Chapter 1, Wandering Summary

Langston Hughes never considered himself a poet until the age of fourteen, when his grammar school classmates nominated him for class poet. Hughes had not written any poems, but his classmates, who were all white, knew that good poems had rhythm. Since Langston was black, and black people were supposed to have rhythm, Langston's classmates assumed he would be a good poet. He delivered his first poem on graduation day.

Hughes had a mixed family history; both great-grandfathers were white, one a Jewish slave trader and the other a Scottish whiskey maker. His mother's grandfather was a white planter who was said to have descended from Frances Quarles, a seventeenth- century British poet.

Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Mississippi on February 1, 1902. His father, who was a struggling lawyer, left his mother soon after Langston's birth, and traveled south, eventually settling...