James Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes

One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, “I want to

be a poet—not a Negro poet,” meaning, I believe, “I want to write like a white

poet,” meaning subconsciously, “I would like to be a white poet;” meaning

behind that, “I would like to be white.” And I doubted then that, with his desire

to run away spiritually from his race, this boy would ever be a great poet. But this

is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America—this urge

within to race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the

mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much

American as possible (Hughes, Modern Internet).

As a successful writer, Langston Hughes was proud to be African American, a fact

inherent in all his literary works. Hughes’ optimistic attitude that not all people are prejudiced

provided impetus to take chances to get his poetry noticed. Intensely criticized by many Negro

critics and intellectuals, Hughes wrote about oppression and other racial themes in his works and

utilized a jazz and blues rhythm in conjunction with black urban language. James Mercer

Langston Hughes’ writing was profoundly influenced by his life, his ethnicity, and the way he

viewed the world around him. He never lost sight of the fact he was African American and

wrote his poetry for the people not his critics or contemporaries.

Vachel Lindsay greatly influenced Langston Hughes’ writing style. Hughes, wanting to

hear Lindsay read his poetry and knowing he would not be allowed into the auditorium because

of his ethnic background, dared to handwrite three of his poems and leave them beside Lindsay’s

plate at a restaurant where Hughes worked as a busboy (Langston, Elements 378). Langston

Hughes knew he would never be allowed to speak to the famous poet, and took a risk to give

Lindsey handwritten poetry; he hoped the literary giant would notice and perhaps appreciate his

work. Hughes was not ashamed of being African American or a busboy and that’s why he took

the chance Lindsay would actually look at his work. Hughes’ ploy worked when the headlines

of the local paper the next morning read that Vachel Lindsey claimed to have found the next

great African American poet. Hughes, a well-educated and traveled writer by the time he was in

his mid-twenties, enjoyed the clubs around Harlem, New York and other cities around the world

where he traveled. These clubs heavily influenced the poetry written by Hughes.