In Joplin, Missouri on February 1, 1902 James Nathaniel Hughes and Carrie Langston had a son named James Mercer Langston Hughes. Soon after his birth James’s parents separated. James Nathaniel Hughes then moved to Mexico and because Carrie Langston moved around a lot in search of work, James was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother, Mary Patterson Langston in Lawrence, Kanas. Langston says he remembers his grandmother sitting him in her lap and telling him stories of courageous slaves who suffered and struggled to receive their freedom. Langston wrote in a memoir “Through my grandmother's stories always life moved, moved heroically toward an end. Nobody ever cried in my grandmother's stories. They worked, or schemed, or fought. But …show more content…
Later in life Langston cited those two poets as his primary influences. Mr. Hughes also wrote literary pieces for the school magazine. He wrote literary pieces for poetry magazines too even though they were all rejected. Langston graduated from Central high school in 1920. He then spent the following year with his father in hopes to convince him to support his plan of getting into Columbia University. His father wanted him to study in a university abroad and decide on a career in engineering. He was ready to support financially only if Langston agreed to study engineering. The two finally came to a compromise where Langston could attend Columbia but as an engineering student. In 1921 Mr. Hughes returned to the United States and enrolled at Columbia University where he studied briefly, and during which time he quickly became a part of Harlem's cultural movement, the Harlem Renaissance. But He dropped out of Columbia in 1922 because of racial prejudice. After leaving Columbia, He then spend a brief stint as a crewman aboard the S.S. Malone in 1923, to travel the world. During his term he traveled to Europe and West Africa. While in Europe, he left S.S. Malone and stayed in Paris for a while. Langston stayed in England, he was a part of the black foreign