Location: Ashes interred beneath the foyer of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Harlem, New York, New York, USA
Cause of death: complications after abdominal surgery, related to prostate cancer
Photo Taken by: Hitormiss
Buy books by Langston Hughes
American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance.
His poetry and fiction portrayed the lives of the working-class blacks in America, lives he portrayed as full of struggle, joy, laughter, and music. Permeating his work is pride in the African-American identity and its diverse culture. He confronted racial stereotypes, protested social conditions, and expanded African America’s image of itself.
In 1930, his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon Gold Medal for literature. The protagonist of the story is a boy named Sandy, whose family must deal with a variety of struggles due to their race and class, in addition to relating to one another. Hughes's first collection of short stories was published in 1934 as The Ways of White Folks. These stories are a series of vignettes revealing the humorous and tragic interactions between whites and blacks.
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