Langston hughes early life biography

Early Life

Hughes was born February 1, (although some evidence shows it may have been ), in Joplin, Missouri, to James and Caroline Hughes. When he was a young boy, his parents divorced, and, after his father moved to Mexico, and his mother, whose maiden name was Langston, sought work elsewhere, he was raised by his grandmother, Mary Langston, in Lawrence, Kansas.

Mary Langston died when Hughes was around 12 years old, and he relocated to Illinois to live with his mother and stepfather.

Langston hughes early life biography the alan chadwick archive museum

The family eventually landed in Cleveland.

According to the first volume of his autobiography, The Big Sea, which chronicled his life until the age of 28, Hughes said he often used reading to combat loneliness while growing up.

“I began to believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world in books—where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas,” he wrote.

In his Ohio high school, he started writing poetry, focusing on what he called