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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey everyone, I'm Eves and welcome back to

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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class, a podcast where we unwrap

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Speaker 1: a piece of history candy every day. Today is February one.

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Speaker 1: The day was February one, nineteen o two. Writer and

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Speaker 1: activist Blankston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri. Hughes was

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Speaker 1: an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance, and he is

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Speaker 1: considered a pioneer of modern black literature. Though it's long

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Speaker 1: been believed that he was born in nineteen o two,

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Speaker 1: recent archival discoveries do suggest that he may have been

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Speaker 1: born a year earlier. Hughes lineage was full of prominent

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Speaker 1: and politically active people. His maternal grandmother's first husband, Louis Leary,

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Speaker 1: died in John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry. His grandfather,

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Speaker 1: Charles Henry Langston, was an abolitionist and one of the

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Speaker 1: first black people to attend Oberlin College. His great uncle,

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Speaker 1: John Mercer Langston, was the first black congressman from Virginia,

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Speaker 1: the first president of Virginia State University, and the first

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Speaker 1: dean of the law school at Harvard University. And his

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Speaker 1: grandmother frequently told him stories about their family's history. His

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Speaker 1: parents were James Hughes and Carrie Langston. When he was

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Speaker 1: was young, his father left the family and moved to Mexico,

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Speaker 1: and his parents divorced. His mother moved to different cities

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Speaker 1: for work. As a result, Hugh's grandmother raised him in Lawrence, Kansas,

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Speaker 1: though he lived with and visited his mother in some

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Speaker 1: cities like Kansas City in Colorado Springs. Eventually he settled

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Speaker 1: with his mother and stepfather in Lincoln, Illinois, then Cleveland, Ohio.

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Speaker 1: By this time, Hughes had already begun writing poetry. He

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Speaker 1: went to high school in Cleveland, and there he began

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Speaker 1: delving into leftist literature and ideology. He took interest in

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Speaker 1: the Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois,

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Speaker 1: and studied the work of Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandberg,

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Speaker 1: Friedrich Nietzsche, and other writers, and he started publishing his poems.

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Speaker 1: Hughes wrote one of his most famous poems, The Negro

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Speaker 1: Speaks of Rivers, when he was a teenager on a

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Speaker 1: train to Mexico. Once he graduated high school, he spent

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Speaker 1: a year in Mexico with his father, but he had

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Speaker 1: a strained relationship with his father, who considered black people

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Speaker 1: inferior even though he was black, and he urged Hughes

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Speaker 1: to pursue a career that was more practical than writing,

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Speaker 1: but Hughes immersed himself more in his writing. He moved

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Speaker 1: to New York City, attended Columbia University, took odd jobs,

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Speaker 1: then dropped out of college. He traveled to Africa and

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Speaker 1: Europe as a crewman, and he lived in Paris for

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Speaker 1: a while, where he continued to write poems in fiction

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Speaker 1: and learned more about blues and jazz artists. When he

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Speaker 1: returned to the US, he moved to Washington, d c.

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Speaker 1: And took trips to Harlem, where he met literary figures

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Speaker 1: like County Cullen and Gene Tumor. In nineteen six Alfred A.

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Speaker 1: Nof published his first book of poetry, The Wary Blues.

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Speaker 1: In addition to poetry, Hughes wrote novels, short stories, and

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Speaker 1: plays in which he portrayed Black American life in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen twenties through nineteen sixties. His works include The Simple Tales,

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Speaker 1: which began as a regular column in The Chicago Defender,

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Speaker 1: a book of short stories called The Ways of White

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Speaker 1: Folks and a play called Mulatto that ran on Broadway

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Speaker 1: for more than a year. Hughes did reading tours, and

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Speaker 1: he traveled throughout the Soviet Union and Asia, writing a

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Speaker 1: lot of leftist poetry. He wrote prolifically and many people

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Speaker 1: around the world supported his work, but many others disliked

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Speaker 1: his portrayals of everyday working class black people, believing it

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Speaker 1: was a disservice to the race to display the less

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Speaker 1: desirable aspects of black life, and other critics thought that

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Speaker 1: Hughes didn't take a strong enough political stance in his work. Regardless,

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Speaker 1: Hughes became successful enough to live off of his writing

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Speaker 1: and public lectures. Hughes wrote up until his death in

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven. His ashes are beneath of floor medallion

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Speaker 1: at the Shaun Berg Center for Research in Black Culture

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Speaker 1: in Harlem. I'm Eve Jeff Cote and hopefully you know

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Speaker 1: a little more about history today than you did yesterday.

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Speaker 1: If you haven't gotten your fill of history yet, you

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Speaker 1: can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at t

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Speaker 1: d I h C podcast. You can also email us

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Speaker 1: at this day at I heart media dot com. Thank

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Speaker 1: you again for listening and we'll see you tomorrow. For

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Speaker 1: more podcasts for my heart Radio, vis the i heart

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Speaker 1: favorite shows.