.  Although Hughes, as many U.S. African -Americans had white ancestors, his grandmother stress having pride in being black. Later in his life, Hughes was  called a "Negro Nationalist".

He spent 1921 as a student at Columbia University in New York City but left after one year considering himself as a victim of racism.  Columbia is a private, elite university and at the time most of the students and professors were white.  However, Columbia is on the edge of the Harlem section of New York City.  Thus Hughes got his first views of urban African-American life.   He spent most of his working life in Harlem.

He continued his university studies at Lincoln University, a Negro University, near Philadelphia.   He started writing poems while at university which were increasingly published.  He met Vachel Lindsay, a poet in the style of Walt Whitman, who used to declaim his poems in theaters and public meetings. Lindsay recognized Hughes' talent and helped with introductions to editors.

Then Hughes spent a year in Paris where he met young university students from Africa and became interested in the culture of French-speaking Africa although he never lived there.  He  returned to New York City and in 1926 became a co-editor of Fire!!, a literary journal for young Negro artists. In 1926 he published one of his best known poems "The Weary Blues"  (blues being a form of jazz music). As Hughes wrote "Jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America; the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul - the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile."

Hughes wrote daily sections- part short story, part reporting  of scenes of daily life of a working class Negro.  At the time in Chicago and New York there were widely-read Negro newspapers which have since disappeared.  His poetry was published largely in Communist or left-wing   journals such as The Anvil, The Challenge, The Partisan.  Hughes was never a member of the U.S. Communist Party as such and his writing was non-theoretical.  However, Communist editors looking for "proletarian literature" found Hughes'  spoken style  fitted their need to show oppression of the worker.

            As Hughes wrote in "Let America be America Again"
            For all the dreams we've dreamed,
            And all the songs we've sung
            And all the hopes we've held
            And all the flags we've hung
            The millions who have nothing for our pay
            Except the dream that's almost dead today." 

Langston Hughes and his friend Richard Wright who lived most of his later life in France, were among the most highly visible African-American cultural figures working for what was called "Black Pride" Both were humanists and were unrelated - if not opposed - to churches.  Churches were then and remain a crucial element of African-American leadership, Martin Luther King being a later model.

With the coming of the 1950s, the Cold War and an anti-Communist atmosphere often associated with Senator Joseph McCarthy, most of the Communist - left-wing journals disappeared. Although still young, Hughes in the public mind was associated with the 1930s and the Harlem Renaissance.  He continued to write, especially letters to friends which have since been collected and published. He was seen as a "father-figure"  by the younger generation of African-American activists, not really as one of them.   He followed the model of his early friend Vachel Lindsay and gave many public readings of his poems in universities and other public meetings.  His writings merit being known by readers today.

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Note
1) See two of Langston Hughes' autobiographies: The Big Sea (1940) and I Wonder as I Wander  (1956)

As a biography see the two volume life by Arnold Rampersad The Life of Langston Hughes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986)

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Rene Wadlow, Presidentt , Association of World Citizens