The American "jazz poet" Langston Hughes (1902-1967) worked in a fascinating era. Born less than a half-century after the enslaved blacks of America gained their freedom, his was a time of expansive creativity and new opportunity, while racial oppression was still incredibly common. He worked as a novelist, playwright, and columnist. But it is for his poetry he is best remembered.

    Born in Joplin, Missouri, he moved often as a child. After his parents' divorce, he was fostered out, first to his grandmother, and wrote later: "I was unhappy for a long time, and very lonesome, living with my grandmother. Then it was that books began to happen to me, and I began to believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world in books--where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas."

    In grammar school he was class poet, and in high school a writer for the newspaper and was editor of the yearbook. He began his creative writing at this time.

    Following his father's wishes, he began to study engineering at Columbia University in New York, but left because of racial prejudice. As a student he often frequented jazz clubs in Harlem. He traveled abroad, then completed his degree around age 27 at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. After graduation, he returned to Harlem, where he remained the rest of his life. He died in New York City at age 65.

    Hughes is most prominently associated with the Harlem Renaissance, a movement centered in Harlem, though some of its proponents lived elsewhere (including Paris). Like the other writers in the movement, Hughes was unabashed about his race, and celebrated it in poems like "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" which includes these lines: "I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. / I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. / I heard the singing of the Mississippi..."

    Other signature poems include "Dream Deferred" and "I, Too, Sing America."

    Vocabulary: Which word above means:

    1. delayed, put off

    2. placed in a home outside of the family

    3. a school publication with pictures of all the students

    4. unique, easily recognized

    5. not free

    6. went to often

    7. encouraging new, wider activities

    8. negative attitude toward people of another race

    9. single sounds like "uh" and "oh"

    10. limiting opportunities for people of another race

    ANSWERS: 1. deferred 2. fostered (out) 3. yearbook 4. signature 5. enslaved 6. frequented 7. expansive 8. racial prejudice 9. monosyllables 10. racial oppression