James Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri in 1902. He was the second child born. He went to High School in Cleveland, Ohio. He started writing poetry in 8th grade and continued to do so in High School. His dad did not think that he would make a good living as a poet, so he paid for his college at Columbia University and he studied engineering. After some time he dropped out because he wanted to write poetry. A lot of his poems were in the NAACP's Crisis Magazing and Opportunity Magazine.
He worked a lot of small jobs and he then traveled to West Africa and Europe. He stayed in Paris in 1923. He then returned to New York, New York in 1925. When he returned he was an assistant for Carter Woodson at the Association for African American Life and History. He didnt really like it because he never had time to write, so he quit and became a busboy for a hotel. While he was working there he met a well know poet, Vachel Lindsay. Vachel like some of the poems that Langston wrote and he made him more know to the public. By this time he was just about ready to release his first book of poetry.
A year later he recieved a scholarship to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. He joined a black ferternity. There he earned his B.A. degree and after he moved to New York. For the remainder of his life he wrote poetry. He wrote 16 books of poems and several other books. He died in 1967 from complications during surgerybecause of cancer. He was 65.
source 1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langston_Hughes
source 2) http://www.redhotjazz.com/hughes.html
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