Happy Birthday, Langston Hughes! Born February 1, 1902

“We all have “our” Langstons, the Langstons usually first encountered in childhood through poetry.”

– From Elizabeth Alexander’s essay “The Black Poet as Canon-Maker” on Langston Hughes, New Negro Poets, and American poetry’s segregated past

You can also read Langston Hughes’ poems from old issues of Poetry magazine, like Suicide and Seashore Through Dark Glasses, photographed here, through the Hughes page on our web archive.