Langston Hughes--poet, novelist, playwright--was born in Joplin, Missouri on February 1, 1902. As a boy he lived in Kansas and Missouri, and he attended high school in Cleveland, Ohio. In the early 1920's the young man extended his travels even further, working as a seaman from 1923 to 1925; shortly thereafter he returned to school and received his B.A. from Lincoln University in 1929. Although Hughes traveled extensively throughout his life, Harlem was his home and he wrote of its people.
“Discovered” by Vachel Lindsay in 1924, Hughes was one of the young black poets who rose to prominence during the “Negro Renaissance” of the 1920's. His first book of poems, Weary Blues, was published in 1926 and his literary output from then on was prodigious, totaling more than 30 volumes.
Hughes was the recipient of many awards during his career, including several honorary degrees, a Guggenheim Fellowship (1925), the Harmon Gold Medal for Literature (1931), the Rosenwald Fellowship (1941), the American Academy of Arts Letters Grant (1947), the Anisfield-Wolfe Award (1953), and the N.A.A.C.P.'s Spingarn Medal (1960). He taught creative writing at Atlanta University in 1947 and in 1949 was poet-in-residence at the Laboratory School of the University of Chicago.
Although Langston Hughes is most well-known for his poetry and for the creation of his “Simple” character--a kindly and perceptive black man--he also wrote extensively for the theatre. His first full-length play, Mulatto (1935), was successful in New York, but banned in Philadelphia because it dealt with miscegenation. Despite his Broadway success it was difficult to find producers for his work and, recognizing the problem for black playwrights generally, Hughes founded two dramatic groups during the thirties, the Suitcase Theatre in Harlem and the Negro Art Theatre in Los Angeles. Don't You Want to Be Free?, his successful one-act play, opened at the Harlem Suitcase Theatre in 1937.
Poetry and music were never far from the theatrical medium for Hughes; indeed, they were a vital part of it. He wrote the lyrics to accompany Kurt Weill's music for Street Scene (1947); the book for the opera, Troubled Island (1949); and the book and lyrics for the opera, The Barrier (1950). In 1957 Simply Heavenly, called “the definitive folk comedy of life in Harlem,” was produced, and in 1959 Hughes collaborated with James Weldon Johnson on Shakespeare in Harlem.
Hughes remained active in the theatre through the mid-sixties, writing Tambourines to Glory, Jerico-Jim Crow, and The Prodigal Son in the successive years 1963, 1964, and 1965. Late in his career Langston Hughes was criticized because his work did not reflect the bitterness and cynicism of other black writers or, indeed, of the racial scene of the 1960's. Even so, his main concern--the plight of the black man in the United States--remained constant and it was a theme he handled with sensitivity. The “poet of Harlem” died in 1967.
