Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes, whose full name was James Mercer Langston Hughes, was born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. He was the only son of James Nathaniel Hughes and Carrie Mercer Langston. His parents divorced when he was young and his father moved to Mexico. Because his mother traveled a lot to find work

and was often absent, his grandmother raised Hughes until he was 12. His childhood was lonely and he often occupied himself with books. It was Hughes's grandmother, a great storyteller, who transferred to him her love of literature and the importance of becoming educated. 

In 1914 he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her new husband. It was here that he started writing poetry he wrote his first poem in the eighth grade. A year later the family relocated to Cleveland, Ohio. Despite all the moving around, Hughes was a good student and excelled in his studies. He was also good looking and popular with the other students, during his senior year at Central High School in Cleveland, Ohio, he was voted class poet and editor of the yearbook. 

After high school, Hughes traveled in Mexico, Europe, and Africa sometimes by working on freighters. By 1924 he had settled in Harlem, New York, and was an important figure during the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance was an African-American cultural movement that focused on literature, music, theater, art, and politics. One of his favorite pastimes was to sit in clubs and listen to the blues as he wrote his poetry. 

Langston Hughes wrote from 1926 to 1967. In that time he wrote more than 60 books, including poems, novels, short stories, plays, children's poetry, musicals, operas, and autobiographies. He was the first African American to support himself as a writer, and he wrote from his own experience.

Hughes died on May 22, 1967, in New York, NY. Some of his books for children and young adults include:Popo and Fifina: Children of Haiti, The Dream Keeper and Other Poems, The First Book of

Negroes, The First Book of Rhythms, Famous Negro Music Makers and Don't You Turn Back. Zora Neal Hurston

Born in Alabama on January 7, 1891, Zora Neale Hurston spent her early adulthood studying at various universities and collecting folklore from the South, the Caribbean and Latin America. She published her findings in Mules and Men. Hurston was a fixture of the Harlem Renaissance, rubbing shoulders with many of its famous writers. In 1937, she published her masterwork of fiction, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston died in Florida in 1960.

Living in Harlem in the 1920s, Hurston befriended the likes of Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, among several others. Her apartment, according to some accounts, was a popular spot for social gatherings. Around this time, Hurston experienced a few early literary successes, including placing in short-story and playwriting contests in Opportunity magazine.

Also in the mid-1930s, Hurston explored the fine arts through a number of different projects. She worked with Langston Hughes on a play called Mule-Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life—disputes over the work would eventually lead to a falling out between the two writers—and wrote several other plays, including The Great Day and From Sun to Sun.

Hurston released her first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine, in 1934. Two years later, she received a Guggenheim fellowship, which allowed her to work on what would become her most famous work: Their Eyes Were Watching God(1937). She wrote the novel while traveling in Haiti, where she also studied local voodoo practices. That same year, Hurston spent time in Jamaica conducting anthropological research.

Ja mes Weldon Johnson

Born on June 17, 1871 in Jacksonville, Florida, James Weldon Johnson was encouraged by his mother to study English literature and the European musical tradition. He graduated from Atlanta University.

In 1900, he wrote the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing” on the occasion of Lincoln’s birthday; the song was immensely popular in the black community, and became known as the “Negro National Anthem.” Johnson moved to New York in 1901 to work with his brother Rosamond, a composer; after attaining some success as a songwriter for Broadway, he decided in 1906 to take a job as a U.S. consul to Venezuela. While employed by the diplomatic corps, Johnson had poems published in The Century Magazine and The Independent.

In 1912, Johnson anonymously published his novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, the story of a musician who rejects his black roots for a life of material comfort in the white world. The book explores the issue of racial identity in the twentieth century, a common theme for the writers of the Harlem Renaissance.

With his talent for persuading people of differing ideologies to work together for a common goal, Johnson became the national organizer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1920. He edited The Book of American Negro Poetry (Harcourt, 1922), a major contribution to the history of African-American literature.

James Weldon Johnson died on June 26, 1938.

Harlem Renaissance and the Jazz Age

The 1920s saw the continuation of African American migration out of the American South.  As African

Americans moved north, they brought with them a culture born of their experiences navigating an often unfair society based on social norms for which they possessed little ability to change. Out of these cultural navigations came jazz, America’s first authentic art form. Jazz grew out of the era’s ragtime music, and its influence was not restricted to the musical

arena.  Author F. Scott Fitzgerald labeled the period from the end of the Great War to the Great Depression as the “Jazz Age” as much for the cultural change it brought about as the music that defined it.  While much of the country found solace in the policies associated with Prohibition, Fitzgerald chronicled the hedonism found in the Jazz Age in many of his works, including The Beautiful and the Damned, The Great Gatsby, and Tales from the Jazz Age.  Speakeasies and night clubs abounded in urban areas as Prohibition was routinely circumvented or ignored outright.

Racism in American society remained a formidable obstacle, but jazz music and the culture it produced offered Americans an unprecedented opportunity to interact with one another regardless of race.  White patrons routinely frequented jazz clubs to listen to African American performers like Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and Duke Ellington.

Duke Ellington established commercial radio as a medium for music.  Thousands of Americans tuned in weekly for Ellington’s performances from the famous Cotton Club.  Located in Harlem, a Manhattan neighborhood famous as a refuge for African Americans, the Cotton Club nevertheless often denied admission to black patrons even as African American jazz performers headlined the establishment.  Many famous Americans visited the music venue, including the mayor of New York.  The Cotton Club’s policies regarding race highlighted the frustration of many African Americans at the time.