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Hughe Hughes Poetry During The Harlem Renaissance

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Not only was literature rising during the Harlem Renaissance, but so was music. Jazz and blues had peaked in the 1920’s. Hughes was devoted to black music and based a lot of his writings off blues and jazz allowed him to experiment in rhythmic free verse. He attracted a lot of attention after publishing his two books The Weary Blues, 1926, and Fine Clothes to the Jew, 1927. Both of these novels emphasized on the lower class black life that ultimately angered a lot of people, saying that it put out a bad image of blacks during this time. But Hughes wasn’t using this to bash the blacks, he was using it to make people aware. He used black dialect, mixed with his rhythm of the blues in a way to present the emotional scenery of the urban black community. He loved the street life of the Harlem neighborhoods, and often he wrote people he met into his works. He wasn’t just speaking as himself anymore, he was speaking as his mother, as the weary man who lived on Lenox Avenue, he spoke as the house servant, he spoke as a brother, and he spoke as the Negro community. …show more content…

In his 1926 novel titled The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, he wrote “We younger Negro artist who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad, if they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too…We stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.” He embraced the black community and tried to empower them by celebrating all tones of black. Not only was it not ok for whites to break down blacks, but it was also not ok for the blacks to break down other blacks. By celebrating all tones he resurrected the word ‘black’ as a beautiful word as opposed to a dark, deceptive, and negative word. His use of color imagery was able to show the ethnic differences of all black

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He had seen firsthand how African Americans experienced brutality growing up. He had seen this when Jess Alexander Helms a police officer brutalized a black woman, and dragged her to the jail house. He had explained it as “the way a caveman would club and drag his sexual prey”. This shows how little rights African Americans had in these days because he was unable to do anything. All of this happened while other African American individuals walked away hurriedly.

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He attending predominantly white schools and churches and although black, had no of discrimination of his white counterparts. His belief was for man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellow man, and without having the door of opportunity closed roughly in his face. (pg.695) He criticized Washington teachings as “tending to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators”. (pg.707) He viewed the reconstruction of the south as a debacle and emphasized the efforts to transform the South into a society free of social and economic exploitation; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs.

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He believed that black people were treated poorly by white people even after they were freed. He also wrote this to demonstrate the black culture during that time period and how they moved past racism to think of themselves as contributing American’s and humans in

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1.Langston Hughes was an African-American author, poet, playwright and a social activist in the era of the Harlem Renaissance. Langston lived in New York's Harlem and went through various experiences in the artistic period which heavily influenced his vivid works. Hughes took after the intellectual, social, and artistic atmosphere of the Harlem Renaissance and incorporated it into many of his works like “The Weary Blues”. 2.Langston Hughes is regarded as one of the most notorious and influential figures in the Harlem Renaissance. His contributions to the lively era included him writing about the world around him which brought about a familiar and relatable feeling to his African American readers and a vivid imagery to his White readers.

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He wrote this piece to express his important opinion about the effect of racism and how he’s viewed as a man of color. He talks about his first encounter of racism when he was young man in college and was assumed to be a mugger or killer just because of skin. “It was in echo of that terrified woman’s footfalls that I first began to know the unwieldy inheritance I’d come into the ability to alter public space in ugly ways.” I feel that the author is trying to connect to his vast audience of people who don’t understand what it is like to a black man in society. Later he contemplated that he rejected or shunned by the white race collectively as a dangerous man.

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The Harlem Renaissance, an age of musical and artistic rebirth. During the the 1920’s artist, poets, and musicians brought on a new light to the arts. Many writers and thinkers called New York City home. African-Americans wrote and sang about their culture and spiritualism. Among these poets and artists, Langston Hughes was the most influential, his works promoted equality and celebrated African-American culture.

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Hughes was different when writing his poetry, he addressed to the people specifically, the black people(“Langston). Meaning he didn’t write his poems for fun, they had a purpose and he wanted that purpose to spread within people. He always spread the message humorously

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Hughes's poetry, mainly about "The Weary Blues," exemplified the Harlem Renaissance's spirit of resilience and creativity. He easily became one of the era's most influential voices. Through his literary contributions, Hughes challenged the stereotypes and fought

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Whenever a group of like-minded people are allowed to congregate, it tends to be that the result of their collective minds leaves the world forever changed. Examples of this widespread of ideas can be found in the renaissance, the age of enlightenment, and most recently, the Harlem Renaissance. This marvellous movement was a time of great appreciation for African-American culture and heritage, which began in the slums of Harlem, New York, around 1920. This specific change in cultural tempo came about as less of a re-birth, and more of a first light for the brilliance of black poets who had been, and to some extent still were being, buried under the immense cover of the white majority in America. Each poet of this time contributed something unique and incredible to the rising movement, starting with a man named Langston Hughes.

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The culture of most blacks was unwanted during this time. For this reason Hughes desired to make a change and illustrate such cultural identities in his poems. In doing this he caused a shift in ideas among all people. Although the change didn’t happen immediately it did eventually occur. With that said the African American people were given less of an opportunity at jobs, schooling, and most importantly culture.

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He uses literary devices to explain his tone and feelings toward the black

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He played an important role in the movement of African Americans in the Harlem Renaissance period. He was one of those who brought the African American culture and an entirely new level of development and acceptance by other races. Hughes was a man with deep sense of racial pride. Through his works he tried to glorify the African American culture, traditions and customs, he tried to show its creativity

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He does this by explaining that dark color shouldn’t be treated as a slave. He is an influence to some of the people in the world because he tries to aware people what's happening in the society in some kind of way unlike the other artist who let the situation in the society continue and no being

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Harlem Renaissance When Langston Hughes left his native Midwest to attend Columbia University in 1921, he was excited about his new school's location in the Harlem community. Hughes had already heard about a place that was the "Negro capital of the world," and he knew that if ever he wanted to be a writer, his career would have to begin in Harlem. Hughes would become one of the major figures in the New Negro Renaissance—or Harlem Renaissance, as it is familiarly known. After his arrival, he would never call anyplace else home, and in many ways Hughes typifies what the Renaissance meant and what it allowed. Today his residence at 20 East 127th Street continues to attract young writers committed to producing the kind of art that made Hughes famous.

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This leads to his ideas of separation over integration. He felt that integration would still give white people power over black people (which relates back to his beliefs of economic independence). He felt that integration didn’t make up for the kidnapping, rapes, and enslavement of millions of black people for hundreds of years. He thought that as long as white people and black people lived together, white people would have the power while black people would always beg for housing, food, and money. In his lifetime, he’d never seen a situation where someone black wasn’t begging for the “table scraps” off of a white person’s table.

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