accepted for publication in CRISIS magazine, the
literary voice of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE
ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE (NAACP).
Returning to the United States, Hughes at-
tended Columbia University in New York for one
year but found it unsatisfying and was thus mo-
tivated to work various jobs and to travel abroad.
He traveled to countries in West Africa and then
to Paris before returning to the United States
around 1924 to live in Washington, D.C., finding
odd jobs to support himself. During his travels he
wrote and published his poetry, which “was often
written in free verse or loosely rhymed verse, re-
flecting the poet’s admiration for Walt Whitman
and Carl Sandburg” (Hatch and Strickland, 177).
These publications helped him get his first book,
The Weary Blues, published in 1926. The volume
received praise, and Hughes was acclaimed as one
of the significant new black voices emanating
from the HARLEM RENAISSANCE of the 1920s. In a
chapter titled “Harlem Literati” in his first auto-
biography, Hughes commented on the favorable
and disappointing aspects of the Harlem Renais-
sance, noting:
During the summer of 1926, Wallace Thur-
man, Zora Neale Hurston, Aaron Douglas,
John P. Davis, Bruce Nugent, Gwendolyn Ben-
nett, and I decided to publish ‘a Negro quar-
terly of the arts’ to be called Fire!!—the idea
being that it would burn up a lot of the old,
dead conventional Negro-white ideas of the
past... into a realization of the existence of the
younger Negro writers and artists, and provide
us with an outlet for publication. (Barksdale
and Kinnamon, 525)Expressing both a generational and racial gap,
Hughes goes on to recount the negative reception
to Fire!!, including disparaging assessments of
his poetry. However, Hughes continued to write
about black cultural themes. His next volume, Fine
Clothes to the Jew (1927), showed him
writing blues poems without either apology or
framing devices from the traditional world of
poetry... delving into the basic subject mat-ter of the blues—love and raw sexuality, deep
sorrow and sudden violence, poverty and
heartbreak... treated with sympathy for the
poor and dispossessed, and without false piety,
[making] him easily the most controversial
black poet of his time. (Rampersad, 370)In 1926, Hughes became a student at Lincoln
University in Pennsylvania, graduating in 1929.
His first novel, Not Without Laughter, was pub-
lished that next year, winning the Harmon Prize
for literature and convincing him to write profes-
sionally. Using the prize money, he traveled to and
lived in Cuba and Haiti, and when he returned to
New York, he became associated with the politi-
cal left and members of the John Reed Society, the
literary arm of the Communist Party. His writings
began to reflect his more political consciousness, as
he published essays in the New Masses and wrote a
poetic drama, Scottsboro Limited (1931), about the
controversial trial of nine black men accused of
raping two white women. In 1932, he traveled with
a group of 22 young blacks who were invited to the
Soviet Union to participate in a film being made
about racism in America. Although the film was
never completed, Hughes lived in the country for a
year, publishing poetry, which would later be con-
troversial for its anti-American perspectives. After
traveling to Japan and China, Hughes returned to
America in the early 1930s, living in Carmel, Cali-
fornia, while writing a collection of stories pub-
lished as The Ways of White Folks (1934). The book
contained stories that emphasized hypocrisy and
racism within white society, setting the tone for his
play Mulatto (1935), which opened on Broadway
in New York.
Mulatto follows the tragedy of a young black
man parented by a white father and his black mis-
tress. The biracial son confronts his father, seek-
ing acknowledgment and an accountability for
his father’s rejection. The play became a commer-
cial success, leading to numerous other plays by
Hughes during the decade, including Little Ham
(1936), Joy to My Soul (1936), When the Jack Hol-
lers (1936; with ARNA BONTEMPS), Soul Gone Home
(1937), Front Porch (1938), and Don’t You Want to
Be Free? (1938). Hughes was not widely revered byHughes, Langston James Mercer 257