1902-1967
Writer

Early Writings.

The "poet laureate of the Negro race" was born into a troubled family, albeit one with a long history of abolitionist activism. Abandoned by his father's immigration to Mexico, young Langston and his mother moved in with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas, where he spent an unhappy, lonely childhood. In 1915 his mother moved the family to Cleveland, Ohio, where he began publishing stories and poems in the high-school magazine, reflecting his concerns with race and social justice.

Travel and First Book.

After high school and a stay in Mexico with his father, Hughes returned to the United States for a year at Columbia University. Throughout a period that included odd jobs in New York, work as a messboy on ships traveling to Africa and Europe, and a job washing dishes in a Paris nightclub featuring black entertainers, Hughes was publishing poems in...