50 Fun Facts About Langston Hughes

In which Missouri city was Langston Hughes born in 1901?

He spent most of his childhood in Lawrence, Kansas, and claimed in his autobiography to have been born in 1902.

Hughes is best known as a leader of which cultural movement?

He was also an early innovator of jazz poetry, setting verse to the rhythms of blues and bebop.

Hughes's 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers' was first published in 1921 in which NAACP magazine?

It was the NAACP's official magazine, and it published both his first and his last poems.

How old was Hughes when he wrote 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers'?

He wrote it while crossing the Mississippi on a train to visit his father in Mexico.

Which four rivers does 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers' name, in a progression from Eden to modern America?

The 'muddy bosom' turning golden at sunset gives the poem its note of hope.

Which literary editor brought Hughes's first poem to W. E. B. Du Bois?

She later reviewed The Weary Blues and posed with Hughes and Hurston at Booker T. Washington's grave in Tuskegee.

What was the title of Hughes's first poetry collection, published in 1926?

The title poem, set in a bar on Lenox Avenue, had already won Opportunity magazine's prize for best poem of the year.

Hughes's poem about a Lenox Avenue bar pianist first ran in which magazine, whose prize it won?

Opportunity was the Urban League's magazine; the poem describes a piano player in a Harlem bar.

Which university did Hughes attend in 1921 before dropping out?

His father had agreed to pay only if he studied engineering; he was denied a campus room because he was Black.

From which historically Black college in Pennsylvania did Hughes eventually graduate in 1929?

It is in Chester County, Pennsylvania; Lincoln later gave him an honorary doctorate in 1943.

Which poet 'discovered' Hughes in 1925 while Hughes was working as a busboy at a Washington hotel?

Hughes slipped him some poems at the Wardman Park Hotel and Lindsay publicised his find.

Langston Hughes worked as personal assistant to which historian, founder of Black History Week?

He quit because the work left too little time for writing.

On which ship did Hughes serve as a crewman in 1923, sailing to West Africa and Europe?

He jumped ship in Europe for a stay in Paris, where he had a romance with a Gold Coast student named Anne Marie Coussey.

Hughes's 1926 essay regarded as the manifesto of the younger Black artists of the 1920s was titled what?

Published in The Nation, it declared: 'We know we are beautiful. And ugly, too.'

What was the short-lived 1926 magazine Hughes co-founded with Hurston, Thurman and Nugent called?

Its full title was Fire!! Devoted to Younger Negro Artists; Claude McKay was the one member of the circle not involved.

Where did Hughes first meet Zora Neale Hurston, on 23 July 1927?

Because she owned a car, the two drove through the South together collecting folk songs.

Which play, co-written by Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston in 1930, ended the two friends' relationship?

It was not staged until 1991, when the Lincoln Center Theater produced it in New York.

Hughes's 1930 debut novel, Not Without Laughter, won which award?

Its protagonist, a boy named Sandy, grows up in a small Kansas town between 1912 and 1918.

What is the name of the boy at the centre of Not Without Laughter?

Hughes said the semi-autobiographical novel drew on his own Kansas childhood.

Which wealthy white patron supported Langston Hughes in the late 1920s until they fell out?

He hinted at the break in his 1939 poem 'Poet to Patron'.

Hughes's first short-story collection, published in 1934, was titled what?

He finished it in a Carmel-by-the-Sea cottage provided by his patron Noel Sullivan.

Why did Hughes travel to the Soviet Union in 1932?

The film was abandoned without explanation, and he stayed on to travel through Central Asia, where he befriended Arthur Koestler.

Which Hungarian-born writer, then a Communist, did Hughes befriend in Turkmenistan?

Koestler later wrote Darkness at Noon; Hughes went on from the USSR to China, Japan and Korea.

For which newspaper did Hughes go to Spain as a correspondent during the Spanish Civil War in 1937?

He broadcast live from Madrid, and a Spanish magazine bid him farewell as 'el gran poeta de raza negra'.

