Langston Hughes Impact On Society

During the Harlem Renaissance, which took place roughly from the 1920s to the mid-'30s, many Black artists flourished as public interest in their work took off. One of the Renaissance'due south leading lights was poet and author Langston Hughes.

Hughes not just made his mark in this artistic movement by breaking boundaries with his poetry, he drew on international experiences, found kindred spirits amongst his swain artists, took a correspond the possibilities of Blackness fine art and influenced how the Harlem Renaissance would be remembered.

Hughes stood up for Black artists

George Schuyler, the editor of a Black paper in Pittsburgh, wrote the article "The Negro-Fine art Hokum" for an edition of The Nation in June 1926.

The commodity discounted the existence of "Negro art," arguing that African-American artists shared European influences with their white counterparts, and were, therefore, producing the same kind of piece of work. Spirituals and jazz, with their clear links to Black performers, were dismissed as folk art.

Invited to brand a response, Hughes penned "The Negro Creative person and the Racial Mountain." In it, he described Blackness artists rejecting their racial identity as "the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America." Simply he declared that instead of ignoring their identity, "We younger Negro artists who create now intend to limited our private, dark-skinned selves without fear or shame."

This clarion telephone call for the importance of pursuing art from a Black perspective was not only the philosophy behind much of Hughes' piece of work, but information technology was likewise reflected throughout the Harlem Renaissance.

Langston Hughes in 1954

Photograph: Fred Stein Archive/Archive Photos/Getty Images

Some critics called Hughes' poems "depression-charge per unit"

Hughes bankrupt new ground in poesy when he began to write poesy that incorporated how Black people talked and the jazz and blues music they played. He led the way in harnessing the blues form in poetry with "The Weary Blues," which was written in 1923 and appeared in his 1926 collection The Weary Blues.

Hughes' next poetry collection — published in February 1927 under the controversial title Fine Wearing apparel to the Jew — featured Black lives outside the educated upper and middle classes, including drunks and prostitutes.

A preponderance of Black critics objected to what they felt were negative characterizations of African Americans — many Black characters created by whites already consisted of caricatures and stereotypes, and these critics wanted to see positive depictions instead. Some were then incensed that they attacked Hughes in print, with one calling him "the poet low-rate of Harlem."

But Hughes believed in the worthiness of all Black people to announced in art, no matter their social status. He argued, "My poems are indelicate. But and then is life." And though many of his contemporaries might non accept seen the merits, the collection came to be viewed as one of Hughes' best. (The poet did end up agreeing that the championship — a reference to selling wearing apparel to Jewish pawnbrokers in hard times — was a bad pick.)

Hughes' travels helped give him different perspectives

Hughes came to Harlem in 1921, merely was before long traveling the world as a crewman and taking different jobs beyond the world. In fact, he spent more time outside Harlem than in it during the Harlem Renaissance.

His journeys, along with the fact that he'd lived in several unlike places as a child and had visited his male parent in Mexico, allowed Hughes to bring varied perspectives and approaches to the piece of work he created.

In 1923, when the ship he was working on visited the west coast of Africa, Hughes, who described himself as having "copper-brown peel and straight black hair," had a member of the Kru tribe tell him he was a White human being, non a Black 1.

Hughes lived in Paris for part of 1924, where he eked out a living every bit a doorman and met Black jazz musicians. And in the fall of 1924, Hughes saw many white sailors get hired instead of him when he was desperate for a ship to take him domicile from Genoa, Italy. This led to his plaintive, powerful poem "I, Too," a meditation on the day that such unequal handling would end.

Hughes and other young Blackness artists formed a support group

By 1925 Hughes was dorsum in the U.s., where he was greeted with acclaim. He was soon attending Lincoln Academy in Pennsylvania merely returned to Harlem in the summer of 1926.

There, he and other young Harlem Renaissance artists like novelist Wallace Thurman, author Zora Neale Hurston, artist Gwendolyn Bennett and painter Aaron Douglas formed a support grouping together.

Hughes was role of the grouping's decision to collaborate on Burn!!, a magazine intended for young Blackness artists like themselves. Instead of the limits on content they faced at more staid publications like the NAACP's Crisis magazine, they aimed to tackle a broader, uncensored range of topics, including sex and race.

Unfortunately, the group just managed to put out a unmarried issue of Fire!!. (And Hughes and Hurston had a falling out after a failed collaboration on a play chosen Mule Bone.) But by creating the magazine, Hughes and the others had even so taken a stand for the kind of ideas they wanted to pursue going frontward.

He continued to spread the word of the Harlem Renaissance long afterward it was over

In add-on to what he wrote during the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes helped make the motion itself more than well known. In 1931, he embarked on a tour to read his poesy across the South. His fee was ostensibly $fifty, but he would lower the corporeality, or forego information technology entirely, at places that couldn't afford it.

His tour and willingness to deliver free programs when necessary helped many get acquainted with the Harlem Renaissance.

And in his autobiography The Big Ocean (1940), Hughes provided a firsthand business relationship of the Harlem Renaissance in a department titled "Black Renaissance." His descriptions of the people, art and goings-on would influence how the movement was understood and remembered.

Hughes even played a function in shifting the name for the era from "Negro Renaissance" to "Harlem Renaissance," as his book was one of the get-go to use the latter term.