Read Langston Hughes’ most famous poems

Read a Langston Hughes poem on 'Jazz as Communication'

The essay, delivered in 1956 at the Newport Jazz Festival, offers a poetic take on defining jazz, suggesting that it is the root of both literature and music. “Jazz is a great big sea,” he says. “It washes up all kinds of fish and shells and spume and waves with a steady old beat, or off-beat.”

Hughes' poems brought blues and jazz to poetry

Poets like Walt Whitman and Claude McKay inspired Hughes, but he was also enamored with blues and jazz music. The styles informed the way he structured his verses, with Hughes employing repetition and rhythm in ways similar to the standard 12-bar blues form and playing with meter in a way that recalled the improvisation of jazz.

Watch Langston Hughes perform with a jazz quintet

In 1958, Hughes performed with a jazz group on a Vancouver television show before appearing at the University of British Columbia. Hughes reads "Hey!" from his 1927 collection "Fine Clothes to the Jew" before performing 1925's "The Weary Blues."

Langston Hughes wrote a foundational text for the Harlem Renaissance

Although the 1920s artistic movement lacked formal leaders, Hughes' 1926 essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" established him as one of its figureheads. Hughes' piece argues that Black artists should not be ashamed of their race; instead, they should embrace it, while simultaneously pursuing their own individual artistic visions.

Writer James Baldwin once criticized Langston Hughes for squandering his talent

In 1959, Baldwin, the author of renowned works like “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and “Giovanni’s Room,” reviewed Hughes’ “Selected Poems” for the New York Times. Baldwin panned the book, writing, “Every time I read Langston Hughes I am amazed all over again by his genuine gifts—and depressed that he has done so little with them.” (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

Browse a collection of Harlem Renaissance poetry

This guide from the Poetry Foundation walks you through the movement's major poems, including works by writers like Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Anne Spencer, James Weldon Johnson, and more. Helpfully, it's organized them into four major eras, allowing you to analyze the movement's steady evolution.

Langston Hughes poems inspired Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream'

In 1959, King wrote to Hughes, saying, "I can no longer count the number of times and places … in which I have read your poems." Scholars believe that Hughes' words—particularly his poems "Harlem" and "I Dream a World"—inspired King's most famous speech, "I Have a Dream."

Read 'The New Negro,' the influential collection that helped define the Harlem Renaissance.

Langston Hughes wrote several children's books

Later in his career, the “Poet Laureate of Harlem” branched out into children’s literature, releasing a series of “First Book” titles (“The First Book of Rhythms,” “The First Book of Jazz”) as well as some that helped young Black children cope with racism, like 1969’s “Black Misery.”

Langston Hughes' 'I, Too' replies to Walt Whitman

Hughes was a fan of Whitman and used one of the Good Gray Poet's most famous poems, "I Hear America Singing," as the basis for his 1926 poem "I, Too." Hughes' work is both a response and a pointed commentary about the unequal treatment of Black Americans.

Hughes wrote for and about everyday Black Americans

Early in his career, Hughes was often disregarded by prominent white literary critics and criticized by Black intellectuals for his sometimes negative portrayal of Black life. Hughes, though, was unconcerned, saying that he wrote for the “workers, roustabouts, and singers, and job hunters” of New York, Washington, Chicago, and other Black hubs.

Hughes’ ‘Harlem’ inspired Lorraine Hansberry’s ‘A Raisin in the Sun’

Hughes' 11-line poem from “Montage of a Dream Deferred” is one of the most recognizable verses in American literature. Part of that is due to its legacy as the inspiration for the title of Lorraine Hansberry’s landmark 1959 play “A Raisin in the Sun,” the first show written by a Black woman to appear on Broadway.

'The Negro Speaks of Rivers’ introduced a teenage Hughes to the literary world

While traveling to Mexico to visit his father, Hughes began scrawling “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” as he crossed the Mississippi River, using the river as a metaphor for the Black experience. The poem was published in 1921 in the Crisis, an NAACP magazine edited by WEB DuBois, kickstarting Hughes’ literary career.

Hughes' 'Black Nativity' reworked the Christmas story through jazz improvisation

Although he’s primarily known as a poet, Langston Hughes was also a popular playwright. One of his most inventive works is the 1961 stage show “Black Nativity,” which told the story of Christ’s birth with an all-Black cast. Hughes’ original script encourages improvisation, calling on his love of jazz, and includes 27 songs.

Langston Hughes solicited ghost stories from his readers

Hughes had a column in the Chicago Defender newspaper for two decades. In 1951, he asked readers to send him their ghost stories, promising that he'd reward them with autographed copies of his books. He spent the next several months dedicating the column to the stories he received.

Langston Hughes scholars have debated the writer’s sexuality

After his death, Hughes scholars discovered unpublished poems that some believe are addressed to a male lover. Hughes’ primary biographer has argued that he was likely asexual. Hughes never married or publicly commented on his sexual orientation.

Hughes recorded an album with jazz legend Charles Mingus

1958’s “The Weary Blues” features Hughes reciting poems over jazz. The back half of the album is accompanied by bassist Charles Mingus and his ensemble, just a year before Mingus would release his landmark record “Mingus Ah Um.”

