Langston Hughes

@ National Portrait Gallery

Description

The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was fueled by community and racial pride led by cultural leaders in African American society such as author and poet Langston Hughes. Born and raised in the Midwest, Hughes was educated at Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) after leaving Columbia University, in part because of its racism. He lived in Harlem for most of his life.Artistically, Hughes anticipated black separatism (even black nationalism) in work that dealt with the desperate predicament of African Americans. Not simply despairing, his poetry insisted on the dignity and beauty of African Americans: "Beautiful, also, is the sun./Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people." Beset by the contradictions and difficulties of being a celebrated black artist and a cultural radical in a segregated society, Hughes kept his homosexuality publicly hidden, although it runs through his poetry in coded and oblique messages of loneliness and fulfillment.

Type:

Image

Format:

Gelatin Silver Print

Rights:

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Prentiss Taylor

View Original At:

http://collections.si.edu/search/results.htm?q=record_ID=npg_NPG.84.143&repo=DPLA