James Langston Hughes was born 1 February 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was very small, and his father (who found American racism made his desires to be a lawyer impossible) left the family and immigrated to Mexico. Hughes' mother moved with her child to Lawrence, Kansas, so she and he could live with his grandmother, Mary Langston. Langston Hughes' mother moved to Topeka in 1907, leaving the five-year-old with his grandmother. Langston came from …showed first 75 words of 671 total…

…showed last 75 words of 671 total…personalizing them, so the reader could step in and draw his own conclusions." Hughes wrote novels, stories, songs, speeches, and children's books. He is associated with jazz, which influenced some of his poems and to which he contributed lyrics, attitude, and themes. Irony and humor characterize Hughes' work. Langston Hughes died on 22 May 1967, at the age of 67, in a hospital in New York, still an active and productive writer, still respected by millions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Bibliography**