Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes was an American poet and writer, a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s.
His work celebrated Black American life and culture, often incorporating jazz rhythms and vernacular speech: Hughes wrote "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" when he was seventeen.
His poems, stories, and essays addressed racial injustice while affirming Black identity and dignity.
Guaranteed individual legal protections
- social justiceFair distribution of opportunities
- socialismCommunal economic control
- racial equalityEqual treatment regardless of ancestry
- protest poetryLiterature opposing authority
Jim Crow · segregation · NAACP · labor rights · Spanish Civil War · Soviet Union · blacklist · working class
Black arts explosion, 1920s
- jazz poetryPoems echoing improvisational music
- free versePoetry without fixed structure
- rhythmPatterned stress and silence
- syncopationStressed unexpected beats
vernacular · lyrical · stanza · imagery · meter · rhyme · diction · metaphor
Black arts explosion, 1920s
- cultural nationalismDevotion to shared heritage
- racial prideEsteem for one's heritage
- Pan-AfricanismContinental and diaspora solidarity ideology
- Fire!!Rapid oxidation with flames
Mixed Black-white heritage
- theaterVenue for live drama
- stageRaised performance platform
- scriptWritten words for performance
- dialogueSpoken exchange between parties
characterization · performance · tragedy · ensemble · Broadway · gospel play · musical theater
Brief prose narratives
- fictionImagined narrative work
- narrativeAccount of events
- charactersPersons in a narrative
- satireMockery exposing vice
civil rights
Guaranteed individual legal protections
- social justiceFair distribution of opportunities
- socialismCommunal economic control
- racial equalityEqual treatment regardless of ancestry
protest poetry · Jim Crow · segregation · NAACP · labor rights · Spanish Civil War · Soviet Union · blacklist · working class
Harlem Renaissance
Black arts explosion, 1920s
- jazz poetryPoems echoing improvisational music
- free versePoetry without fixed structure
- rhythmPatterned stress and silence
syncopation · vernacular · lyrical · stanza · imagery · meter · rhyme · diction · metaphor · alliteration
Harlem Renaissance
Black arts explosion, 1920s
- cultural nationalismDevotion to shared heritage
- racial prideEsteem for one's heritage
- Pan-AfricanismContinental and diaspora solidarity ideology
Mulatto
Mixed Black-white heritage
dialogue · characterization · performance · tragedy · ensemble · Broadway · gospel play · musical theater
short stories
Brief prose narratives
- fictionImagined narrative work
- narrativeAccount of events
- charactersPersons in a narrative
satire · humor · columnist · autobiography
- Activist PoetsPablo Neruda, Bertolt Brecht, Gil Scott-Heron, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron
- AuthorsShakespeare, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Famous AuthorsShakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Hemingway, Twain
- poetrypoem, poems, poetry, verse, verses
- 1920s IconsBabe Ruth, Charlie Chaplin, Al Capone, Charles Lindbergh, Duke Ellington
- poetspoet, Homer, Dante, Milton, Emily Dickinson
Langston HughesT.S. Eliot
Ezra Pound · Ayn Rand · The Waste Land · art for art's sake · Robert Frost