Langston Hughes

James Hughes had one romantic involvement in his lifetime with Anne Marie Coussey, but owing to his lack of interest, the relation didn’t last long. In fact, he was majorly known to be asexual yet many historians suggest that his autobiography subtly hints at him being a homosexual.

The world saw the last of Hughes on 22 May 1967. He died in New York at the age of 65. His death resulted from complications that emerged after an abdominal surgery conducted to eradicate prostate cancer.

His body was burnt and his ashes have been placed in the centre of the foyer at Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.

James Hughes was born on 1 February 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, to Native Americans with Afro-American ancestry. His mother, Carrie Langston was a school teacher and his father was James Nathaniel Hughes.

Shortly after his birth, his father abandoned their family and later filed for divorce. Seeking desperately to acquire a job, Carrie travelled to and fro for better opportunities.

Carrie’s mother took over the responsibility of bringing up little James Hughes in Kansas. However, when old age caught up with her, she couldn’t take good care of him and when he was thirteen his grandmother expired.

After the death of his grandmother, he moved to Ohio, where he finally lived with his mother. As a young boy, Hughes felt tremendously insecure as the love he sought from both parents was never received by him.

In high school, he learned about various authors and poets; in one such lesson he came across the works of Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman who inspired his flair for writing.

On concluding his high school education, Langston Hughes took a train back to his father in Mexico in 1920, hoping that his father would identify his talent and provide for his further education.

It was in the course of this journey that he wrote the legendary poem ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’. On reaching Mexico, his father was astounded to hear of his son’s literary preference as he had wanted his son to study engineering instead.

In retaliation, Hughes sent a few of his poems that were published in ‘The Crisis’ magazine. On reading his son’s published poems, James Nathaniel had a change of heart and he paid for his son’s education at Columbia University in 1921.

At the university, he was greatly influenced by the Harlem Renaissance, which contributed greatly to the revival of Afro-American literature and art.

He was more inclined towards the movement than his syllabi. Though he maintained a consistently good performance at the university, owing to his growing interest in social activities he left his studies midway in 1922.

Langston Hughes published his first novel. ‘Not without Laughter’ in 1930;his novel portrayed the life of a black American who juggles between the juxtaposing attitudes of parents with dissimilar values.

The success of his novel made him adamant to pursue writing as a career. Around this time, he often travelled to other countries including the Soviet Union. After he returned from the Soviet Union, he was flabbergasted at the racial discrimination rife in the States.

His ideals moved politically to the left wing and thus, he wrote ‘The Ways of White Folks’ in 1934. In 1937, for his play ‘Don’t You Want to Be Free?’ he built the Harlem Suitcase Theatre.

After the Second World War and its devastating consequences, his rigid political ideals slowly began to sober. In 1940, he wrote a humorous autobiography, titled ‘The Big Sea’, in which he expressed no political ideology.

Yet, he disagreed with any form of racial discrimination and socially condemned it through his books ‘Shakespeare of Harlem’ in 1942 and ‘Jim Crows Last Stand’, 1943.