Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri.
Shortly afterward, his parents separated. His father emigrated to Mexico to escape
racial discrimination in the United States and had little contact with Hughes for 11
years. His mother, a teacher, struggled to support herself and her son. She
frequently moved in search of decent jobs, leaving Hughes in the care of relatives or
family friends. From the ages of 7 to 12, Hughes lives in Lawrence, Kansas, with his
maternal grandmother.
After his grandmother’s death in 1915, Hughes rejoined his mother and her second
husband in Lincoln, Illinois, where he completed grammar school. While Hughes was
in seventh grade, his classmates elected him class poet, even though he had never
written a poem in his life. Hughes took his duties seriously, composing multiple
verses about his teachers and classmates.
The family moved again in 1916—this time to Cleveland, Ohio. There, Hughes
attended Central High School. A popular student, he was elected to class offices,
acted in school plays, and joined the track-and-field team. He also wrote dialect poems in the style of Paul Laurence
Dunbar and free-verse poems in the style of Carl Sandburg.
After graduating from high school, Hughes visited his father in Mexico and lived with him for a year. On the train trip there,
Hughes observed the Mississippi River and composed what was ultimately to become one of his most famous poems, “The
Negro Speaks of Rivers.” Hughes had found his distinctive poetic voice and began to publish in magazines.
After convincing his father to send him to Columbia University, Hughes left for New York City in 1921. Unhappy at college,
he dropped out after one year. Fascinated by the sights and sounds of Harlem, he remained in New York and supported
himself as best he could.
In 1923 Hughes found work as a cabin boy on a freighter bound for Africa, a trip that moved him profoundly. He also sailed
to Europe aboard another freighter and decided to remain there for a while. In the fall of 1924 with only 25 cents in his
pocket, Hughes returned to the United States to pursue his career as a writer.
Sudden Fame
By winning a literary contest with “The Weary Blues” in 1925, Hughes won the support of a prominent critic. He also gained
public notice through an encounter with Vachel Lindsay, a famous poet of the day. When Lindsay came to the hotel
restaurant in Washington, D.C., where Hughes worked as a busboy, Hughes slipped three poems—including “The Weary
Blues”—besides Lindsay’s plate. The next morning the newspapers reported that Lindsay had “discovered” a busboy poet.
After receiving a scholarship, Hughes enrolled at Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University in 1926, the same year in which his first
collection of poems, The Weary Blues, was published. A second collection, Fine Clothes to the Jew, appeared in 1927. In
response to African-American critics who disliked Hughes’ gritty depiction of the lives of ordinary working people, Hughes
said, “I didn’t know the upper-class Negroes well enough to write much about them. I knew only the people I had grown up
with, and they weren’t people whose shoes were always shined, who had been to Harvard, or who had heard of Bach. But
they seemed to me good people, too.”
An Influential Career
Hughes played a key role in the Harlem Renaissance. In his writing, he portrayed both the nightlife and the everyday
experiences of Harlem. He championed the right of African-American artists to express their own culture. He also used his
writing to protest racial discrimination, especially the form of legal segregation, commonly known as Jim Crow laws.
The first African American to earn a living solely from writing, Hughes went on to publish more than 40 books. His efforts to
re-create the structures and rhythms of blues and jazz music in poetic words, such as Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951),
demonstrated his desire to use poetry to immortalize other African-American art forms. After a long and varied career,
Hughes died in New York City in 1967.
Many have been encouraged by Hughes’ poems of racial pride, such as the poets of the negritude movement—the Frenchspeaking African poets who affirmed black culture. Succeeding generations of writers have been enormously influenced by
Hughes, who has been called the “Poet Laureate of Harlem.”
Hughes’ Style
When Langston Hughes began to write, many African-American poets tried to sound like the white poets they had read in
school. Instead of following that practice, Hughes incorporated the patterns of African-American speech and the rhythms
of African-American music into his poetry. By doing so, Hughes hoped to gain recognition for the beauty of his culture. He
also wrote protest poems, such as “I, Too,” to expose the injustice of Jim Crow laws that imposed segregation upon African
Americans.
Both “The Weary Blues” and “Harlem” are influenced by music. “The Weary Blues” draws on the blues, a style of music
that African Americans developed in the late 19th century. Blues lyrics, which typically express sorrow or melancholy, often
consist of three-line verses in which the second line repeats the first and the third expresses a response to the other two.
“Harlem” draws on bepop jazz of the 1940’s. Jazz evolved from ragtime and blues in the early 20th century. The music is
characterized by syncopation, heavily accented rhythms, and improvisation on tunes and chord patterns. Bebop jazz has
more complicated melodies and faster rhythmic changes than traditional jazz.
Focus Your Reading
The mood of a poem is the emotional feeling or atmosphere that the poet creates for a reader. Poets create mood through
their use of imagery, figurative language, sound devices, rhythm, and description. For example, the following line from
“The Weary Blues” helps create a feeling of tiredness.
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
As you read each of the following poems, pay attention to the different moods that Hughes creates and the elements he
uses to create them.
Inspired by the blues Harlem nightclubs, Hughes tried to write poetry with the distinctive rhythms of these types of music.
As you read the poems, try to detect the different rhythms that Hughes created through his arrangement of stressed and
unstressed syllables in a line.
I, Too
LANGSTON HUGHES
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
Questions: Answer the following in complete sentences on a separate sheet of paper.
1. What is the feeling or the mood of the poem? What words make you think so?
2. Who is the speaker? What is his experience? What does he want?
3. What do you believe the poem is saying about America? Consider:
a. The first and last lines of the poem.
b. The identity of the speaker and the “they” in lines 3 and 16
c. What is meant by “when company comes” in line 4.
d. What the speaker wants other people to recognize.
4. Of what are the “kitchen” and the “table” metaphors in this poem?
5. How do you think the speaker expects to move from the “kitchen” to the “table”? How do you view his
expectations?
Harlem
LANGSTON HUGHES
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Questions: Answer the following in complete sentences on a separate sheet of paper.
6. What does defer mean? What “dream” do you think the speaker is referring to? What is a “dream deferred”?
7. What is your response to the last line?
8. What is the poem’s man message or theme? Consider:
a. The title
b. What the speaker’s dream might be and why it might “explode.”
9. Do you agree or disagree with the speaker’s opinion of what happens to a dream deferred? Explain your answer by
citing details from the poem and from your own observations about life.
The Weary Blues
LANGSTON HUGHES
Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow crune,
I heard a Nero play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway….
He did a lazy sway….
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
“Ain’t nobody in all this world,
Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
And put ma troubles on the shelf.”
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords and then he sang some more—
“I got the Weary Blues
And I can’t be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can’t be satisfied—
I ain’t happy no mo’
And I wish that I had died.”
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoes through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.
Questions: Answer the following in complete sentences on a separate sheet of paper.
10. How does the speaker seem to feel about the musician and about blues music? Cite evidence from the poem.
11. What aspects of African-American culture or African-American identity do you think Hughes wanted to gain
recognition for in this poem? Explain.
12. What difference do you see between the two blues verses (lines 19-22 and 25-30) in “The Weary Blues” and the
rest of the poem? Why do you think Hughes includes these verses in the poem?
13. “The Weary Blues,” “I, Too,” and “Harlem” may be read as describing different ways of responding to
discrimination. Which response do you think is the most effective? Give reasons for your answer.
14. If Hughes were writing today, what features of contemporary African-American culture do you think he would
portray in his poetry? Explain the aspects of African-American culture that Hughes might think deserve more
recognition.