Langston Hughes' Role in the Harlem Renaissance?.
Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was born in Joplin, Missouri and educated at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. He published his first poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers,"" in Crisis magazine in 1921 and studied at Columbia University from 1921 to 1922. He lived in Paris for a time and after his return to the United States, he worked as a busboy in Washington, D.C. there in 1925, his literary skills were discovered after he left three of his poems beside the plate of American poet Vachel Lindsay who recognized Hughes abilities and subsequently helped publicize Hughes work. Hughes never married and several of his friends were homosexual, among them Carl Van Vechten, who wrote the controversial novel Nigger Heaven (1926) therefore causing an unrelevant speculation about his sexuality. Hughes wrote in many genres, but he is best known for his poetry in which he disregarded classical forms in favor of musical rhythms and the oral and improvisatory traditions of black culture. http://myhero.com/hero.asp?hero=langstonHughes.
Langston Hughes earned a place amongst the greatest poets America has ever produced. The literature he created became part of the Harlem Renaissance Movement. The term Harlem Renaissance refers to an artistic, cultural, and social growing of writing about race and the African American's place in American life during the early 1920s and 1930s. Hughes' poetry announced to the world that the streets of black America were culturally rich, vibrant and fiercely poetic. This announcement became his life's mission and was foretold in different pieces written long before his name became a beloved household name. http://myhero.com/hero.asp?hero=langstonHughes.
One of the most characteristic aspects of the Harlem Renaissance was the diversity of its expression. From the mid-1920s through the mid-1930s, some 16 black writers published more than 50 volumes of poetry and fiction, The Harlem Renaissance appealed to a mixed audience.