Big Apple History . Arts and Entertainment . Langston Hughes


	Langston Hughes as a student at Lincoln University, 1928

As a poet and playwright, Langston Hughes was a leading African-American writer during the Harlem Renaissance in New York. He also wrote novels, short stories, songs, and children's books.

Hughes, who grew up in a wealthy, well-educated family in the Midwest and traveled abroad, came to New York City to attend Columbia University in 1921. At his father's urging, he studied engineering there. He left school, however, after just two semesters. Hughes was far more interested in a career as a writer than as an engineer. In fact, by the time he entered Columbia, his poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" had already been published in a magazine. In addition, Hughes was offended by the racism he experienced at Columbia.

Living in Manhattan in the 1920s provided Hughes with many sources of creative inspiration as well as opportunities to get his work published. He enjoyed the popular Broadway hit SHUFFLE ALONG, written by African-American songwriters. Hughes had the good fortune to develop his talents in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance. Looking back at that time, he wrote, "More than Paris, or the Shakespeare country, or Berlin, or the Alps, I wanted to see Harlem, the greatest Negro city in the world."

In 1925, his poems were published in New York in a collection called THE WEARY BLUES. In a review of this book that appeared in the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, Du Bose Heyward wrote, "Always intensely subjective, passionate, keenly sensitive to beauty and possessed of an unfaltering musical sense, Langston Hughes has given us a 'first book' that marks the opening of a career well worth watching." In 1926, after winning a poetry contest, his first book of poetry was published. In poems such as "Dream Boogie," Hughes tried to capture the rhythms of jazz and blues.

Despite the fact that Hughes was raised in a wealthy, well-educated family, he chose to write about poor, less literate characters. African-American intellectuals at the time criticized him for portraying blacks in what they felt was an unflattering manner. Hughes responded that he sympathized with the intellectuals' cause but believed "that the masses of our people had as much in their lives to put into books as did those more fortunate ones..."

THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVERS

By Langston Hughes

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow
    of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went
    down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn
    all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

DREAM BOOGIE

By Langston Hughes

Good morning, daddy!
Ain't you heard
The boogie-woogie rumble
Of a dream deferred?

Listen closely:
You'll hear their feet
Beating out and Beating out a --

You think
It's a happy beat?

Listen to it closely:
Ain't you heard
something underneath
like a --

What did I say?

Sure,
I'm happy!
Take it away!

Hey, pop!
Re-bop!
Mop!

Y-e-a-h!

Illustration: Courtesy of the Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.