He travelled across Europe for the next two years, living hand-to-mouth at different times in Holland, France, and Italy. In 1923, he signed on as a cabin boy with a freighter bound for West Africa. After leaving Columbia University, Hughes supported himself and his mother-who now lived in Harlem-with a variety of menial jobs. He also became a regular at events sponsored by the American Socialist Society. There he studied English literature and explored the city’s rich social and intellectual life.

In 1921, Hughes spent a year at Columbia University in New York City. He also became a regular contributor to the Crisis, a magazine published by the NAACP and one of the cornerstones of the early fight for civil rights. At Central High School, he proved himself as a student and as an athlete, and began writing poetry and short fiction for the school’s literary magazine.Īfter graduating from high school, Hughes taught English in Mexico for a year. When his mother was remarried and settled in 1914, he joined her in Cleveland, Ohio.

He spent many years living with various relatives and family friends as his mother traveled in search of work. Young James and his mother, however, struggled to make ends meet.

The elder Hughes left soon after his son’s birth, eventually settling in Mexico, where he prospered in a variety of business ventures. Hughes was the only child of James Nathaniel Hughes and Carrie Mercer Hughes nee Langston. James Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. The story of a young black pianist, Oceola Jones, and her conflict with her self-appointed white patron, Dora Ellsworth, “The Blues I’m Playing” embodies Hughes’s belief in the fortitude and dignity of black Americans. It also conveys powerful messages about race relations, the beauty of blues and jazz, and the black artist’s experiences in the white-dominated world of modern art. First published in Scribner’s Magazine in May, 1934, and in the collection The Ways of White Folks that same year, “The Blues I’m Playing” combines Hughes’s irony, his directness, and his use of dialect. The author is a major figure on the landscape of American poetry and may be the best-known on the landscape of African-American poetry. In many ways, “The Blues I’m Playing” exemplifies the qualities that dominate the prose and poetry of Langston Hughes.

The ways of white folks