Life and Times of Langton Hughes

James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri into an abolitionist family. He was the grandson of James Mercer Langston, the first African American to be elected to public office in 1855. His parents divorced when he was a small child and his father moved to Mexico. During this time, Hughes struggled with a sense of desolation fostered by parental neglect, and he recalled being driven early by his loneliness “to books, and the wonderful world in books.” (Life of Langston Hughes: I, Too, Sing America) His grandmother raised him until he was twelve, when he moved to

The Simple books inspired a musical show, Simply Heavenly written in 1957, which met with some success. However, Hughes's Tambourines to Glory (1963), a gospel musical play satirizing corruption in a black storefront church, failed badly, with some critics accusing him of creating cartoons of black life. Nevertheless, his love of gospel music led to other acclaimed stage efforts, usually mixing words, music, and dance in an atmosphere of improvisation. Notable here were the Christmas show Black Nativity (1961) and, inspired by the civil rights movement, Jericho--Jim Crow (1964). (www.falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/hughes.htm)

In many ways Hughes always remained loyal to the principles he had laid down for the younger black writers in 1926. His art was firmly rooted in race pride and race feeling even as he cherished his freedom as an artist. He was both nationalist and international. As a radical democrat, he believed that art should be accessible to as many people as possible. He could sometimes be bitter, but his art is generally suffused by a keen sense of the ideal and by a profound love of humanity, especially black Americans. He was perhaps the most original of African American poets and, in the breadth and variety of his work, assuredly the most representative of African American writers.

Langston Hughes was a prolific writer. In the forty-one years between his first book in 1926 and his death in 1967, he devoted his life to writing and lecturing. He wrote sixteen books of poems, two novels, three collections of short stories, four volumes of "editorial" and "documentary" fiction, twenty plays, children's poetry, musicals and operas, three autobiographies, a dozen radio and television scripts and dozens of magazine articles. In addition, he edited seven anthologies. Critically, Langston Hughes is one of the most abused poets in America. Serious white critics ignored him, and most black critics only reluctantly admired him. Critics have mistaken the simple form of language of Hughes’s poetry for shortage of meaning. His real meanings are never that apparent and, in order to understand his work fully, one must have deep insight into ghetto life and psychology and an emotional tie. (www.falcon.jmu.edu/~ramseyil/hughes.htm)

Shakespeare in Harlem lasted only three-quarters of an hour or less in the theatre. From an academic point of view, it is hardly a play. However, the gracefulness of feeling it discloses, the idiomatic music of the lines and the immaculate taste of the performance endow it with thoughtful beauty. “Under Richard Glenn’s quiet direction, the play is presented as a sketch of Harlem scenes against a luminous background, with a subdued but stirring musical score by Margaret Bonds.” (www.americaslibrary.gov) The acting was marvelous and controlled in various moods—the hearty good nature of Alma Hubbard; the touching, shining student by Calden Marsh; the massive, sulky blues man by John McCurry; the weary old man by Ted Butler. Hughes was unashamedly black at a time when blackness was démodé, and he did not go much beyond one of the earliest themes, black is beautiful. He

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