In Memory - Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was born in Joplin, Missouri. He was the second child of school teacher Carrie (Caroline) Mercer Langston and James Nathaniel Hughes (1871–1934). Langston Hughes grew up in a series of Midwestern small towns. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form of jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance but his poems also include about common human experiences. His works are influenced greatly the poetry of Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg.

Even though he wrote mainly for an audience of African-Americans, and wanted his poetry to be accessible to them in both style and subject matter, I find much in his writing that resonates with me, I'm not an American nor am I a black.

Hughes was unashamedly black at a time when blackness was deemed "outmoded". He stressed the theme of "black is beautiful" as he explored the black human condition in a variety of depths. His main concern was the uplift of his people, whose strengths, resiliency, courage, and humor he wanted to record as part of the general American experience. His poetry and fiction portrayed the lives of the working class blacks in America, lives he portrayed as full of struggle, joy, laughter, and music.

In America during the 1920's the segregation of whites and blacks was very predominate and he is deprived of either race. Leaving him with the confusion of which race he can identify with. Through his adulthood and maturity he finally realizes that he can't blame his parents for who he is. He realizes that he can't hate his parents for his heritage and no matter what he does that's still who he is going to be (Cross by Langston Hughes).

Hughes stressed a racial consciousness and cultural nationalism devoid of self-hate that united people of African descent and Africa across the globe and encouraged pride in their diverse black folk culture and black aesthetic. Hughes was one of the few black writers of any consequence to champion racial consciousness as a source of inspiration for black artists. His African-American race consciousness and cultural nationalism would influence many foreign black writers

Taking a cue from Carl Sandburg's Jazz Fantasies, Hughes included jazz influences and African rhythms in his verse. Some have also criticized Hughes for his radical political poetry. However, writers often are a reflection of the times they live in, and the fact that some of Hughes' poems have Marxist and socialist thought in them is descriptive of the era as much as the man. He also wrote religious poems, and poetry that described the human condition during the Depression. 

Langston Hughes died on May 22, 1967. He died from complications after abdominal surgery, related to prostate cancer, at the age of 65. His ashes are interred beneath a floor medallion in the middle of the foyer in the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. It is the entrance to an auditorium named for him. The design on the floor covering his ashes is an African cosmogram titled Rivers. The title is taken from his poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers". Within the center of the cosmogram, above his ashes, is the line: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers". His poetry is definitely worth reading, and he should be included in any study of American literature.