Aaron Douglas' art defined the visual aesthetic of the Harlem Renaissance

Douglas learned about Harlem's cultural scene while teaching high school in Kansas City and was eventually recruited to New York by Charles S. Johnson, the editor of the National Urban League's periodical. Soon, Douglas was illustrating periodicals and books affiliated with the movement. In 1934, the Works Progress Administration commissioned him to paint the "Aspects of Negro Life" murals. One of those murals, "Song of the Towers," pictured below, portrays Black life during the Harlem Renaissance.

Langston Hughes performed with Muddy Waters at the Newport Jazz Fest

Hughes became involved with the Rhode Island music festival in 1956, sensing an opportunity to introduce the predominantly white audience to Black culture. In 1960, he helped book Muddy Waters for a blues session that featured the music alongside Hughes' poetic explanation of its history. The final song of the set, "Goodbye Newport Blues," found Waters' pianist singing lyrics Hughes had written earlier that day.

Walt Whitman helped define the voice and spirit of American literature

The 19th-century poet is considered one of the most important voices in the American canon. His collection “Leaves of Grass,” in particular, is regarded as a foundational text and is widely taught in American high schools and colleges.

Hughes once taught creative writing to junior high and high school students

In 1949, Hughes accepted an eight-week contract at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools to teach creative work, along with seminars on jazz and the “negro theme” in American poetry. He enjoyed his time at the school, but never returned to the classroom, noting that the early mornings and teaching load left little time for his writing.

Read the first (and only) issue of the magazine started by Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and others

"Fire!!" was founded in New York in 1926 by Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and several other artists involved in the Harlem Renaissance. The publication was intended to flout the respectability of the middle-class Black tradition and instead engage with sometimes controversial ideas in a contemporary vernacular. The magazine's offices were, ironically, burned to the ground shortly after the first issue.

Alain Locke's 'The New Negro' anthology helped define the Harlem Renaissance

The 1925 collection of poetry, drama, short fiction, lyrics, and essays by Black writers was intended to document what Locke, a Harvard-trained philosopher and the first Black Rhodes Scholar, believed was a burgeoning Black consciousness that was "vibrant with a new psychology." The book is now considered one of the major impetuses for the Harlem Renaissance.

Analyzing Billie Holiday's impact on American poetry

Although Holiday is sometimes associated with the Harlem Renaissance, the Black cultural movement of the 1920s and '30s, scholar Whit Frazier Peterson argues that her real impact in poetry was on the Black Arts Movement, the more radical Black literary movement of the '60s and '70s that featured writers like Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, and Nikki Giovanni.

Duke Ellington's 'Harlem' takes listeners on a stroll through the neighborhood

"Sir Duke" was one of the Harlem Renaissance's major musicians, recording several songs that would become jazz standards. 1950's "Harlem" is an ode to the neighborhood, alternating styles (including a Latin groove and a New Orleans funeral dirge) to pay homage to the diverse cultures that populate it.

The Dylan/Whitman connection

Even before his 2016 Nobel Prize, critics often wrote about Bob Dylan with a seriousness typically reserved for literary figures. In this critical analysis, Jones Hogsed continues the tradition, analyzing Dylan's vision of America alongside Walt Whitman's.

Jazz was an integral part of the Harlem Renaissance

The Great Migration transformed New York City's Harlem neighborhood into the epicenter of Black American art, with artists such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Bessie Smith regularly performing. The music not only provided the backbeat to the cultural scene—it often influenced it, with Harlem Renaissance poets, in particular, inspired by jazz's approach to rhythm and improvisation.

Hughes testified before Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s Subcommittee on Investigations

In 1953, the writer was interrogated by the Subcommittee’s chief counsel, Roy Cohn, about communism and its impact on his work. Cohn quoted lines from poems like “Goodbye, Christ” and “Ballads of Lenin,” but Hughes denied that he was a communist, explaining that poetry should not be taken literally. “That is a poem,” he told Cohn. “One can not state one believes every word of a poem.”

Read the Beats' poetry

The Beats were alike in their willingness to experiment and transgress, though the movement’s writers were distinct artists with varying styles. This collection showcases the breadth of the Beat Generation’s work, with authorized texts from Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane di Prima, Richard Brautigan and others.

How a Harlem Renaissance poet teamed up with a Wright brother

Paul Laurence Dunbar is one of the most influential poets from the Harlem Renaissance, a loose collection of Black artists who redefined American literature in the early 20th century. He was also an entrepreneur. He founded a short-lived newspaper, the Dayton Tattler, alongside Orville Wright, one of the famous Wright Brothers who pioneered aviation. This article explores how their friendship defied the societal norms of the time and led to a pioneering publication.

Novelist Jean Toomer was uncomfortable with the term 'Negro writer'

Toomer's modernist novel "Cane" is, among critics, one of the great works of the Harlem Renaissance. Toomer, however, was uncomfortable with his work being labeled as "Negro," including in Alain Locke's movement-defining collection "The New Negro." He found the title both reductive and inaccurate: He was mixed-race, telling writer Claude McKay that he was "French, Dutch, Welsh, Negro, German, Jewish and Indian," and preferred to be considered "American."

