Langston HughesLangston Hughes was one of the first black men to put the spirit of blues and jazz into words. An African American Hughes became a well-known poet, novelist, journalist and playwright. Because his father emigrated to Mexico and his mother was often absent, Hughes was raised in Lawrence, Kansas, by his grandmother Mary Langston. Her second husband (Hughes' grandfather) was a fierce abolitionist. It helped Hughes see the cause of social justice. As a lonely child, Hughes devoted himself to reading and writing, publishing his first poems while in high school in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1921 he entered Columbia University, but left after an unhappy year. Although he worked as a bellhop, diner on ships to Africa and Europe, waiter, and dishwasher, his poetry appeared regularly in magazines such as The Crisis (NAACP) and Opportunity (National Urban League).1 As a poet, Hughes was the first to combine traditional poetry with black art forms, particularly blues and jazz. As a leader of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, Hughes became the movement's best-known poet. He published two collections of poetry, The Weary Blues (1926) and Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927).2 Largely due to the Depression, Hughes became a socialist in the 1930s. He never joined the Communist Party, but wrote many radical poems and essays in journals such as New Masses and International Literature and spent a year in the Soviet Union. In 1939 Hughes withdrew from the political scene. During the war he supported the Allies with patriotic songs and sketches and published a collection of Shakespeare's poems in Harlem (1942). He attacked segregation, especially in his column in t...... half of the paper ...... being a person of color in his time. He used his poetry sensibly to speak out against racism. African American voices. Connecticutt: The Millbrook Press, 1995 Adventures in American Literature. Chicago: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1980 Langston Hughes. We too sing about America. G. Casey Cassidy.Online. Yale New Haven Teachers Institute. 1998Langston Hughes. The influence of popular musical traditions in the poetry of Langston Hughes and Nicolás Guill. Kathryn Gray.online. Yale New Haven Teachers Institute.1998Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes.online. Biography online.1997Langston Hughes.Life and career of Hughes.Arnold Rampersad.online. Oxford University Press.1997The new modern American and British poetry. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1939