Langston hughes profile or biography wikipedia

In TurkmenistanHughes met and befriended the Hungarian author Arthur Koestlerthen a Communist who was given permission to travel there. As later noted in Koestler's autobiography, Hughes, together with some forty other Black Americans, had originally been invited to the Soviet Union to produce a Soviet film on "Negro Life", [ 81 ] but the Soviets dropped the film idea because of their success in getting the US to recognize the Soviet Union and establish an embassy in Moscow.

This entailed a toning down of Soviet propaganda on racial segregation in America. Hughes and his fellow Blacks were not informed of the reasons for the cancellation, but he and Koestler worked it out for themselves. Hughes also managed to travel to China, [ 83 ] Japan, [ 84 ] and Korea [ 85 ] before returning to the States. Hughes's poetry was frequently published in the CPUSA newspaper and he was involved in initiatives supported by Communist organizations, such as the drive to free the Scottsboro Boys.

Partly as a show of support for the Republican faction during the Spanish Civil War[ 86 ] in Hughes traveled to Spain [ 87 ] as a correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American and other various African-American newspapers. He was more of a sympathizer than an active participant. He signed a statement supporting Joseph Stalin 's purges and joined the American Peace Mobilization in working to keep the U.

Hughes initially did not favor black American involvement in the war because of the persistence of discriminatory U. Jim Crow laws and racial segregation and disfranchisement throughout the South. He came to support the war effort and black American participation after deciding that war service would aid their struggle for civil rights at home.

They provided a foundation for nontheistic participation in social struggle. Hughes was accused of being a Communist by many on the political right, but he always denied it. When asked why he never joined the Communist Party, he wrote, "it was based on strict discipline and the acceptance of directives that I, as a writer, did not wish to accept.

He stated, "I never read the theoretical books of socialism or communism or the Democratic or Republican parties for that matter, and so my interest in whatever may be considered political has been non-theoretical, non-sectarian, and largely emotional and born out of my own need to find some way of thinking about this whole problem of myself.

He moved away from overtly political poems and towards more langston hughes profile or biography wikipedia subjects. When selecting his poetry for his Selected Poems he excluded all his radical socialist verse from the s. On May 22,Hughes died in the Stuyvesant Polyclinic in New York City at the age of 66 from complications after abdominal surgery related to prostate cancer.

His ashes are interred beneath a floor medallion in the foyer of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. The title is taken from his poem " The Negro Speaks of Rivers ". Within the center of the cosmogram is the line: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers". Harry Burleigh set the poem "Lovely, dark, and lonely one" from the collection The Dream Keeper and Other Poems [ 98 ] to music in[ 99 ] his last art song.

Italian composer Mira Sulpizi set Hughes's text to music in her song "Lyrics". Hughes's life has been portrayed in film and stage productions since the late 20th century. In Looking for LangstonBritish filmmaker Isaac Julien claimed him as a black gay icon—Julien thought that Hughes's sexuality had historically been ignored or downplayed. Spike Lee 's film Get on the Busincluded a black gay character, played by Isaiah Washingtonwho invokes the name of Hughes and punches a homophobic character, saying: "This is for James Baldwin and Langston Hughes.

Hughes's Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazzwritten inwas performed for the first time in March with specially composed music by Laura Karpman at Carnegie Hallat the Honor festival curated by Jessye Norman in celebration of the African-American cultural legacy. The novel Harlem Mosaics by Whit Frazier depicts the friendship between Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, and tells the story of how their friendship fell apart during their collaboration on the play Mule Bone.

Hughes's work continues to have a major readership in contemporary China. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read View source View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item. American writer and social activist — For other uses, see Langston Hughes disambiguation.

Poet columnist dramatist essayist novelist. Representation in other media. Poetry collections. Novels and short story collections. Library resources about Langston Hughes. Resources in your library Resources in other libraries. By Langston Hughes Resources in your library Resources in other libraries. The New York Times. Retrieved August 9, Kansas History.

Retrieved May 24, Retrieved December 15, African-Native American Scholars. Archived from the original on August 15, Retrieved July 30, Nobody ever cried in my grandmother's stories. They worked, schemed, or fought. But no crying. Rampersad, vol. Wirth Collection Emory University. Central High. Retrieved February 1, — via Hathi Trust. Chesnutt —Black Latinist".

