Langston Hughes or to give him his full name, James Mercer Langston Hughes, was one of the shining lights of the Harlem Renaissance, itself one of the shining moments of American 20th century history. This paper looks at the works of Hughes within the context of his historical moment and how his poetry helped give voice to perhaps the first truly empowered generation of blacks in the United States.
Born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, and educated at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, Hughes worked as a seaman, busboy, and teacher in several American cities and abroad. He studied in the Soviet Union and, during the Spanish civil war, was Madrid correspondent for a Baltimore periodical. While no doubt his travels in such differing cultures influenced his philosophy and his perspective, his writing (while always sophisticated) remained fundamentally American (Miller, 1990, p. 31).
As a columnist, Hughes often expressed his views on the frustrations of blacks in the U.S. through the wry, deceptively naive humor of his most famous character, Simple (Jesse B. Semple). Simple also figured in many of Hughes's short stories, collected in The Ways of White Folks (1934), Simple Speaks His Mind (1950), Simple Takes a Wife (1953), and Best of Simple (1961). Despite the cleverness of the main character, the spare and elegant use of language by Hughes and the clarity and accuracy of his ethnographic observations, Hughes's short stories are not now much read (Miller, 1990, p. 112).
Hughes's poetry is notable for its disregard of classical forms, frequent use of jazz and black folk rhythms, and angry protest against social injustices. It includes the collections The Weary Blues (1926), The Dream Keeper (1932), Shakespeare in Harlem (1942), and Fields of Wonder (1947. Before looking at some of the specific ways in which Hughes's poetry reflected and created the tone of the Harlem Renaissance, we must examine that period in history itself, lookin...