James Mercer Langston Hughes

James Mercer Langston Hughes

1. Who?

   • He was an Afro-American poet novelist,and playwright
   • He attended Columbia University,but left after one year to travel

2. When?

   • He died on May of 1967
   • He was born on February of 1902,in Joplin, Missouri.
   • He published his first book in 1926

3. What?

   • In 1925 Hughes' poem "The Weary Blues" won first prize in the Opportunity magazine literary competition, and Hughes also received a scholarship to attend Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania
   • The inscription marking the spot features a line from Hughes' poem "The Negro speaks of Rivers". It reads: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers"
   • He wrote a lot of poems
     • He expressed the suffering and the struggle of his poem for equal rights
     • He wrote "I, too,sing America"
       • Here, the speaker is sent to the kitchen so that the family,the white Americans, is not embarassed by him when company comes. We can compare them to the representatives of other States
       • The poem seems to be saying that the speaker is like the "black sheep" of the family at the time when African-American lived in poverty and were beaten and abused by white Americans
       • The closing lines conclude the message of the poem with a sense of hope: the people will see that he is really beautiful and they will be ashamed by their previous behavior
       • He states he also has the right to sing as an American,because he,too, is American!