Langston Hughes
by Mark Kliesen
his stand against the Jim crow laws
he did a couple of poems about the "Jim Crow row" he for example wrote a poem called Jim Crow row. which is talking about in 7th grade his teacher would put him far away from the other kids and she would treat him as a outcast, and then his mother took him out of school. and then in another poem called he says that he want to go on a merry go round and he is asking the ticket man where the Jim Crow row on the merry go round.
and he says back home they have to sit in the back but there is no back to a merry go round so where should he sit. he is saying in this poem that the Jim Crow laws are a wall in american growth and culture, by telling white people there better. and america does not need a bunch of snobs thinking there mamma makes them better then anybody else.
black history
Langston Hughes was a very proud of his black history. And he represents this in a very big way in his poem "Negro ". In this poem he talks about what blacks have gone through through the ages. There are lines such as "i brushed the boots of Washington" and "under my hands the pyramids arose". So he says that blacks have made an impact on history far deeper than Europe or the Americas but still made a impact there as well.
His love for poetry
Langston Hughes had a love for poetry, one he was willing to sacrifice family for. In his poem "I do not like my father much" he says that his father wants him to go be a miner in mexico or go to college and become a engineer. But this is not in line with his plans. He wants to go to Harlem and become a poet. And for this his father disowned him. But what his father did not know, was that Langston would be put in the great books of poetry and history. but his name would just be another grain of sand in the ever blowing windstorm of time.