A guide to the major figures of the Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was a multidisciplinary arts movement that included literature, music, dance, film, theater, photography, visual art, political activism, and more. This primer includes some of its most influential artists, including Oscar Micheaux, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, Fats Waller, WEB DuBois, and more, and allows you to explore their lives and major works.

Whitman revolutionized American poetry

Whitman was a groundbreaking force in American literature, legitimizing the national idiom, capturing the spirit of the evolving country, and inspiring younger generations of writers for centuries to follow.

Hughes wrote numerous short stories about a character named 'Simple'

Jesse B. Semple, known as “Simple,” was a recurring character in Hughes’ long-running column in the Chicago Defender newspaper. Hughes had conversations with the fictional Simple, who’d offer humorous and subtly profound observations about contemporary life, especially as it related to race, allowing Hughes to present pointed commentaries without coming across as preachy.

Read the poetry of Henry David Thoreau

Although primarily known for his nonfiction, the New England transcendentalist was also a prolific poet, writing verse that, like his essays, tackled nature, man, and society. The Academy of American Poets has collected 30 of his poems, which you can read for free.

Rudolph Fisher was an incisive writer—and a practicing physician

Fisher was one of the luminaries Langston Hughes cited in "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" and was known as an impressive polymath, writing stories, acting in plays, and practicing medicine. In this deep dive, science writer Harriet A. Washington explores why he's often neglected in modern narratives about the Harlem Renaissance.

Allen Ginsberg debuted his poem 'Howl' at San Francisco's Six Gallery in 1955, kicking off the nationwide interest in the Beat Generation.

Jazz provided a soundtrack for the Civil Rights Movement

Songs like Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit," which portrayed the grim brutality of lynching, and John Coltrane's "Alabama," which was modeled on the rhythm of a speech by Martin Luther King Jr., were the backbeat of the movement.

Claude McKay's poem 'If We Must Die' criticized racial violence

The poem, a Shakespearean sonnet, is a critique of the violence that Black Americans faced at home in America. It was written in the summer of 1919, also known as "Red Summer," when several white supremacist attacks and race riots broke out across the country.

Although primarily known for his painting, Pablo Picasso was also a poet.

Watch a 1934 short film starring Cab Calloway

Singer and bandleader Cab Calloway was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene. He was also one of the biggest names in jazz's swing era and would go on to be the first Black American to have a nationally syndicated radio show and the first to sell a million copies of a record. In this 1934 short film, "Cab Calloway's Hi-De-Ho," he reenacts his upbeat performances at Harlem's Cotton Club.

Basquiat's art was text heavy

Like his graffiti, Basquiat’s drawings and paintings often featured words and phrases among images. Art historian Robert Farris Thompson said, “[i]t’s as if he were dripping letters.” Below is 1983’s Horn Players, which includes portraits of jazz greats Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, along with words Basquiat associated with them.

The most famous lines of the 'I Have a Dream' speech were improvised

Though largely scripted, Martin Luther King Jr. shifted off text mid-speech after gospel singer Mahalia Jackson called out, “Tell them about the dream, Martin,” prompting the improvised passage that became the most iconic moment of his public legacy.

Toni Morrison's novels were popular postmodern texts

Toni Morrison’s novels broke new ground in American fiction by using bold structures and colloquial voices to reckon with the country’s past, developing her approach through classic early novels like “The Bluest Eye” and “Beloved,” all the way to later works like “Home.” Morrison once said, “The meaning of a novel is in its structure.”

A guide to the poetry of Walt Whitman

The resource allows you to explore over 100 of Whitman’s essential works, from the iconic “Leaves of Grass” through poems you’ll recognize from pop culture, like “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” and “O Captain! My Captain!”

A comprehensive list of the best Bob Dylan covers

Bob Dylan’s songwriting quickly became part of the great American songbook, thanks in large part to many major artists of the '60s popularizing their own versions of his songs. As this list proves, though, that tradition continued all the way to today. Learn about essential covers of Dylan songs by Adele, Guns N’ Roses, The White Stripes, and others.

Bebop's freedom inspired the Beat Generation

The jazz style took off in the 1940s, mesmerizing listeners with its wild, improvised solos. It had a particular impact on the writers of the Beat Generation, including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, who saw in bebop's freedom a model for what they could achieve through the written word. Beat writers like Lawrence Ferlighetti and Kenneth Rexroth even incorporated live jazz in their poetry readings.

Allen Ginsberg on how Walt Whitman changed poetry

In this 1992 appearance on "Charlie Rose," Beat Generation icon Ginsberg articulates why Whitman mattered not only to the Beats but to all of poetry, arguing that he forever changed the possibilities of the form.

Many consider Twain 'the father of American literature'

In "Green Hills of Africa," Ernest Hemingway declared that all modern American literature sprang from Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." That's a sentiment shared by many scholars, who assert that Twain's book changed American fiction by challenging the country's racist history and incorporating a more realistic vernacular.

'Lift Every Voice and Sing' was written to celebrate Abraham Lincoln's birthday, but would go on to become the 'Black national anthem' and a Juneteenth tradition.