Retrieved February 1, May 23, Retrieved June 20, And the father, Hughes said, 'hated Negroes. I think he hated himself, too, for being a Negro. He disliked all of his family because they were Negroes. Langston Hughes: The Harlem Renaissance. Marshall Cavendish. ISBN Retrieved February 11, Retrieved May 1, Hughes never publicly identified "F. Nine years older than Hughes, Smith influenced the poet to go to sea.

Born in Jamaica inSmith spent most of his life as a ship steward and political activist at sea—and later in New York as a resident of Harlem. Smith was deported in to Jamaica for alleged Communist activities and illegal alien status. Hughes corresponded with Smith up until the latter's death in Berry, p. Archived from the original on March 2, Retrieved March 3, Retrieved March 7, Godmother Mason Mrs.

Rufus Osgood Mason, their white protector had selected Westfield, safely removed from the distractions of New York City, as a suitable place for both Hurston and Hughes to work. He said marriage and career didn't work. It wasn't until his later years that I became convinced he was homosexual. Langston Hughes: Voice of the Poet. New York: Random House Audio.

Though there were infrequent and half-hearted affairs with women, most people considered Hughes asexual, insistent on a skittish, carefree 'innocence. Until the time of his death, he spread his message humorously—though always seriously—to audiences throughout the country, having read his poetry to more people possibly than any other American poet.

Poet Yusef Komunyakaa first received wide recognition following the publication of Copacetica collection of poems built from colloquial speech which demonstrated his incorporation of jazz influences. Perhaps best known for the song "Lift Every Voice and SIng," he also wrote several poetry collections and novels, often exploring racial identity and the African American folk tradition.

Search Submit. Poets Search more than 3, biographies of contemporary and classic poets. Page submenu block find poems find poets poem-a-day literary seminars materials for teachers poetry near you. Langston Hughes —. Read poems by this poet.

Langston hughes profile or biography wikipedia

Tools Tools. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. Langston Hughes in James Mercer Langston Hughes February 1, [ 1 ] — May 22, was an American poetnovelistplaywright and short story writer. Life [ change change source ]. Childhood [ change change source ]. Hughes' father and Columbia University [ change change source ]. Adult life [ change change source ].

Death [ change change source ]. Works by Langston Hughes [ change change source ]. Poetry [ change change source ]. Fiction [ change change source ]. Non-fiction [ change change source ]. Major plays [ change change source ]. Works for children [ change change source ]. Other [ change change source ]. Notes [ change change source ]. The New York Times.

Retrieved August 9, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance,p. May 23, April In The Weary Bluesthe poem is dedicated to W. Du Bois. The dedication does not appear in later printings of the poem. Hughes' first and last published poems appeared in The Crisis ; more of his poems appeared in The Crisis than in any other journal. References [ change change source ].

Aldrich, Robert Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem. In On the Cross of the Southp. Also around this time, Hughes began contributing a column to the Chicago Defenderfor which he created a comic character named Jesse B. In the late s, Hughes contributed the lyrics for a Broadway musical titled Street Scenewhich featured music by Kurt Weill.

The success of the musical earned Hughes enough money that he was finally able to buy a house in Harlem. Around this time, he also taught creative writing at Atlanta University today Clark Atlanta University and was a guest lecturer at a university in Chicago for several months. Over the next two decades, Hughes continued his prolific output.

Inhe wrote a play that inspired the opera Troubled Island and published yet another anthology of work titled The Poetry of the Negro. It opens:. Mixing story and song, Tambourines tells the story of two female street preachers in Harlem whose success allows them to open up a church. Hughes told The New York Times he tried to sell the play to producers for a couple of years, eventually adapting the story into a novel—his second.

It published in and received acclaim, garnering new interest in a stage production. Hughes never married, nor was he romantically linked to any of the women in his life. On May 22,Hughes died from complications of prostate cancer at age A tribute to his poetry, his funeral contained little in the way of spoken eulogy but was filled with jazz and blues music.

Volumes of his work continue to be published and translated throughout the world. Langston Hughes High School, completed in and located in Fairburn, Georgia, is named after the poet.