Black History
Langston Hughes – A Major Voice of the Harlem Renaissance
By Chaitram Aklu
Starting in 1910 during the Great Migration, Harlem had become a major destination for African Americans migrating from the US South and other parts of the world. By the 1920s and continuing into the 1930s (The Harlem Renaissance), it had become a place where African American culture flourished to the extent that it had impacted black culture and consciousness worldwide. Writers and artists’ works were encouraged and promoted in African American publications and forums.
Langston Hughes’ name is indelibly engraved in the movement, and his life experience is a powerful example for future generations of all races. He was a writer who wrote in many different genres and authored over 60 books between 1926 and 1967. He has the distinction of being the first African American writer to earn a living by writing. He and others focused on portraying black life experiences in America, which led to them being targeted as enemies by their own government. He was accused of being a communist by Senator Joseph MC Carty and was forced to testify in Congress. W.E.B Dubois was also persecuted by the US Federal Government, which indicted him as a foreign agent, tampered with his mail, and intimidated his friends and supporters to silence him. His passport was revoked. Du Bois eventually chose to exile himself in Kenya where he died in 1963.
Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, on February 1, 1902. His parents divorced when he was very young, and he lived with his grandmother until he was 12 years old. His grandmother inculcated many positive characteristics in him, including the importance of achieving a good education. He spent most of his time in libraries and, as a result, developed a passion for reading, literature, and writing in his formative years.
Hughes started writing poetry in the eighth grade after he moved with his mother to Lincoln, Illinois, where he lived only one year before moving again to Cleveland, Ohio. Although he moved a great deal, he remained focused academically, and at high school, he was voted class poet and editor of his school’s yearbook.
His father encouraged him to pursue a professional career. He had him enroll at Columbia University, where he studied engineering and chemistry from which he could earn a living rather than the uncertainty of being a writer.
He also moved from place to place as an adult and took a variety of jobs (on an African freighter, as a cook in Paris, and as a busboy in Washington DC.) to support himself but continued writing poetry. He learned several languages and translated the significant works.
But it was in Washington DC that he was “discovered.” On November 27, 1925, Hughes was working as a busboy at what is now the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in the nation’s capital. The famous poet Vachel Lindsay was at a function at the hotel. Hughes quietly put three of his poems on Lindsay’s table. Lindsay was immediately impressed and, later in the evening, read the poems to the audience. He praised the African American busboy that he did not know, telling his audience he had “discovered a young man with great literary talent.” The next day, the major newspapers covering the event published the poems. The following year, 1926, Hughes published his first book.
He became a leading figure and significant voice in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance (1918 -1937), where other writers, performers, entertainers, musicians, composers, and visual artists sought to settle during the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North. Between 1916 and 1970, the black population in New York increased 66 percent. The Renaissance period lasted from the 1920s to the 1930s and was a cultural, social, and artistic movement that encouraged the study and promotion of the expressions of black life.
He and Zora Neale Hurston, Aaron Douglas, WEB Du Bois, Duke Ellington, Claude McKay, Marcus Garvey, and others shaped the Harlem Renaissance with their own unique and diverse contributions. People of African descent from other parts of the world also moved to Harlem. He wrote poems, novels, short stories, plays, children’s poetry, musicals, operas, and biographies from his own experience. All of his works portrayed the African American experience from the 1920s until his death in 1967.
Some of his works include Popo and Fifina: Children of Haiti, The Dream Keeper, The Negro Speaks of Rivers (1921), other Poems, Famous Negro Music Makers, and the First Book of Negroes. He also wrote the first history of the NAACP. Fight for freedom: The story of the NAACP (1962).
One of his great poems, Mother to Son (1922), was published in The Crisis magazine – a publication that promoted Civil Rights and highlighted the difficulties African Americans faced in a racist society. The theme highlights the dangers blacks face. Mother to Son also gives hope that the difficulties can be overcome with persistence, resilience, and mutual support.
When Hughes died on May 22, 1967, his ashes were interned at the entrance of the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Harlem.
Beginning February 25, an exhibition billed as “The First African American–led Movement of International Modern Art” and titled Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
It will run through July 28, 2024. A press release states, “This landmark exhibition celebrates the brilliant and talented artists behind the groundbreaking cultural movement we now know as the Harlem Renaissance.” It will consist of 160 works portraying black city life through various media stretching from the 1920s -1940s.
End note: February was selected as Black History Month in honor of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Their birthdays are the 12th and 14th, respectively.