Comparing Langston Hughes And The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was a literary, artistic, and intellectual movement that aroused a new black cultural identity in the 1920s- mid 1930s. Its essence was summed up by critic and teacher Alain Locke in 1926 when he stated that through art, “Negro life is seizing its first chances for group expression and self determination.” Harlem became the center of a “spiritual coming of age” in which Locke’s “New Negro” transformed “social disillusionment to race pride.” Primarily literary, the Renaissance included the visual arts but excluded jazz, despite its parallel emergence as a black art form. The heart of the movement included writers such as Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Bennett.

The publishing industry, fueled by whites’ fascination

Langston began to write poetry in his early teens when he settled in Cleveland, Ohio. He was first introduced to poetry by one of his teachers. His primary influences were Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman. Langston contributed to his high school magazines and then later on other poetry magazines. After high school Langston’s poem The Negro Speaks Of Rivers was published in “The Crises” magazine. In 1925, Langston was working as a busboy in a Washington, D.C. hotel restaurant when he met American poet Vachel Lindsay. Langston showed some of his poems to Vachel, who was very impressed and use his connections to promote his poetry and essentially give langston a broader audience. In 1925, Langston’s poem “The Weary Blues” won first prize in the “Opportunity” magazine literary competition, he also received a scholarship to Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania. During his studies at Lincoln, Langston’s poetry was brought to the attention of novelist and critic Carl Van Vechten, who used his connections to help get Hughes’s first book of poetry, The Weary Blues. The book had popular appeal and established both his poetic style and his commitment to black themes and heritage. Langston was among the first to use jazz rhythms and dialect to depict the life of urban blacks in his

Gwendolyn attended the illustrious Brooklyn High School for Girls and became the first black member of the school's Literary and Dramatic Societies.After graduating from high school in 1921, Gwendolyn attended Columbia University. She eventually earned her degree from the Pratt Institute in 1924. After finishing school, Gwendolyn was hired as an Assistant Professor of Art at Howard University, but left in 1925 when she was awarded a $1000 scholarship to study art at the Sorbonne in Paris. When she returned to the United States, she resumed her position at Howard University and began to transpire as an influential literary figure during the Harlem