Which award did Hughes receive in 1935 that funded travel to Spain and Russia?

It funded his travels to Spain and Russia; a Rosenwald Fund fellowship followed in 1941.

For which Black newspaper did Hughes write a weekly column for twenty years from 1942?

The column introduced the everyman character Jesse B. Semple.

What was the name of the Harlem everyman character Hughes began writing about in 1943?

Universally called 'Simple', he offered musings on the issues of the day, and later starred in the musical Simply Heavenly.

Hughes's poem 'Harlem' opens with what question?

The eleven-line poem answers with images including a raisin drying in the sun and a heavy sagging load.

Which 1959 play took its title from a line in Hughes's poem 'Harlem'?

Lorraine Hansberry's play was the first by a Black woman to be produced on Broadway.

'Harlem' was published in 1951 as part of which book-length poem sequence?

The suite follows a 24-hour period in Harlem in a bebop-inflected style.

Hughes's 1951 book-length poem suite depicts scenes across what span of time in Harlem?

The original edition ran to 75 pages of jazz poetry.

Which Senator's subcommittee summoned Hughes to testify in 1953?

He told the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that his politics had always been 'non-theoretical, non-sectarian'.

What were the titles of Hughes's two volumes of autobiography?

He wrote them with encouragement from his best friend Arna Bontemps and his patron Carl Van Vechten.

With which close friend did Hughes co-edit the 1949 anthology The Poetry of the Negro?

The pair also edited The Book of Negro Folklore, drawing on the trip Hughes had made through the South.

Which honour did the NAACP award Hughes in 1960?

His college fees at Lincoln had been paid by a Spingarn family member decades earlier.

Which younger writer, whom Hughes discovered, later regarded him as a hero and model?

He was cooler toward James Baldwin, whom he found over-intellectual and lacking racial pride.

Hughes's grandmother's first husband, Lewis Sheridan Leary, died taking part in what event?

She later married Charles Henry Langston, an Ohio abolitionist whose surname Hughes carried.

Which poet, introduced by a Cleveland high-school teacher, inspired the teenage Langston Hughes to write poetry?

He also named Whitman as an influence, and his first jazz poem, 'When Sue Wears Red', dates from high school.

Hughes said he was elected class poet in grammar school because of what?

'There were only two of us Negro kids in the whole class,' he recalled, 'and our English teacher was always stressing the importance of rhythm in poetry.'

Where are Hughes's ashes interred?

The floor medallion is an African cosmogram titled Rivers, with the line 'My soul has grown deep like the rivers' at its centre.

Of what did Hughes die in 1967?

He was 66 and died at the Stuyvesant Polyclinic in New York.

Hughes's home at 20 E 127th Street became a landmark in 1981. What was the street renamed?

The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places the following year and later became a museum.

In which year did the US Postal Service put Hughes on a Black Heritage series stamp?

The same year, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed him among the 100 Greatest African Americans.

Which Francophone literary movement did Hughes's celebration of Black culture help inspire?

Senghor, Césaire and Damas were among the writers who took up his example.

In which Kansas town did Hughes spend most of his childhood, raised by his grandmother?

He later recalled the loneliness of that time, when 'books began to happen to me'.

Hughes's father agreed to fund his studies at Columbia on condition he studied what?

His father had wanted him to train abroad and did not support his ambition to be a writer.

In which country did Hughes's father settle after leaving the United States?

Hughes lived with him there briefly in 1919 and again after finishing high school in 1920.

In which Cleveland neighbourhood did Hughes's family settle during his teenage years?

At Central High School he edited the yearbook and wrote his first jazz poem, 'When Sue Wears Red'.

Which blues singer did Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston meet in Macon, Georgia, on their 1927 Southern trip?

Notes from the trip fed into Not Without Laughter and the play Mule Bone.

Which fraternity did Hughes join while at Lincoln University?

His studies there were paid for by Mrs Joel Spingarn, sister-in-law of his friend and lawyer Arthur Spingarn.