Langston Hughes and The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance evolved in the early 1920’s and lasted through the 1940’s.  The renaissance was a time when black writers debated the place that African Americans held in American life and their role in society.  Some believed that all of their blackness should be shared, while others believed that race should not be a factor and their writing should be analyzed in mainstream white society without saying that it was written by a Negro.  “The Renaissance was very much a northern urban movement, associated with modernism.” (Matterson) 

Some black writers were looking for their place in mainstream society, wanting not to be recognized by their race but for their accomplishments.  These writers wanted to be seen as writers, not black writers.  This notion was contradictory to the ideas of many others that believed in promoting their blackness. 

Langston Hughes did not believe that black people should conform to white society but embrace their ethnicity, and Hughes expressed this in his writing.  Hughes wrote about blackness as it was, not as it may have been envisioned by white society.  Hughes used a black vernacular and black music to express his position.  Hughes wrote an essay in 1926, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” in which he criticized the writer that would run away from his race in order to fit into white society.  Hughes pointed out all of the reasons why he felt his race must accept who they are and let society know who they were also. 

Langston Hughes breathed new life into the Harlem Renaissance, accepting and supporting who he was and bringing a new face to Harlem.  Hughes wanted other black writers to be proud of their race and to not run from it but embrace it.  Hughes was a key player in the Harlem Renaissance.

Works cited

Berry, Faith. Langston Hughes: Before and Beyond Harlem. New York: Citadel Press, 1992.

Matterson, Stephen. American Literature: The Essential Gloassary. London: Arnold, 2003.

PBS. n.d. 4 April 2011 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americannovel/timeline/harlemrenaissance.html.