Langston Hughes: a black poet who know himself well

A Joplin native whose creative poems, combined elements of blues, jazz and black patois, James Langston Hughes, would have been 100 years old in Feb-ruary, which also is Black History Month.

With good cause, his communicative gifts to the world were remembered with the issuance of the Langston Hughes commemorative stamp issued last month by the U.S. Postal Service.

Considered one of the most important 20th-century writers, Hughes was born Feb. 1, 1902, into an abolitionist family.

He was the grandson of the grandnephew of John Mercer Langston, the first black American to be elected to public office, which occurred in 1855 in Virginia.

Langston Hughes' father wanted him to have a career other than poetry writing, a talent he demonstrated as his true path early in life. So to oblige his father, Hughes studied engineering at Columbia University, but dropped out quickly even with a B+ average because he truly was a poet at heart. His first published poem one of his best-known was "The Negro Speaks of Rivers."

His essay, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," appeared in the "Na-tion" in 1926. He wrote in the essay about other black writers and poets "who would surrender racial pride in the name of false integration." By that he meant other black poets wanted to be known as just "poets," but to Hughes that was denying who they truly were. He wrote, "No great poet has ever been afraid of being himself."

In the essay, he also wrote, "We younger Negro artists now intend to ex-press our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame ... We build our temples for tomorrow, as strong as we know how and we stand on the top of the mountain, free within ourselves." How many human beings can truly say that about themselves?

Hughes traveled widely in his youth to Senegal, Nigeria, the Cameroons, the Congo, Angola, Guinea, France, Italy, Spain and Russia. But no matter where he was, Hughes penned his poetic words, often while listening to jazz and blues, bringing a new cadence to his poems. The lyrical series, "The Weary Blues," was born then.

In 1924, he lived in Harlem during its rebirth, and did some serious writing, which often was published. The next year he moved to Washington, D.C. and "tried to write poems like the songs they sang on Seventh Street ... (these songs) had the pulse beat of the people who keep on going," Hughes wrote.

By 1926, he was back in Harlem, working with Dr. Carter G. Woodson, editor of the "Journal of Negro Life and History." Woodson founded Black His-tory Week that same year.

"Prolific" is an attribute of Hughes, a man who knew his purpose. He wrote 16 books of poems, two novels, three collections of short stories, four volumes of editorial and documentary fiction, 20 plays, children's poetry, musicals and operas, three autobiographies, a dozen radio and television scripts and another dozen magazine articles. Besides that, he edited seven anthologies, some in an attempt to popularize black authors and their books, including "An African Trea-sury" in 1960 and "The Best Short Stor-ies by Negro Writers" in 1967.

Even after he died of cancer in 1967, five of his plays were published, as were more poems and other writings. No wonder his residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem was given landmark status and the block renamed "Langston Hughes Place."

Take a leaf, if you will, from Langston Hughes' book of life, and follow his lead to find your true self.