The future "Lady Day" first heard the music of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith on a Victrola at Alice Dean's, the Baltimore "house of ill repute" where she ran errands and scrubbed floors as a young girl. ... Hughes's poetry absorbed the rhythms of blues and jazz and the dialect of African American speech that he heard around him. ... In 1926 Hughes published his first book of poems, The Weary Blues, about Harlem life. ... During the Harlem Renaissance, intellectual dialogue, literary and artistic creation, blues and jazz, dance and musical theater came together and flowered as ne...

• Word Count: 1300
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

One of the major accomplishments of the Renaissance was to "push open the door to mainstream white periodicals and publishing houses." ... Some common themes and aims that were used in the writings included alienation, marginality, the use of folk material, the use of the blues tradition, the problems of writing for an elite audience, advancement of the black race, and exploration of self-identity. ...

• Word Count: 1369
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Van Vechten recommended Langston Hughes's work to Knopf that which is a New York publishing house, Knopf Published Hughes' s first volume of poems, the Weary Blues, in 1920, and many other Hughes's works later. ...

• Word Count: 1512
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate