Nick PillaMrs. WelkerEnglish7 April. 2014The 1920s were a time of great change for America. The 1920s, also known as the “Roaring Twenties” and the “Harlem Renaissance,” became known as the decade of exciting social change. New styles, attitudes, and literature were introduced to America during the Roaring Twenties. One of the greatest poets of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s was Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, on February 1, 1902, and is the second son of James Hughes and Carrie Langston. Not long after his birth, his mother and father divorced. Hughes' childhood was tough. His mother and father never came to spend time with him. His mother was looking for work and his father was trying to get away from any segregation. They moved to many Midwestern cities in Missouri and Illinois, until his parents divorced. His father moved to Cuba and then to Mexico to escape the segregation that was still in place. Hughes went to live with his grandmother Mary in Lawrence, Kansas, until he was thirteen. He instilled in Hughes a racial pride that would last his entire life. His mother continued to move from place to place and eventually remarried. After Hughes' grandmother died, his mother came and took him to live with her and her husband in Lincoln, Illinois. Hughes attended many different schools, but most of his high school was attended in Lincoln. It was during his time living in Lincoln that he began to write poetry. His teacher encouraged him and told him about two writers, Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman. He liked their poetry so much that he began writing poems like them and later wrote about how much they influenced his writing. They didn't live there long before they finally moved... into the middle of a sheet of paper... of a spoken tribute. His ashes were placed under the entrance to the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem with the inscription "My soul has grown as deep as the rivers." “Langston Hughes.” 2014. The Biography Channel website. April 4, 2014, 02:40 http://www.biography.com/people/langston-hughes-9346313. Since his death, six books and poems have been published, and other volumes of his work have been translated into English and throughout Europe and Asia. Hughes' writings were many, and today his home is listed in New York City landmark status and in the National Register of Places. In Langston Hughes' time, people were against black people doing many things. After all he wrote, Langston became one of the most famous writers and poets in the world. He started at the bottom and followed his love of writing to the top.