Gibson noted in the introduction to Modern Black Poets: A Collection of Critical Essays (Prentice Hall, 1973) that Hughes “differed from most of his predecessors among black poets… in that he addressed his poetry to the people, specifically to black people. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including their love of music, laughter, and language itself alongside their suffering.
Unlike other notable black poets of the period such as Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, and Countee Cullen, Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. He wrote novels, short stories, plays, and poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in his book-length poem Montage of a Dream Deferred (Holt, 1951). Hughes, who claimed Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman as his primary influences, is particularly known for his insightful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter (Knopf, 1930), won the Harmon gold medal for literature. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. Criticism of the book from the time varied, with some praising the arrival of a significant new voice in poetry, while others dismissed Hughes's debut collection. Knopf in 1926 with an introduction by Harlem Renaissance arts patron Carl Van Vechten. Hughes’s first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, (Knopf, 1926) was published by Alfred A. In November 1924, he moved to Washington, D.C. He also travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. During this time, he worked as an assistant cook, launderer, and busboy. After graduating from high school, he spent a year in Mexico followed by a year at Columbia University in New York City. It was in Lincoln that Hughes began writing poetry. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland, Ohio. Hughes's birth year was revised from 1902 to 1901 after new research from 2018 uncovered that he had been born a year earlier. His parents divorced when he was a young child, and his father moved to Mexico.
James Mercer Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1901, in Joplin, Missouri.