Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

“Dreams” (1929)

Langston Hughes (1902–67)
Writer
Engineering 1921–22

Proclaimed in his time as the Poet Laureate of Harlem, Hughes chronicled black life in a variety of forms, from the beginnings of the Harlem Renaissance through the Depression and into the modern civil-rights era. His work is inflected with the rhythms of the jazz that he absorbed and adored in the clubs of New York and Washington during the 1920s.

In a prodigious career, he wrote poems, novels, short stories, two autobiographies—The Big Sea (1940) and I Wonder as I Wander (1956)—plays, musicals, operas, translations, radio and television scripts, and magazine articles. In addition, he edited seven anthologies.

Hughes attended Columbia's School of Mines, Engineering and Chemistry in 1921 at the behest of his father, who urged him to seek a practical career. Despite a B+ average, Hughes dropped out after one year, exchanging his slide rule for a pen. Eight years later he graduated from Lincoln University, by then a much-published author and poet.


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