In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon gold medal for literature.
Hughes wrote in many genres, but he is best known for his poetry in which he disregarded classical forms in favor of musical rhythms. In the 1920s, when he lived in New York City, he was a prominent figure during the Harlem Renaissance and was referred to as the Poet Laureate of Harlem. Langston Hughes was one of the most important writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance, which was the African American artistic movement in the 1920s that celebrated black life and culture. Hughes's creative genius was influenced by his life in New York City's Harlem, a primarily African American neighborhood. His literary works helped shape American literature and politics. Hughes, like others active in the Harlem Renaissance, had a strong sense of racial pride. His innovations in form and voice influenced many black writers. Unlike other notable black poets of the period, Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. Hughes also wrote the drama "Mulatto" in 1935, which was performed on Broadway 373 times. Beginning in the 1930s, Hughes was active in social and political causes, using his poetry as a vehicle for social protest. He traveled to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Haiti, and Japan, and he served as the Madrid correspondent for a Baltimore, Maryland, newspaper during the Spanish Civil War. In .
the 1940s, first for the "Chicago Defender" and later for the "New York Post," Hughes wrote a newspaper column in the voice of the character Simple, also called Jesse B. Semple, who expressed the thoughts of young black Americans.