Langston Hughes and the Harlem
Renaissance
by Zoe Ross
The Harlem Renaissance included several
African-American artists from musicians and poets to performers and
painters, but one of the most well-known was Langston Hughes, who
penned the famous poem, “Harlem.” The famous poem was written at
the start of the 1950's, during a more difficult time in Hughes'
life, as he was looking around the world around him, and the
Renaissance was fading.
The Harlem Renaissance, which Hughes
took part in influencing and experiencing, was during the roaring
1920's of northern America in which the African-American culture
began to explode with culture and change people's perceptions—it
was an exciting time. Prior to this, African-Americans were primarily
living in the South as racism loomed and was ever constant. Most
people didn't consider them more than uneducated servants, until the
Harlem Renaissance. Suddenly, African-American people were dressed
up, created art, jazz and blues, and were intelligent speaking with
profound literary works, as found in Langston Hughes.
Langston Hughes' full name was James
Mercer Langston Hughes and was born on February 1st, in
1902, Joplin, Missouri. After his parents divorced as a small child,
Hughes went to live with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas. Because
of his loneliness, Hughes took comfort in literature and reading,
which influenced his love of words and language. When he was
thirteen, he moved to live with his mother and step-father in
Lincoln, Illinois, but then they moved to Cleveland, Ohio. During
high-school, he was elected as class poet and began dabbling in
writing. He had a conflicting relationship with his father, but moved
to live with him in Mexico for a short time, asking for money so he
could go to Columbia University in New York. However, Hughes dropped
college in 1922 due to the substantial racial prejudices and was more
drawn to Harlem than his studies. The following year, Hughes traveled
Europe and Africa while working on a ship as a crewman and ended up
living in Paris for a short time. Then, back in America in 1924,
living with his mother. Soon after, he shared his poetry with a
fellow poet who helped him gather his works together into his first
poetry book. The rest of his life, he had graduated Lincoln
University in Pennsylvania, returned to New York, lived in Harlem,
and continued to write.
Hughes wrote more than just poetry. He
also wrote several short stories, prose, co-wrote a play with Zora
Neale Hurston, and novels. As seen in his poem, “Harlem” he loved
that city, its culture, its neighborhood of fellow African-Americans
struggling against oppression and racism, and dreamed of the Harlem
Renaissance not just lasting for merely the roaring 1920's, but going
beyond it, and all African-Americans being allowed to live freely and
peaceably as creative human beings. However, the Renaissance only did
last for that brief moment in time. Both world wars drowned out the
noise of African-American movements, and the 1950's tried to keep
things clean and pretty after the prior bloodbaths of war, until
everything came to its boiling point in the 60's. Hughes never really
saw his dream come to fruition and died in 1967 from cancer, yet his
dream was still remembered.
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