Langston Hughes
...literary works helped shape American literature and politics. Hughes, like others active in the Harlem Renaissance, had a strong sense of racial pride. Through his poetry, novels, plays, essays, and children's books, he promoted equality, condemned racism and injustice, and celebrated African American culture, humor, and spirituality. Langston Hughes is an artist who used words to express himself, but other forms of art influenced him, and his work crossed over into other mediums. He is considered a Renaissance man, someone who has wide interests and is talented in many areas. Jazz and blues were key elements of the Harlem Renaissance. A time when African Americans in a section of New York City started a movement to celebrate their culture. Hughes believed that jazz and blues expressed the wide range of black America's experience, from grief and sadness to hope and determination. In 1958, the famous Henry "Red" Allen Band accompanied Hughes in a poetry recording. The rhythms of jazz also influenced his 1951 Montage of a Dream Deferred. This was a book-length poem in five sections portraying the African American urban experience using music, poetry, and history. Langston Hughes influenced many other people with his art. Young writers and artists looked up to him. African Americans found in him a voice for their own experiences and culture a voice that had not been widely heard until then. He inspired many other artists of all races to write, draw, play, and sing. Some people even dedicated their work to Hughes. Langston Hughes was a prolific writer. In the forty-odd years between his first book in 1926 and his death in 1967, he devoted his life to writing and lecturing. He wrote sixteen book of poems, t...