Born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, Langston Hughes is known primarily for his jazz poetry during the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes worked to depict the actual lives of African Americans during the 1920s in the United States.  “In Hughes’s own words, his poetry is about ‘workers, roustabouts, and singers, and job hunters on Lenox Avenue in New York, or Seventh Street in Washington or South State in Chicago—people up today and down tomorrow, working this week and fired the next, beaten and baffled, but determined not to be wholly beaten, buying furniture on the installment plan, filling the house with roomers to help pay the rent, hoping to get a new suit for Easter—and pawning that suit before the Fourth of July’,” (Poetry Foundation).

Along with poetry, Hughes wrote novels, plays and short stories. One of his most notable accomplishments was becoming the first African American able to support himself solely from his writing and public lectures. One of his best known poems is “I, Too”: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/i-too