Dhrumi Patel
Period:4
Mrs.Blanke
Mrs.Hnasko
English Lit IV A
Research Paper
Langston Hughes Influence on the Harlem Renaissance
“Democracy” by Langston Hughes was written during the Harlem Renaissance and left a great impact on it. It helped people stay true to their traditions and made people want to fight for their equality. His real name was James Mercer Langston Hughes and was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents got a divorce when he was a young child. His father then moved to Mexico because of all the racism that was being directed towards the African Americans during that time. James was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen years old .She would often tell him stories that would make him feel proud to be an African American. It was during this time that James started to feel close to his heritage and it made him feel like he was a part of something. Then he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother and her new husband. It was in Illinois that Hughes started to write poetry. Then eventually, the family settled in Cleveland, Ohio. When he graduated from High school, he spent a year in Mexico with his father and then spent a year at Columbia University in New York City. During that time,he had many different jobs such as an assistant cook,
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It addressed the issues that were faced by African Americans in the United States during that time . Langston Hughes' poem encouraged people not to take the issue of democracy lightly and to fight for their rights. He did not directly talk about race, but a huge part of his work had to do with life for African Americans in the United States. Hughes was often criticized for portraying life in such a negative fashion. However, his writing was politicized, and as such, he sought to produce poems with a message. He showed that in order to get equal rights, one must fight as hard as they can and that usually things don't get handed
He was born in the southern state of Georgia in 1919, a time when racial segregation was widely enforced. He was abandoned by his father and raised in a predominately white Californian neighborhood that tried to force his family to move. While serving in the segregated Army, Robinson faced a court martial for refusing to sit in the back of a bus. Robinson was an exceptional athlete in high school and college but financial problems caused his withdrawal. Jobs for black men were scarce in 1945 and Robinson initially played baseball in the arduous Negro leagues.
He had nine siblings living with him. As he grew older he helped his father with his younger siblings and on the farm with crops. On his way home from Chicago, James and his brother were forced to move to the back of the train to a colored-car. He attended Gibbs High School after graduating he joined the U.S. Air Force from 1951 to 1960. When he returned home he attended Jackson State College and then applied for admission to the University of Mississippi in 1961 (www.biography.com).
His parents, James Hughes and Carrie Langston, separated soon after his birth, and his father moved to Mexico. Hughes’s mother would move around when he was very young so Hughes was basically raised by his grandmother Mary, until she died when he was a teenager. He ended up going to live with his mother in Cleveland, Ohio, which was during this time he first began to write poetry. One of his teachers first introduced him to the poetry of Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman. After Hughes graduated from high school in 1920 he moved with his father to Mexico where he published the poem
He was born January 31, 1919 in Cairo, Georgia. His dad left when he was just an infant. Like most of the small population of blacks in the area he lived a life of poverty and toil (Conrads 2). This passage shows he had a tough childhood. When he was young they moved to Pasadena, California
The Impact of the Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance was an artistic and cultural movement during the 1920s and the 1930s. It was sparked by a migration of nearly one million African-Americans who moved to the prospering north to escape the heavy racism in the south and to partake in a better future with better tolerance. Magazines and newspapers owned by African-Americans flourished, poets and music artists rose to their feet. An inspiration swept the people up and gave them confidence.
African Americans who moved to Harlem were astounded and inspired by the amount of people moving in to the city. Writer Langston Hughes once said, “Harlem was like a great magnet for the Negro intellectual…they began writing with a bold new voice about what it meant to be a black American,” (Brown). Hughes, the most famous poet of this time period, wrote to inspire the African Americans. His poems attracted many African Americans, but it also got the attention of publishers, and eventually all Americans, regardless of race began reading them too (“Harlem
There are so many writers and people who do not write also that look up to him. He accepted the challenge of expressing the heart and soul of African Americans. Keenly aware of racism, Hughes visioned a nation where domestic problems could be realized. Hughes in his poetry, expressed his own reactions to incidents in his life and in the world at large. Langston Hughes left such a lasting impression on poetry , black culture, and the people in his life, that he changed the way they lived with the spirit and soul he put into his
All the composers, artists, musicians, and poets introduced new ideas in ways of expressing their pride in their race and culture. The Harlem Renaissance was the general notion where it was the time for African Americans to take their place the society and contribute their way of culture. Art in the time of the Harlem Renaissance often presented usage of bold colors displayed in an expressionist manner. Work from most artists would portray African Americans dancing, dining playing music, or engaging in what seems to be amusing festivities.
He was the youngest born of 5 children. He ended up only living there for a short amount of time because his father left them. Then he moved to Pasadena, California. His family was very poor. They lived in a under average house in a neighborhood.
The Harlem Renaissance was a movement that reflected the culture of African Americans in an artistic way during the 1920’s and the 30’s. Many African Americans who participated in this movement showed a different side of the “Negro Life,” and rejected the stereotypes that were forced on themselves. The Harlem Renaissance was full of artists, musicians, and writers who wrote about their thoughts, especially on discrimination towards blacks, such as Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Langston Hughes. The Harlem Renaissance was an influential and exciting movement, and influenced others to fight for what they want and believed in. The Harlem Renaissance was the start of the Civil Rights Movement.
The culture of most blacks was unwanted during this time. For this reason Hughes desired to make a change and illustrate such cultural identities in his poems. In doing this he caused a shift in ideas among all people. Although the change didn’t happen immediately it did eventually occur. With that said the African American people were given less of an opportunity at jobs, schooling, and most importantly culture.
During the 1900s, there were many famous authors who wrote about African Americans and Civil Rights. This was what was going on during this time period. Segregation and discrimination towards blacks was increasing. Two famous authors were Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou. Langston Hughes wrote the poem “I, Too, Sing America.”
It talks about how yesterday was a thing of the past and that it cannot be changed. He talks about how each day, African Americans must march on towards their dreams. Despite prejudice, oppression, and poverty that African Americans faced at this time, Hughes points to a positive in that the only way their dreams will come true is if they focus on the present day and what they can do to fix things. They cannot be looking at the past and what has happened. His message to the audience in this poem is towards the youth, in particular African-Americans.
Langston Hughes was an American poem born in the early nineteen hundreds, who became known as the leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He published many poems that brought light to the life of people of color in the twentieth century. There are three poems that the speakers are used to portray three major themes of each poem. Racism, the American Dream, and Hopes are all the major themes that Hughes uses to highlight the average life of a person of color. Theme for English B,” “Harlem,” and “Let America Be America Again” were three of Hughes’s poems that was selected to underline the themes.
Throughout much of his poetry, Langston Hughes wrestles with complex notations of African American dreams, racism, and discrimination during the Harlem Renaissance. Through various poems, Hughes uses rhetorical devices to state his point of view. He tends to use metaphors, similes, imagery, and connotation abundantly to illustrate in what he strongly believes. Discrimination and racism were very popular during the time when Langston Hughes began to develop and publish his poems, so therefore his poems are mostly based on racism and discrimination, and the desire of an African American to live the American dream. Langston Hughes poems served as a voice for all African Americans greatly throughout his living life, and even after his death.