Q 01/05

In which Missouri city was Langston Hughes born in 1901?

A) Springfield

B) Joplin

C) Kansas City

D) St. Louis

Answer · why

B) Joplin

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

Q 02/05

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

A) The Lost Generation

B) The Beat Generation

C) The Harlem Renaissance

D) The Black Arts Movement

Answer · why

C) The Harlem Renaissance

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

Q 03/05

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

A) The New Yorker

B) Opportunity

C) The Nation

D) The Crisis

Answer · why

D) The Crisis

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

Q 04/05

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

A) 12

B) 25

C) 21

D) 17

Answer · why

D) 17

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

Q 05/05

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

A) Euphrates, Congo, Nile, Mississippi

B) Euphrates, Ganges, Amazon, Mississippi

C) Jordan, Zambezi, Nile, Ohio

D) Tigris, Niger, Nile, Hudson

Answer · why

A) Euphrates, Congo, Nile, Mississippi

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