What were some of Langston Hughes's achievements during the Harlem Renaissance?

Langston Hughes was one of the most important figures in the Harlem Renaissance, a movement involving African-American literary and artistic achievements and pride in the 1920s based in New York City. One of his achievements was to write poems that reflected the reality and the real language of African-American urban life, though critics often found fault with him for doing so.

His 1924 collection Fine Clothes to the Jew was roundly criticized, though it captured some of the realities of life in Harlem. The title of the collection came from the practice that many African-Americans had of pawning clothes to Jewish pawnbrokers when they were down on their luck. 

While Hughes's poems did not use the abstractions or elevated language common to many esteemed poets of the time, there is no doubt that his work captured the essence of African-American city life. For example, his poem "Theme for English B" reads, in part, "I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem./ I went to school there, then Durham, then here/ to this college on the hill above Harlem./ I am the only colored student in my class." This poem tells the story of an African-American student who must write an essay for a college English class. A later line reads, "So will my page be colored that I write?/ Being me, it will not be white./But it will be/ a part of you, instructor./You are white—/yet a part of me, as I am a part of you./ That’s American." The narrator goes on the suggest that the instructor of the class will learn as much from the student as the student will from the professor, even though the professor is white and "more free." It was this assertion of the value of African-American tradition and of life in Harlem that made Hughes's poetry so powerful.

In addition, Hughes's poetry involves a lot of references to and rhythms from jazz, which he considered the highest expression of African-American life. For example, he began his poem "The Weary Blues" with the following line: "Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,/Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,/ I heard a Negro play." His lines mimic the syncopated rhythm and improvisation of jazz. His work celebrated working-class African-Americans, their music, and their lives and transmitted pride in African-American traditions. 

How did Langston Hughes's poems influence the Harlem Renaissance?

Most literary scholars consider Langston Hughes to be the most prominent voice of the Harlem Renaissance writers. Hughes brilliantly captured the zeitgeist, or spirit of the age, that produced some of America's most notable African American artists of the early 20th century. The formation of the African American identity, the ongoing struggle for social and economic equality, the legacy of slavery, and the richness of African American culture figure prominently in Hughes's poems, stories, novels, memoirs and plays.

As a poet, Hughes challenged the omission of African Americans in the laboring class catalogued in Walt Whitman's 1860 poem "I Hear America Singing." His "I, Too," written in 1926, reminds readers that African Americans, "the darker brother" will one day emerge from the kitchen and be counted as citizens and patriots.

"Dream Deferred" poses a series of rhetorical questions to challenge white America. The speaker presents several scenarios as a metaphor for the African American condition and how it will evolve, hinting that a social revolution could "explode."

A third example of how Hughes saw the emergence of African American culture as an artistic and social force to be reckoned with is "The Weary Blues," a 1926 poem that celebrated the music and culture that was bringing white social elites uptown to Harlem to its nightclubs and music halls. At the same time, it contributed to the continuing evolution of canonical poetry by injecting a freer rhythm and informal diction that took the free verse of earlier poets to a new level and increased its approachability to a modern audience.

How did Langston Hughes's poems influence the Harlem Renaissance?

Langston Hughes is arguably the most influential poet to come out of the Harlem Renaissance. His legacy and impact are far-reaching, but his influence within the movement was also significant. Hughes was a leader within the Harlem Renaissance, forming groups for artists to belong to and arguing publicly in defense of black art.

The poetry of Langston Hughes was an influence in how it shifted the subject matter and style of the medium. Hughes writes poems about the lives of everyday black folks, even ones who were considered “taboo” by mainstream African American culture. For example, in his poem “Hard Luck” he wrote the lines,

Jew takes yo’ fine clothes,

Gives you a doller an’ a half.

Go to de bootleg’s,

Git some gin to make you laugh.

People reacted with disgust to his poems because they depicted the underbelly of black society, something that many critics felt white people already did in their minstrel shows and works of art. Hughes pressed on in the face of this criticism, arguing that every black person should be represented in art regardless of their social status or vices. His viewpoint eventually won, and his poetry influenced the other art being created in the movement. His depiction of everyday life was something emulated by other artists and recreated across a variety of mediums.

How did Langston Hughes's poems influence the Harlem Renaissance?

The Harlem Renaissance refers to a period that lasted roughly from the end of World War I to the mid-1930s and had its main flourishing during the 1920s. During this period, black artists and intellectuals converged on the Harlem neighborhood in upper Manhattan, developing a vibrant arts culture centered around the black experience.

Hughes was an important part of Harlem culture in the 1920s and early 1930s. He was influential because his poetry spoke to the outward concerns of black people and their desire for dignity. While other Harlem Renaissance poets were turning inward and writing obscure, difficult-to-understand verse, Hughes wrote in simple, accessible language. An example would be his 1923 poem, "The Crisis," which uses commonplace words and the rhythmic repetition of the word beautiful to emphasize the natural, innate beauty of the black body and soul:

The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people

Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.

In a racist society, Hughes's praise of the positive aspects of black people and culture, without in any way excusing racism, influenced other poets.

How did Langston Hughes's poems influence the Harlem Renaissance?

By writing about the black experience in America in a matter-of-fact and authentic way, Langston Hughes presented the lives of black Americans as real and valuable. His contributions to the literature of the Harlem Renaissance encouraged other black poets to be themselves, as he was wholly himself in his art, refusing to conform to expectations anyone may have set on him, including those of other black people. Hughes prized the individual as well as the culture of black people in a more general sense, and many of his poems convey this sense of pride in himself and in his culture.

Poems like "Harlem Sweeties" and "I Too" celebrate the beauty of being black, while other poems like "Brass Spittoons" and "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" chronicle excerpts from black history. Hughes writes in a musical style influenced by jazz in poems like "The Weary Blues" and "Blues in Stereo." All of these literary contributions, and more, are characterized by Hughes's accessible style, which ensures that his readership, back during the Harlem Renaissance and all the way up to the present, is broad.

How did Langston Hughes's poems influence the Harlem Renaissance?

Hughes's poems influenced the Harlem Renaissance for two reasons. First, because he was elemental in exposing the reality of conditions for African-Americans in the 40s and 50s. But perhaps even more meaningful was instilling both a sense of pride and hope: pride in their culture and hope that the American Dream extended beyond "whiteness."

Hughes's poem, "I, Too" is a good example of this argument:

I, too, sing America.I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then. Besides,They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--I, too, am America.