Langston Hughes was one of the most successful black writers of the middle 20"Th century. He was born in Missouri February first 1901. His parents divorced when he was just a young boy, and he was sent to live with his grandmother. After his parent's divorce his father moved to Mexico and his mother remarried in Lincoln, Illinois. When he was thirteen he moved to Lincoln to live with his mother and step-father. He started writing poetry and short stories soon after and continued writing throughout high school. After graduation from high school he moved to Mexico to live with father for a year. He spent a year in Mexico, and then enrolled in Columbia University. He only spent a year at Columbia then dropped out and took up odd jobs, all of this while still writing. His first book, The Weary Blues, got published in 1924. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in 1930, also the same year; he won the Harmon Gold Metal for Literature for his first novel Not Without Laughter. Throughout his life Hughes wrote over 50 books and one Broadway show ("Langston Hughes" 1).
Langston Hughes uses "Salvation" as a satirical look at organized religion though the eyes of a 12 year old boy. While it was written long after the event happened it displays, in vivid detail, the sights sounds and feelings that he was witnessing at that time. In the story Hughes talks about his Auntie Reed and how she has been going to a "big [church] revival" all week long, and how on the last night there would be a special .
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meeting for children to, "bring all of the young lambs to the fold" (Hughes 76). Auntie Reed told Langston that when he is saved he will "see Jesus" and something will happen .
to him. He talks of how the church was rocking with song and prayer and how the entire congregation gathered around the "young lambs" when it was time for them to be saved. All of the children have been saved, except for Langston and another young boy named Westley.
