Hughes, born February 1st 1902 in Joplin Missouri, under the given name of James Langston Hughes, the son of Carrie Langston Hughes and James Nathaniel Hughes. Shortly after he was born his parents separated. His mother moved around from city to city searching for work in childhood, Hughes lived in Mexico, Topeka, Kansas, Colorado, Indiana and Buffalo. When he was a child he lived with his grandmother for a time, when he was 13 he moved back with his mother and her new husband. After he graduated from high school he spent a year with his father in Mexico who had become a successful cattle rancher and was able to leave the racism of the north. After he left his fathers' ranch to return north Hughes wrote one of his most famous poems, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers". The poem appeared in the African-American journal Crisis (1921). Hughes also published his first play, THE GOLDEN PIECE in 1921 at the age of 19.
In the early 1920's Hughes entered the Columbia University in New York supported by his father to his fathers disappointment he did not last in the university atmosphere and soon participated in the more entertaining jazz and blues in the nearby Harlem. Hughes decided to see the world and enlisted on a freighter bound for West Africa. He traveled to Paris and Italy.
When Hughes returned to the States he work at many menial jobs and wrote poems in his spare time which earned him a scholarship to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. In 1929 he received his bachelors degree. Throughout the rest of his life he wrote many poems, plays and prose.
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